From Vox--a study in the
Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science (which has the unfortunate acronym PNIS) found a bias toward white males in a sampling of New Yorker cartoons.
Out of 1,810 total characters, 1,277 (about 70.6 percent) were male, and 1,714 (94.7 percent) were white. As Michel notes, this is similar to the under-representation of non-whites in newspaper comics (which have about 2 to 4 percent non-white characters) and worse than children's books (which have 5 to 10 percent).
Let me play the devil's advocate here, at least on the issue of race—
The New Yorker readership is overwhelmingly white so it may be legitimate for them to feature mainly white characters. Nobody would accuse Men's Health of not writing enough stories about women or Ebony of failing to cover white people. Women's magazines are targeted at women.
Plenty of music is marketed toward white audiences (deliberately or as the consequence of a nonracial strategy, i.e. targeting rural areas). Can a music company specialize in music that appeals to white people? Many do.
On the other hand, the New Yorker purports to tell its readers about what's going on in the world. Not to include people of color--even if you are satirizing them in cartoons--is a glaring omission. And if you want to say you report on the culture, politics, and history of America then under-representing minorities is inexcusable—as if the story of this country can be told without including blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and other groups.
The other disturbing finding--
Women disproportionately filled the roles of "parent," "assistant," and "spouse." They were far less likely to be portrayed as "scientists," "literary figures," "coaches," or "police." ... about 10 percent of the lawyers in the cartoons were women, whereas about 33 percent of American Bar Association members are in reality.
I think it's indisputable that this is at least bias if not sexism (the irony being, I bet, that the majority of the magazine's readers are career women).