Why This is Important: Racism Does Exist

This morning, while scanning for channels for

Sesame Street, I saw this image on the news
screen depicting President Baraka Obama as a
baby chimpanzee in the arms of his parent
chimpanzees. Instantly, my two year daughter
yells out excitingly, “Monkey!” Unknowing
what the entire image was suggesting, I knew
that within those few seconds on the screen that
she had internalized the image of a black man
being synonymous to a monkey and that if I do
not teach and explain to her the significance of
this image, she will grow up with internalized inferiority and self-hatred. I felt that I
should not have even let her see that at all, but it was too late.

Once I had the opportunity to review the story online and the circumstances that
prompted it, I noticed that the author in the particular article I was reading stated, “... it's
very tempting to say, "This time we won't report on it; it's beneath us even to give the
idiots who create this trash a platform." But when it's elected officials who are involved,
we can't ignore it.” For me, this statement is just as bad as the image emailed by
Republican Party official and Tea Party activist in Orange Country, CA, Marilyn
Davenport, an elected official making a racist statement about another elected official.
The statement suggests that is only important to talk about, because it involved the
President. Yes the email and its contents are wrong because it was aimed at the first
African American president in U.S. history, but it is dead wrong to all people of African
ancestry.

History & Culture of Dehumanization

Anthropologically, race does not exist but is historically and culturally constructed in
various societies. The image follows a long line of racist caricatures and depictions of
Africans. This long line extends as far back the Greeks and the glyphs showcasing there
despise for Africans. In western societies the dehumanizing of Africans was a means of
justifying the capture and enslavement of Africans. Early on in the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade or Maafa “Great African Holocaust”, Africans were viewed as less than human;
viewed as domesticated animals for the purpose of labor during this agricultural period
prior to the industrial revolution.

By design the practice of Social Darwinism, the pseudo-scientific approach to racism

state that Africans were not a part of the human family and were nothing more than
another species of apes and monkeys. Because of such pseudo-science, many people do
not give the idea of human evolution a chance because of the idea that people derived
from monkeys and I can’t even blame them for feeling that way. The notion of
dehumanizing Africans was so intrinsically set in American society it became law that
Africans were only 3/5ths of a human being under the 3/5ths Compromise of 1787.
Along with the stage plays of the Minstrel Shows, in which African people were depicted
in blackface and illustrated as buffoons and porch monkeys; the invention of Tell-a-Lie-
Vision in American society only enhanced the ‘Programming” of these stereotypical and
demeaning attitudes. Such attitudes and depictions created a culture of racialized
superiority amongst white Americans and inferiority amongst the black Americans. It
was and is equally wrong for a group people to feel they are better than everyone else and
for another group of people to feel they are less than anyone else.

We may not know how many, but there were other elected officials cc’d in the email
depicting President Obama in such a negative light, that did not reply with disapproval,
but may even forwarded to some of their friends via email.

Apology Don’t Mean a Thang

This image and the rationale behind it is truly disrespectful to our president along with
the countless other statements, images and remarks made since he has been in office.
Mrs. Davenport’s explanations and apologies are null and void, because the damage has
been done. Some folks really belive this shit is funny and now that the image is in the
universe, it is being forwarded, saved as screen savers and even printed to hang on walls.

We must understand that this has little to with President Baraka Obama, and more to do
with the unchanged racialized climate of American society. Many people carry with them
the notion that hatred, bigotry and racism no longer exist in American society, because
there is a “Black President”, and blind themselves to inferiority and superiority
complexes they possess within themselves.

Why It is an Issue Worth Discussion

I cannot afford for my daughter or any other children to associate themselves with being
less than human. We cannot afford to internalize self-hatred or allow people to be
dehumanized in any way.

The best way to combat this is to Please Educate All Children with Equality; teach your
children; the children that we are all equal and no one is less than human.