Jim:
Depicting an African minister as an ape, or Nigerian Muslim women as benefit scroungers is racist, whatever colour you paint it (pun intended

I don't know the back-story behind the African minister depitction, but I have some knowledge of the Boko Haram / Benefits scenario, and what you're failing to do here is put the cartoon into context, and to apply the French sense of humour (cultural imperialism on your part?).

Charlie Hebdo has always been a strongly *socialist* magazine. One of the things its front-page cartoons often do is conflate 2 or 3 current news stories into one to make a point by taking something to the extreme, and showing a "reductio ad absurdum". The week this cartoon came out the big news stories in France were the girls kidnapped (and probably raped) by Boko Haram and the French Government's proposals to reduce benefits....in particular benefits to new mothers. The point Hebdo was making with this cartoon was directly against the benefit reduction proposals. The way it was intended (and the way a typical French person following the news that week would have seen it) is not racist.

You (and to be fair, many other Brits) have chosen to interpret this cartoon in the light of your own cultural preconceptions...not something I'd have thought someone committed to understanding multiculturalism would have done quite so readily.