The recent social-media post from President Trump that depicted former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes rightly drew widespread outrage; and Christians should be among those raising their voices. What was shared was not just political theater but imagery grounded in a painful and explicit history of racial dehumanization in the United States.
For generations, comparisons of Black Americans to apes and monkeys were pervasive tools of racial caricature used to justify slavery, segregation, lynching, and second-class citizenship. Such tropes weren’t accidental; they were intended to strip away the humanity of Black people and uphold systems of power built on white supremacy. My service on the Ahmaud Arbery Foundation board, named after the man whose life was taken in 2020 in a horrible act of racism, shows that these issues are not just ancient history.
It bleeds into our present and shapes perceptions in ways many still underestimate.
Christians are called to something higher than tribal loyalty. Scripture teaches that we are all made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and that love for neighbor is inseparable from faith (Mark 12:31). Turning a blind eye when leaders engage in dehumanizing rhetoric is not neutrality—it is complicity. When we fail to name such acts for what they are, we surrender moral ground that Scripture calls us to hold.
True reconciliation requires honesty about the ways racism harms individuals and society. Calling out egregious actions, even when committed by those we support politically, is not “politics,” it’s ethical courage. Christians have an opportunity to bear prophetic witness: to reject imagery and rhetoric that demean God’s beloved children, and to model a more gracious, reconciliatory way forward.
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.-Isaiah 5:20 NIV
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
-Romans 12:21
God hates racism. So like a toxin, His body should hate it too.
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