The Herald Sun newspaper has republished its controversial cartoon of tennis star Serena Williams on a defiant front page in which it attacked its critics and foreshadowed a future where satire is outlawed.

"WELCOME TO PC WORLD," read the paper's headline, over a collection of Mark Knight cartoons, including the depiction of Williams spitting a dummy and stamping on her racquet.

The caricature has drawn accusations of sexism and racism from around the globe.

"If the self-appointed censors of Mark Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our new politically correct life will be very dull indeed," the paper wrote.

Loading

The cartoon, first published on Monday, was Knight's take on the controversial US Open women's final over the weekend, which Williams lost to Japan's Naomi Osaka after being given three code violations — one for coaching, one for breaking her racquet and another for verbal abuse of the chair umpire.

Williams' behaviour divided onlookers, with some saying she was out of line and others believing she was the victim of overzealous or discriminatory officiating.

Knight has rejected suggestions his depiction of Williams was racist or sexist, while others said it drew on racist tropes of African-Americans.

"I saw the world number one tennis player have a huge hissy fit and spit the dummy," Knight said on Tuesday.

"That's what the cartoon was about, her poor behaviour on the court.

"I drew her as an African-American woman. She's powerfully built. She wears these outrageous costumes when she plays tennis. She's interesting to draw. I drew her as she is, as an African-American woman."

The Herald Sun reported Knight had suspended his Twitter account in response to abuse towards his family over the cartoon.

Aboriginal playwright and actor Nakkiah Lui tweeted in response to the front page, saying the Herald Sun needed to "chill".

"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom above criticism," she said.

"What we have is a bunch of people who get paid to publicly exercise their implied freedom to speech then whinging when people disagree with what they have had the privilege of being paid to say."

Sorry, this video has expired 'This whole business that I'm some sort of racist is just made up,' says Mark Knight

Front page shows 'misunderstanding' of criticism

Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke said she believed the front page demonstrated a "misunderstanding" of the criticism levelled at the cartoon.

"I think it's really interesting that the Herald Sun has not included really any other caricatures or cartoons of black people — either Aboriginal people or African-American people, black people of any descent," said Ms Clarke, who is of Afro-Caribbean descent.

"So what you have is essentially a front page that has pictures like Donald Trump being caricatured for his hair, Tony Abbott being caricatured for his big ears, you know the Prime Minister being portrayed as a muppet, kind of this innuendo that he's having his strings pulled … and I think it's fundamentally different to racial caricature.

"We don't have a history of people being persecuted because they have orange skin and strange yellow hair, or being persecuted because they have large ears."

Ms Clarke said the front page had been carefully constructed.

"What it's trying to say is that all people are caricatured, but the criticism of the Serena Williams caricature is that it's specifically racist, and there's a reason why the Herald Sun isn't able to put other cartoons that they've reproduced of black people on the front page.

"I'm not really opposed to satire through caricature but it was just a bad cartoon, so I think really there's a misunderstanding of the criticism."

Ms Clarke said it appeared the front page was designed to capitalise on the global attention generated by the initial cartoon.

"This is actually going to sell newspapers for days or weeks and I think that's essentially what the front page reflects, it's not necessarily about whether this is 'PC' or whether this is racist," she said.

The cartoon referenced a dispute between Serena Williams and umpire Carlos Ramos. ( Reuters: Robert Deutsch, USA Today Sports )

Cartooning 'under threat'

Cartoonists in Australia have expressed a range of views on the original cartoon and the newspaper's response to criticism.

Syndicated cartoonist Paul Zanetti, a friend of Knight's for forty years, said cartooning was under threat from political correctness, and the Herald Sun front page "spelt out exactly where we are at at this point".

"Political correctness is really all about censoring, it's about being bullied into conforming to a view of the world," he said.

"If you draw a cartoon, do you have to start self-regulating, do you have to start thinking, 'well how is this cartoon going to be taken?'"

Zanetti said he spoke to Knight at length and he was in a state of "stunned disbelief" about the response his cartoon had generated.

"He's in the middle of a hurricane at the moment," he said.

"He did say to me that his wife is worried and the kids are worried because they're all getting death threats."

Freelance cartoonist Fiona Katauskas, the producer of Insiders' Talking Pictures segment, said the Herald Sun front page was "a total straw man" because the depiction of Williams was the only cartoon of those featured that had offended people.

"To try and imply that people are saying that you can't criticise anyone or exaggerate anything is completely missing the point," she said.

Katauskas said it was important for cartoonists to be sensitive to the history of caricatures based on race, and consider how their images could be viewed in that context.

"Things can be racist even if you don't mean for them to be," she said.

Loading

"On the whole, a lot of white people seem to find criticism of this kind of stuff really difficult.

"We're very good at being offended when we're called racist and assume that because that isn't our intent, we don't have to listen to what people are saying."

Katauskas said the Herald Sun could have learned from the responses of people around the world who were offended by the cartoon.

"Instead I feel like it was turned into a 'well stuff you, we're not going to be told what to do' kind of message which ends up creating further toxicity."

Cathy Wilcox from The Sydney Morning Herald tweeted she was "very sorry to see that News Ltd are going to make another culture war martyr of a cartoonist. What a wicked, deadly game".

Wilcox defended Knight in response to another user's tweet, posting that she knew him to be "a decent fellow".

Loading

Jon Kudelka, a cartoonist for The Australian, tweeted: "May I humbly suggest that the time for criticising anyone for having a bit of a tanty has now passed".

Australia 'not outside' race history

Knight's cartoon is continuing to generate headlines overseas, where many American media sites featured opinion and analysis articles criticising his depiction of Williams.

The Washington Post wrote the cartoon reflected "the dehumanizing Jim Crow caricatures so common in the 19th and 20th centuries", while an opinion piece published by CNN said "the racist Serena cartoon is straight out of 1910".

The New York Times spoke to cartoon researcher Noah Berlatsky, who said "the tradition of comics very often has been the same as the tradition of racism, and you can choose to push back against that, or you can be racist".

An opinion piece on The Huffington Post described Knight's portrayal of Williams as "reminiscent of the minstrel or the mammy" and African-American news site Blavity said Knight's response to the criticism was an "implausible non-apology".

In an opinion piece published on Slate, freelance writer Rachel Withers said the cartoon was "sadly representative of Australian cartooning and Australian racism in general".

Ms Clarke said while there had been some condemnation of the cartoon in Australia, some held the view that the offence taken to the cartoon is unique to America's history.

"I think there is some kind of sense that Australia is somehow outside of any history, any kind of race history," she said.

"And historically it has been Aboriginal Australian people who have been portrayed in this really incredibly dehumanising way … we're not outside or divorced of this history.

"So this idea that it's political correctness and it's coming from the United States and Australia is different and we're going to kind of stand behind this, it's just internationally embarrassing."

Loading

Loading

Loading