SACRAMENTO, CA—The California Legislative Black Caucus is disgusted at Racist Donald Trump’s circulation of a video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as dancing apes, yet again. This deliberate deployment of one of the most vicious and enduring tools of racial dehumanization in American history is reprehensible and is just another example of what Donald Trump really thinks of Black Americans.
This imagery is not new. It draws from a centuries-old bag of racist propaganda designed to strip Black Americans of their humanity. During slavery, pseudo-scientific racism portrayed people of African descent as subhuman to justify their brutal subjugation. During Jim Crow, these same caricatures appeared in newspapers and posters to normalize segregation and violence against Black communities. During the Civil Rights era, they were wielded against leaders fighting for basic human dignity.
The tactic is as old as tyranny itself. Dehumanize those you seek to oppress and justify their deaths as you clean your knife. When any authoritarian movement has sought to justify violence, dehumanization has been the essential first step. You cannot commit atrocities against people you see as fully human. You must first transform them, in the public, into something less than.
That this video targets the first Black president and first lady of the United States—individuals who have conducted themselves with dignity and grace, who have inspired millions—makes the offense more pronounced, but the fundamental sin remains the same. It is the sin of reducing African Americans to caricatures, of trafficking in hatred, of weaponizing the ugliest chapters of our history against those who have worked to move us beyond them.
History teaches us that when dehumanizing rhetoric goes unchallenged, it metastasizes. What begins as "just a joke" becomes a permission structure for escalating hatred. What begins as cruel imagery becomes justification for cruel policy and, ultimately, violence.
The California Legislative Black Caucus calls on all Americans of conscience to reject this content and the ideology it represents. We call on platforms hosting this material to recognize it for what it is—not protected speech deserving amplification, but hate speech designed to degrade and endanger. And we call on leaders across the political spectrum—specifically our GOP colleagues with whom we serve in the halls of the California State Capitol—to unequivocally condemn these tactics, regardless of their policy disagreements with the individuals targeted.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed outrage over racist imagery as "fake" and demanded the press "report on something today that actually matters to the American public."
Fine. Let's discuss what matters.
Racism matters. Indiscriminate killing matters. Donald Trump's documented close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and visits to his rape compound matters. Our outrage is very real, Karoline.
This video clip comes as Donald Trump continues his assault on our neighborhoods, allowing his goons to murder and pillage in cold blood. Despite what Trump may mumble into a microphone as the sun goes down, there is no excuse that can absolve the perpetuation of racist stereotypes.
The Obamas do not need our defense—their legacy speaks for itself. But our democracy needs us to defend the principle that no American, regardless of their politics, should be subjected to the kind of racist dehumanization that has scarred our history and enabled our darkest chapters.
As we move forward through this month, the centennial anniversary of the commemoration of Black history in America, remember that Donald J. Trump posted a video depicting Black people as dancing apes and his administration dismissed it as “fake outrage.”
This is what he means by Make America Great Again.
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