When A President Turns Dehumanization Into Policy

Dr. Barbara Reynolds argues that recent presidential endorsement of racist imagery depicting the Obamas as monkeys represents a deliberate continuation of America's historical strategy of dehumanizing Black people to justify oppression and violence. She traces this pattern from slavery through Jim Crow to contemporary attacks on diversity programs and immigrant communities, explaining how such dehumanization has consistently preceded the denial of rights and lives. Reynolds emphasizes that this imagery causes measurable psychological harm, particularly to young Black people who face real-world consequences in schools and workplaces, recalling her own students' traumatic reactions to similar images in 2017.