Andrew Yang's wife lashes out at 'racist' cartoon of candidate

While Andrew Yang on Tuesday visited the Queens subway station where an Asian man was shoved onto the tracks the day before, the wife of the New York City mayoral candidate responded to another subway issue — a newspaper cartoon that she called a stereotypical depiction.

On Monday, candidate Yang, who is Chinese American, drew some derision from hubristic New Yorkers when he picked Times Square in Manhattan as his favorite subway stop. Many New Yorkers consider Times Square the ultimate tourist destination and a place they try to avoid.

Yang unveiled his favorite underground stop on Showtime to comedian Ziwe, who reacted with surprise.

"It's big. It's cavernous. There are entertainers there," said Yang, who lives nearby and uses the station. "Sure, what's not to like?"

A cartoon in the New York Daily News this week shows Yang emerging from a Times Square subway stop with three of the costumed characters who roam the Crossroads of the World standing behind him. A caption below an older couple standing in the doorway of their souvenir shop says, "THE TOURISTS ARE BACK!"

Yang's wife, Evelyn, a Queens native, excoriated the cartoon, which she said distorted her husband's facial features.

"It is not OK to use Andrew to make Asians the butt of racist jokes, especially during this time of unprecedented racial tension, a time when Asians are being randomly attacked on our streets just because of how they look," she said at the 21st Street-Queensbridge F train station, where the man who was shoved onto the tracks escaped serious injury.

"This cartoonist disfigured Andrew's face. He has overtly beady, slanted eyes. Now, these white people standing here on the other side have larger eyes and human irises," she said in describing the cartoon. "They're calling Andrew, this Asian man, a tourist, coming from who knows where, but probably from a land of other people who look just like him with his shifty, beady eyes."

The News originally published the cartoon online and later in the paper.

Josh Greenman, the editorial page editor for the News, defended the cartoon by artist Bill Bramhall, which was later revised.

"Andrew Yang is a leading contender to be mayor of New York City, and as commentators, his opponents and The News editorial board have recently pointed out, he's recently revealed there are major gaps in his knowledge of New York City politics and policy. Nor has he ever voted in a mayoral election," Greenman said. "Bill Bramhall's cartoon is a comment on that, period, end of story. This is not a racial stereotype or racist caricature."

Greenman said that the online version of the cartoon had been altered for the print edition after complaints were voiced.

"After Bill tweeted his cartoon yesterday, people reacted badly to how Yang's eyes were drawn," Greenman said. "Bill altered the drawing out of sensitivity to those concerns, without changing the concept of the cartoon, which he and we stand by."

On Monday, Evelyn Yang had tweeted: "I can't believe my eyes. To publish this racist disfiguration of @AndrewYang as a tourist, in NYC where I was born, where Andrew has lived for 25 years, where our boys were born, where 16% of us are Asian and anti-Asian hate is up 900%. #StopAsianHate."

Her tweet drew a mixed response with some seeing the cartoon as political commentary while others compared it to images from the days of the notorious 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

"I call upon everyone in this race to say that all of us belong here in New York and that characterizing anyone as being less New York than someone else on the basis of their race or religion or any other background is wrong," Andrew Yang said Tuesday at the subway stop.

According to the most recent NYPD statistics, through May 2 this year there have been 80 anti-Asian hate crimes in the city, a 400 percent increase over the same period last year. The jump in the bias incidents corresponds to the coronavirus outbreak, which accelerated in New York in March 2020.

Mainly in response to the rise in anti-Asian incidents, the NYPD established a Hate Crime Review Panel in April.

John Liu, a popular Queens politician who is now a state senator and previously served as New York City comptroller, endorsed Yang on Monday. Of the cartoon, Liu said Tuesday, "It jumps out at you like a shark with sharp teeth. I was just happy they didn't hang a camera around his neck."

Andrew Yang, 46, the son of immigrants from Taiwan, was born in Schenectady in upstate New York and grew up in Westchester County.

He ran a quirky Democratic US presidential campaign in 2020 featuring a plan for universal basic income (a concept that since has gained traction in some locations). Yang has been near the top of a large mayoral field for the June 22 Democratic primary. At one time, polls had him as the front-runner but lately he appears to be trailing Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia.