by A.man.I

So, if you haven’t heard, there’s a bar in the Atlanta area that has gained a fair amount of media attention over a controversial T-shirt that likens Barack Obama to Curious George.

Why would the monkey joke be so offensive? Well if you must ask, back in the day racist folks convinced themselves that Blacks were subhuman, unintelligent animals.

This post from UndercoverBlackMan illustrates the thinking. The following quote comes from Tennessee clergyman Rev. Buckner H. Payne who wrote “The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status?” in 1867.

“[W]e take up the monkey, and trace him … through his upward and advancing orders – baboon, ourang-outang and gorilla, up to the negro, another noble animal, the noblest of the beast creation. The difference between these higher orders of the monkey and the negro is very slight, and consists mainly in this one thing: the negro can utter sounds that can be imitated; hence he could talk with Adam and Eve, for they could imitate his sounds.”

But wait! Science tells us that life originated in Africa, so maybe Adam and Eve were a little darker than Rev. Payne could have imagined.

Regardless, there are still plenty of folks who think the Blackman=monkey issue is funny. When I was in high school for example, a fellow student shared a joke that he thought was brilliant.

“Hey Amani did you hear about the Blackman who was looking up his family tree?” he asked. “No,” I replied. “Well, a monkey s*&% on him!” Ha-ha.

With regards to the Obama/Curious George issue, Atlanta political blogger Andre Walker makes an interesting point saying that President Bush has also been likened to a monkey, but no one has ever complained.

That may be true, but who really wants to be thought of as a monkey?