Although I don’t believe that it will impact your heavily distributed publication if I stop picking it up, I find it necessary to inform you that I will no longer patronize City Weekly. I find the cover of your Oct. 21, 2010, edition incredibly offensive.
Disregarding the context, of which I am aware, putting the face of a black man along with the title “The Faces of Rape” is racist and bigoted. Pushing oblique stereotypes onto an already marginalized group is a poor move and makes it seem like you have no consideration for your audience.
Utah’s black population is less than 2 percent of the overall population, so, sure, I guess you won’t be impacted heavily if all blacks in Utah stopped reading. Hopefully there are more people than just me, though, who are upset by it.
My reaction to hearing about the cover was, “Where do we live?”
Peter Worden
Salt Lake City
