The unfortunate thing is that if Obama looks like any animal, it’s a monkey. Not because he’s black, but because he, in particular, happens to look an awful lot like a monkey.
Some people just look like animals. The unfortunate part is that racists have been calling black people monkeys since god knows when and I’m sure they’re dying for an excuse to call Obama one. This is it. I’ll never be sure if someone is calling him a monkey because they’re a bigoted prick or because he looks like one.
I just don’t see a strong monkey resemblence with Obama. He doesn’t have a prognathic jaw or a brow ridge, and he doesn’t pucker his lips like a chimp does (like Bush does). His projecting ears and short hair are the only thing that look particularly simian, but that’s pushing it.
McCain looks more like a toad than Obama looks like a monkey. And yet my search of google doesn’t turn up any toad dolls. I wonder why?
I give this group a pass only because they are located in Salt Lake City. It is hard to overstate how insulated the majority of Utahns are from the rest of the country.
I don’t think it is a stretch to say that most white Utahns never have any regular contact with black people, and many have never even spoken to one. Hispanics and Pacific Islanders, yes, but African-Americans, no. Add to that their tendency (especially LDS) to be crushingly nice and avoiding of offending anyone, and I chalk it up to pure ignorance.
I was in SLC a few years back at the Sheraton across the street from the Convention Center. A scrapbooking (official state pastime of Utah) convention was taking place so the hotel was packed with middle aged white women. At the same time was the NBA summer league for rookies and free agents that takes place every year in SLC. I was riding down the elevator with one player (Gabe Muoneke - UT-Austin) who was a very unthreatening looking guy for an NBA prospect, but was 6’8" and black. The elevator stopped on the way down and opened on a gaggle of said women - they were absolutely terrified to get on with this guy, but at the same time didn’t want to offend, so the creeped in and tried to get as far away from him as was possible. They clutched their scrapbooks so tightly to their chests that their nipples must have created dents in the covers.
Bush has been called a monkey/chimp. I don’t think he’d be cast in this light if he were more popular and perceived as more intelligent. The humor in the Bush = chimp equivalvency is largely rooted in the observation that he acts stupid. If he weren’t so dumb, the joke would have gotten old a long time ago. His name is also George, so that brings in the Curious George reference. And since Bush is famously not curious, there’s additional irony to play with. It doesn’t help at all that Bush does look like a chimpazee about the face, but without those other ingredients, there wouldn’t be a joke.
Likening Obama to Curious George is not funny because there’s no irony to it that is ripe for political satire and his personality is not monkey-like at all. So even in a colorblind world, it would be a mean caricature. In a world that is decidedly not colorblind, it looks racist and mean.
That said, I think Obama kinda does look like Curious George because of his ears and youthful face. Curious George’s face doesn’t look like a monkey or chimp, though. He’s a anthromorphized cartoon representation of a chimp. But I didn’t start making that mental connection until I saw the T-shirt or whatever it was on. I figure that’s the point of the whole thing. Make people start seeing Obama as the butt of a monkey joke instead of strong contender for the White House.
I don’t know - when the Obama monkey t-shirts came out during the primaries I was pointing out, too, the history of caricaturizing politicians as various primates. But that doesn’t change, in my mind, that the history that monstro brings up in the OP. And that historical background leaves me thinking that the idea of an Obama sock-monkey is less acceptable than the flurry of Bush-monkey images.
And as conservative as I am, I’m sure that political cartoons, campaigns and races will all survive if animal caricatures are no longer used, or even used for just one candidate.
(I still am having trouble imagining an animal that might be appropriate for a caricature of Obama that won’t have problems with the history of race relations in this country.)
I don’t think this is right. I think it starts with his looks, as one might do in a caricature. His face shape, nose, small eyes, ears and lips, lend themselves to that portrayal. Add to that a desire for someone to make him look less than human, and there you go.
I am always puzzled by the racist comparison of blacks to monkeys or apes, because in fact, causasians have more claim to resemble our primate cousins.
Consider the following:
Thin lips. So do monkeys and apes. Don’t confuse lips with muzzles. Apes and monkeys have pronounced muzzles, but their lips are practically non-existant. Just like whites.
Hardly any buttocks. Look at a chimp or a gorilla. Do you see the large buns so common among blacks or the skinny flat ass common to whites?
Straight hair: Have you ever seen a monkey or ape with tightly curled hair? Straight as a white man!
Frequently copious body hair. There are some hairy-chested and hairy-backed blacks, but hirsute torsos are far more common among whites.
Large ears. I am not talking about ears that stick out like those of Obama or Will Smith. I mean overall ear size. Blacks tend to have small ears. Now compare whites and chimps.
Shorter legs on whites. Whites have generally shorter legs than blacks in proportion to body size, which makes them very similar to chimps. But blacks also have longer arms, so the man-simian comparison is a toss-up on that score.
Of course, as one writer pointed out, if only for the sake of the monkeys, stop comparing, period!
In popular usage, apes are a kind of monkey. (Originally, monkeys were considered to be one kind of ape.) It’s only in scientific usage that monkeys are differentiated from apes. Even so, cladistically speaking, apes are included within monkeys.
Really? I’ve always understood that the apes were separate from monkeys. That, for whatever reason, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, humans - and something else that slips my mind - are not monkeys.
Re the OP: in a perfect world, this would just be normal mocking of a politician. Sadly, this is not a perfect world, and I have to wonder.
There’s got to be some kind of animal we can use to make fun of Obama when necessary. (It is always necessary to be able to make fun of politicians.) How about a horse?
It’s not a stretch at all. I taught the intro to writing courses for two years at the University, for a total of 8 classes, and had only 2 black students (total). 90% of the faces I see every day are white.
That doesn’t mean people in SLC deserve any sort of “pass.” Racism is still racism, and I feel quite certain in saying that the people behind the Obama sock monkey aren’t a group of innocents who thought it’d be good for a chuckle. I hear the racism every single day, often from my own family members–often in front of my (black) husband. It’s getting better in SLC, but the fact of the matter is, Utah is not a very pleasant place for minorities.
