A certain Sydney from Charlotte asked this bitch to comment on the use of primate imagery and dolls to depict Senator Obama.

Shall we?

A bitch went on record years ago…right here on this blog…about the use of primates in connection with black people. Shit, I even had to post a response to all the responses!

I’m not surprised that it has emerged again now that America has its first black Presidential presumptive nominee from a major party.

I am, however, disgusted.

Pause…sip ice water…continue.

Since one of the more infamous uses of the primate connection was pulled by Nazis during the 1936 Olympics against the great Jesse Owens, this bitch thinks it is worth pointing out that using that kind if imagery puts the person using it in a certain kind of…ummm, group.

Too often people dismiss the use of primate imagery to represent a black person as careless or lacking insight rather than acknowledging it as part of a deliberate attempt to classify black people as lesser than full evolved human beings.

Life has taught me that these folks are not worthy of the benefit of the doubt. More importantly, why the fuck do people feel the need to give them the benefit of the doubt?

Is it because people are disturbed to think that there are Americans in 2008 who respond to a black person seeking high office by dusting off Racism for Dummies and pulling out stuffed primates then dressing them up in Obama 2008 t-shirts…rustle up a simple assed grin followed by a shrug and protest that they didn’t mean anything by it?

C’mon people…this is America, for the love of all that is built on a foundation of ig’nance towards others!

We are not post racial…we do not have a population that stumbles over racial imagery like fresh faced chil’ren who have never ever ever seen that shit used in a negative way and gosh, sure didn’t mean to say what they said when they did it.

These primate doll and monkey t-shirt people are not making a perfectly understandable mistake.

They are using imagery that is easily understood by the population they seek to reach.

A discussion of the primate connection is not an opportunity to point out that we humans are primates and, as members of the superfamily Hominoidea, are just another primate species and blah followed by blah and another blah.

This primate connection shit is damaging and it is wrong.

For all the attempts to perfume it up with excuses and explanations, it stinks the same stink it did (insert last time some asshole used a primate to depict a black person who threatened their notion of racial superiority).

To argue otherwise is to devolve and trust a bitch - we haven’t moved forward enough on the ledge to be taking that many steps back.

Crossposted from The Angry Black Bitch

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