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In case anyone out there is still wondering why no sane person should ever, EVER post a meme, image, or joke depicting women and men of color as simians, here's some very clear historical research for you.
I hope it's useful. But you shouldn't have to know this background in order to avoid such a cruel, dehumanizing act.
"The Conversation" is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent news organization that hosts the peer-reviewed works of scholars. Please read the whole piece, which I've excerpted liberally below.
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In the history of European cultures, the comparison of humans to apes and monkeys was disparaging from its very beginning.
When Plato – by quoting Heraclitus – declared apes ugly in relation to humans and men apish in relation to gods, this was cold comfort for the apes. It transcendentally disconnected them from their human co-primates. The Fathers of the Church went one step further: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Isidore of Seville compared pagans to monkeys.
In the Middle Ages, Christian discourse recognised simians as devilish figures and representatives of lustful and sinful behaviour.
In the history of European cultures, the comparison of humans to apes and monkeys was disparaging from its very beginning.
When Plato – by quoting Heraclitus – declared apes ugly in relation to humans and men apish in relation to gods, this was cold comfort for the apes. It transcendentally disconnected them from their human co-primates. The Fathers of the Church went one step further: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Isidore of Seville compared pagans to monkeys.
In the Middle Ages, Christian discourse recognised simians as devilish figures and representatives of lustful and sinful behaviour...
In the following centuries, simianisation would enter into different sciences and humanities. Anthropology, archaeology, biology, ethnology, geology, medicine, philosophy, and, not least, theology were some of the fields.
Literature, arts and everyday entertainment also seized on the issue. It popularised its repellent combination of sexist and racist representations. The climax was the hugely successful classic of Hollywood’s horror factory, King Kong.
At the time of King Kong’s production the public in the US was riveted by a rape trial. The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers accused of having raped two young white women. In 1935 a picture story by the Japanese artist Lin Shi Khan and the lithographer Toni Perez was published. ‘Scottsboro Alabama’ carried a foreword by Michael Gold, editor of the communist journal New Masses.
One of the 56 images showed the group of the accused young men beside a newspaper with the headline “Guilty Rape”. The rest of the picture was filled with a monstrous black simian figure baring its teeth and dragging off a helpless white girl.
The artists fully understood the interplay of racist ideology, reactionary reporting and southern injustice. They recognised that the white public had been thoroughly conditioned by the dehumanising violence of animal comparisons and simianised representations, as in the reel racism of King Kong.
Animalisation and even bacterialisation are widespread elements of racist dehumanisation. They are closely related to the labelling of others with the language of contamination and disease. Images that put men on a level with rats carrying epidemic plagues were part of the ideological escort of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese racism.
Africa is labelled as a contagious continent incubating pestilences of all sorts in hot muggy jungles, spread by reckless and sexually unrestrained people. AIDS in particular is said to have its origin in the careless dealings of Africans with simians, which they eat or whose blood they use as an aphrodisiac.
This is just the latest chapter in a long and ugly line of stereotypes directed against different people like the Irish or Japanese, and Africans and African Americans in particular. To throw bananas in front of black sportspeople is a common racist provocation even today...
Long before post-Darwinian “scientific racism” begins to develop, then, one can find blacks being depicted as closer to apes on the Great Chain of Being...Darwin’s revolutionary 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, did not discredit scientific racism but only its polygenetic variants. Social Darwinism, triumphantly monogenetic, would become the new racial orthodoxy. Global white domination was being taken as proof of the evolutionary superiority of the white race.
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Comparing black people to monkeys has a long, dark simian history
theconversation.com
Animalisation remains a malicious and effective form of dehumanisation. Simianisation is a version of this strategy, which historically manifested a lethal combination of sexism and racism.3 hours ago
This shouldn't be a point that needs explanation or discussion, but here we are in the horrific, apocalyptic unveiling of evil hearts that is the present day. God forgive us, God help us. Thank you for communicating truth clearly, Susan Wise Bauer.
Again, I am reminded of Maya Angelou’s wisdom: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.” May God give us eyes to see and ears to hear 🙏
Again and again and again we have to articulate reasons to exercise basic respect for each other. It’s exhausting. And thank you.
This has felt so heavy today. What have we come to? I know there is a long history of this form of racism but that doesn’t make it any easier to be a parent in the age of Trump. Thank you again for speaking out.
So thankful for your voice amidst all of the crazy and cruelty. We need more Christian writers and educators like you-
Thank you for this. Every day brings some new horror.
Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for sharing. This is far too important to sweep under the rug.
Thank you for using your platform to thoroughly deny racism. 💛
Once again, thank you.
Thank you!
Once again, thank you for speaking up. I am beyond horrified.
Thank You Susie🥲❤️
So grateful for your steady voice through such horrid events. Again and again, thank you. 🙏♥️
Watching BBc as they say first it was that we are all expressing "fake outrage" then a few hours later that it was posted erroneously by a staffer. I doubt it. No apology.
Thank you for speaking up for what is right and true and for speaking out about the absolutely disgusting behavior of our president and government "leaders."
Thank you for this.
I am wondering if you are aware of Dr. Stanley Plotkin’s 8 hour deposition with Attorney Aaron Siri discussing testing vaccines on African populations. My apologies for the run on sentence.
AIDS did begin in Africa. Throw away the racism. But Let’s not throw away the Truth with the racism. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3234451/#:~:text=Approximately%20one%20century%20ago%20in%20sout....
It’s truly appalling!
Thank you.
Honestly, in 2026 nobody should think this is a good idea.
Did something happen that I don’t know about? I feel like I can’t keep up these days.
I have felt a lot of emotions over the years. Not at Trump but his enablers and voters. Today I feel pity.
Thank you.
