Don Cheadle Says He Doesn’t Believe Serena Cartoonist, You Know It’s Racist!

EXCLUSIVE

Don Cheadle isn’t buying the Herald Sun’s explanation for its Serena Williams cartoon one bit … telling TMZ Sports the newspaper DEFINITELY knows the drawing is racist as hell.

“I don’t believe them,” the ‘Avengers’ actor says.

“They have their own history of racism — they know what that cartoon means.”

The paper doubled down on Mark Knight‘s drawing — the one depicting Serena with exaggerated lips, hair and nose after her U.S. Open outburst — reprinting the piece Wednesday and claiming the world is too sensitive.

Cheadle couldn’t believe it when we got him out at LAX … saying he sees no humor or satire in the “art” at all.

“It’s incredibly tone deaf,” he says.

For his part … Knight says of the drawing, “The world’s gone crazy. It’s a cartoon about poor behavior. It’s nothing to do with race.”