Whites do not have a long tradition of being compared negatively to monkeys; blacks do. Therefore when Bush is drawn as a monkey the implication is simply that he's stupid, but there's nothing racist about it because there's no tradition of "white people = monkeys".
Racist portrayals and language are nothing but tradition and convention. There's no reason why certain words or images should be inherently racist; they become racist due to the tradition and history of use.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 06:09 pm (UTC)Racist portrayals and language are nothing but tradition and convention. There's no reason why certain words or images should be inherently racist; they become racist due to the tradition and history of use.