HISTORY LESSON: For the RACISTS:
Dehumanizing Black people during Black History Month, by portraying the Obama’s as apes, is one of the oldest, most explicit RACIST tropes in history, used to justify slavery, segregation, and violence.
Over and over again. Portraying targeted groups as animals is one of the oldest, most reliable tools of dehumanization used by dictators and violent movements.
Adolf Hitler / Nazi Germany
- Jews were routinely depicted as rats, lice, parasites, or apes
Rwandan Genocide (1994)
- Tutsis were labeled “cockroaches”
Imperial Japan (WWII)
- Chinese and Koreans portrayed as monkeys or vermin
Colonial & Slave-Era Propaganda & TRUMP
- Black people depicted as apes, monkeys, beasts