First Guns

About That Other News Story in South Carolina...

On June 13, a gorilla escaped from the Riverbanks Zoo near Columbia, South Carolina. Apparently this is bigtime news worthy of government attention, as an assistant to the state attorney general was posting updates on his Facebook account. On seeing the update, a local GOP activist named Rusty DePass (no words) posted “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors—probably harmless.”

Where to begin? First, if this is the kind of discourse that occupies the state house in South Carolina, no wonder Mark Sanford got away with his affairs for so long. A couple of “Missing Dog” posters around town and they’d probably be distracted for days.

On a more sober note, this is a sad reminder of the long, ugly history of comparing African Americans to various types of monkeys and apes. Those folks back in the 19th century figured that dehumanizing a race that you are enslaving makes it a little easier to sleep at night. Why, it wasn’t too long ago that someone else compared another Obama to an escaped chimp! In February of this year, a chimpanzee in Connecticut escaped and mauled a woman, nearly killing her. The animal was shot and killed when he attacked a police officer.

Two days later, this cartoon by Sean DeLonas ran in the New York Post:

Elsewhere in the paper was a photograph of President Obama signing the stimulus bill. Subtle!

People always act shocked when racism like that of DePass or DeLonas is given voice, but it is actually all around us all the time. Philip Goff, a professor at Penn State, has done psychological studies and found that many whites associate African-Americans with apes, often subconsciously. (His test was a lot like the Harvard Implicit Assocation Test, which you can take here.)

While we appreciate the many strong voices that have responded to things like DePass’s comment, we also admire Michelle and Barack Obama’s refusal to even dignify such things with a response. While others are engaged in monkeyshines, the First Family is going about its business. Michelle has become a strong voice for health care, announcing that $851 million of recovery money will go to community health clinics.

She has been keeping us busy, too. We harvested the White House garden, we helped build a playground in California—we even danced the hula!

We’d like to see a monkey do any of that. Hell, we’d settle for seeing Rusty DePass or Sean DeLonas do it.