American Civil Liberties Union

To illustrate its cover story about the housing market’s recovery in Phoenix, last week’s Bloomberg Businessweek cover depicted four black and Latino caricatures with obscenely exaggerated features, celebrating in a house filled with cash. You might wonder why an article about a tentative economic upturn should be represented by such alarmingly racist stereotypes—as though it’s a problem that people of color to have access to credit. After intense blowback, Bloomberg Businessweek responded, asserting “Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret. Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.” However, their “apology” and its focus on their “intention” misses the larger point: Reducing complex economic systems to a caricature, particularly when it is done with an agenda, obscures the real sources of inequality and unfairly blames the victim.