I found the monkey comparison offensive at its core.

The sock monkey is as cute as a button as a " toy " monkey.  

Not as a man~

If not for the historical context - it might seem benign ~

After reading your article,  I tend to agree that Sen. Obama's supporters would "do him a favor by letting him pick and choose his own fights".

Fall back, I shall, Jimi ~  for none of this is new.

However, let us listen to the poet/novelist Claude McKay:

           White Houses

Your door is shut against my tightened face,

And I am sharp as steel with discontent;

But I possess the courage and the grace

To bear my anger proudly and unbent.

....Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour...

....Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate...

Against the potent poison of your hate.

Nicely put as usual, Mr. Izrael.  Comparing blacks to monkeys just isn't funny, and I guess you'd have to have spent your life in the ass-end of nowhere (i.e., Utah) not to know that.  But it really doesn't sound like these poor goofs had any bad intentions.

That having been said, if I were a black dude, I would be ordering one of those sock-monkeys too.  The damn things really are as cute as the dickens.  Also, a thought just occurred to me:  If you had a four or five year old child (i.e., just barely old enough to understand who Obama was and what he was doing), do you think they'd like to curl up and sleep with an Obama sock puppet, or would they think that was making fun of Obama?  Do you think having that puppet would make a black child feel more or less proud that a black man was a major political candidate?

I think a little kid--unknowing of the past use of monkeys to denigrade blacks--would just think the monkey idea was cute, and would feel proud (to whatever extent they were able to understand) that the doll represented a great and admired black man.

Most of all, though, nice sense of perspective, Mr. Izrael!  Your point about Sharpton and his ilk is right on target.  One of the reasons that so many whites take the tribulations of blackness so lightly is that guys like Sharpton whine about EVERYTHING, making it impossible to for us to tell whether an injustice is real, perceived, or simply sophistic.

The obama sock monkey startled me a bit when i heard of it (out here a little closer to the world, Idaho), but then i saw they were making a john mccain one and immediately imagined an epic battle, transformer-style, between the 2. wouldn't that be the coolest thing?

        but the debate brings to mind a question i've had for a few years now. in my family we use the term 'monkey' to refer to the grandkids, mostly cause they are pretty monkeyish (climbing trees, throwing food, looking for bugs, etc.). this has been fine until my biracial nieces were born a few years back. my brother -in-law is touchy (well basically paranoid) about race issues so i never ever have called his daughters monkeys, not even when they're climbing on the furniture trying to get the goldfish. but i still call the other kids that. which is worse, to call them all a bunch of monkeys when the occasion calls for it, or basically exclude the 2 little girls from the same treatment the cousins get? i did try to use a different term of annoyed affection, but my nephew elijiah seriously objected to getting called a parakeet. any advice?

I am so glad you wrote this. My friends and I NEED one of these, but we wondered if we were the only ones.  I think as many Obama supporters as possible should buy them and then, come election day, whip'em out in parades of ecstacy.  In your face, pre-racialists!!!!  I GOT YO MONKEY RIGHT HERE.

Also, we really should have thought to make a Bush sock monkey sometime in the last 7 years because...well...he is a simian looking fool.

Sorry Mr. Izrael, but you're dead wrong on this one.  There is no degree of dehumanization, and portreying people of African descent as lesser primates is classic American dehumanization.  I applaud your good humor at what you percive to be trivial offense, but  your comfort in your black skin has no moral impact on the evil intentions of the vast majority of the white purveyers and consumors of such imagery.

In another thread, you asked about the meaning of whiteness.  Well, I submit that if whiteness has any meaning in this time and place it means at an absolute minimum a moral responsibility to take personal affirmative action in our own lives to reject all such badges and incidents.

If I wrote that Mr. Izrael looks like a monkey , or an ape, in the same affectionate way that Mr. Izrael states Obama looks like a monkey, would my post be deleted?

Izrael Responds:

Nope. 

No Mr. Izrael, you were not the only person that didn't understand the controversy behind the Obama sock monkey -- there are millions of "typical white" people to keep you company.

Here's why the Obama Sock Monkey p*sses me off.  

Remember when you were a kid in school and there was always that pain-in-the-ass kid who disrupted class?  The kid who wasn't particularly smart, nor insightful, nor entertaining, and just disrupted class for the sake of it.  And I'm not talking about the anti-establishment kids who challenged the teacher for the sake of ideas (they were kind of cool).  No, I'm talking about the whiny, ineffectual kid who said something predictably stupid at every opportunity simply because he/she could.  Even though it only reinforced that everyone thought the kid was an idiot.  And the class response was usually to drop your head, roll your eyes, and wonder "why do I have to be in the same class as this fool?"  Do you all remember this kid?

Fast forward to today.  The people in the class are people like me, socially consious non-black people in America.  The Sock Puppet hawkers are "that kid".  They say childish, predictably stupid, things whenever possible and disrupt the dialog in the most immature way possible.  Nobody is taking Sock Puppeter seriously.  In fact, we wish he'd just STFU.  But we're stuck in class with this idiot.  

I'm glad you're not too pissed about the Sock Puppeter kids.  But I am, because I studied and did my homework, and he's dragging me down.

ML, well said.

"Typical white person" here, and I was deeply offended by the image. But it really began in a bar/restaurant in Georgia. You know, a "typical redneck bar" whose intentions were not to be cute.

But, let's pose this question: why is it even necessary to depict anyone as a monkey? What is cute about that?

M.L., I appreciate your analysis of why this is offensive, and I find your analysis to be at the heart of why some folks find this monkey business to be the last thing we need in an election year that is filled with discussions about important issues dealing with the economy,  war, and health insurance. Distractions such as monkey toys coming from the back of the class do nothing to move the conversations along, add nothing to the intellectual pursuit of choosing our next leader.

If there was anything added--even a lightening of the mood through humor--to our national conversation by this offer from the unruly kid in the back of the class, then such shenanigans would be acceptable. But they are just not acceptable because the only ones laughing are the other troublemakers who don't read, don't think,  don't know, and don't care.  It is one thing to know that these things are not to be taken so seriously that we would be willing to take to the streets because them, but it is quite another to accept them as anything other than racism.  (And the Hillary Clinton nutcracker is nothing but misogyny).

It's a matter of fearing what they do not know how to understand (i.e. Fearing what the USA will be like without a leader who is a WASP?). And what cannot be understood is made into a toy so that such fears can be managed. That's a way the unthinking and unknowing mind works.

I'm not one for censoring.  I am of the opinion that such ignorance should not be rewarded by profit through the sale of such racist junk.

Jimi, we each have our own level of tolerance and our own idea of what we consider funny.  To some or us Obama no more resembles curious George than you resemble the Predator.  Beauty or beauty-challenged is in the eye of the beholder.  You are, however, correct when you caution us to choose our battles rather than react to every slight.  But keep in mind degradation doesn't happen in an instance, it happens over time.  Today we note differences between ourselves and others, then we label the differences either good or bad likening them to that which is in favor or disfavor. When Howard Cosell likened McGee to a monkey it said more about Howard and his mindset than it did about McGee's appearance.  If it didn't Howard would not have paid the price that he did.  Amerca noticed that and so should you.

Of course on its face comparing Black people to primates is offensive.  But also on its face (literally), the sock monkey is cute and I want to own one too. I view it as a manifestation of Obamamania. I don't like the idea of someone getting rich off the idea if it really takes off especially if Black folks give it an OK.  But I think that whining about such things sounds weak, like all those Hillary supporters who complained about the nutcrackers being sold in airports.  Yes, it was sexist and practically given a pass in a way that the Obama/Curious George t-shirt was not.  Yes, no white male candidate had to endure something equally offensive.  But I agree with you, Jimi.  Let's disarm the racists by showing that their objectification of Obama holds no power over us.  We define who we are in this day and age.  Just ask Barack Obama himself.  He's not about to be swift-boated let alone allow some dumb puppet to derail him from his bigger mission.

Well put, Mr. Izrael. On an tangentially related note, I just read Alice Walkers' moving essay "Becomming What We're Called." I believe her outrage over the spreading use of "guys" as a gender-neutral term, while well-founded, is a bit much. She has, I was glad to read, picked a more worthy fight, female genital mutilation, which is also a big part of that essay.

Does anyone take this clown--I mean, ape--seriously?

Ridiculous. I've said many times that George W. Bush resembles a monkey or ape (it's the big ears, and the non-existent lips), and someone even did a composite picture of Bush made of thousands of pictures of monkeys. I don't know why people would be offended by the Obama sock monkey, but not the Hilary Clinton nutcracker (I'm really tired of people bashing Hilary as a "***", and Obama as a "Muslim", it's so stupid).

i might be off topic but i had a teacher tell me i had to believe in the evolution of man meaning we all came from apes,  he kept trying to make me believe this and so not to hurt his feelings i said "maybe you came from an ape but my parents say I'm from Adam and Eve". The teacher lost it got so mad at me the class was laughing i was in deep with this teacher he went as far as saying you look like a gorilla....from then on i was called gorilla it hurt me so much but anyone who dared to call me that learned very quickly they better not let me hear them utter gorilla or i would go ape s**t on them.

every ones sensitivity is different because of different experiences ....a sock monkey is cute curious George is cute real monkeys are cute but comparing anyone to a ape or monkey is border line mean but then again that's me.

Let us not forget that Mr. Obama is equal parts white and black. Do we just ignore what the white side of him and/or his family feels, whatever way that may be? I'd find it more offensive that the monkey doll is several shades darker than Mr. Obama's actual skin color, leading me to think they'd *forgotten* he's of two races.

A team mate in high school on my tri-racial, all American son's football and lacrosse teams resembled an ape so closely that he was lovingly referred to, by ALL races of parents and students, as "The Great Ape." I used to say, while sitting in the stands or driving the team around, "Thank Goodness he's not black." He was a proud Pol.

I do think great offense can, and should, be taken to any of these animal-likeness referrals depending on where the people involved live, or were raised. A black person being raised in a majority white community should never be referred to as any type of animal, just as a white person living in a majority black community should never be referred to as 'massa' or whatever other cruel term kids (rather, their parents) come up with.

I wonder what my adorable multi-racial infant grandson will have to endure growing up. You know, each generation learns the negative from their parents... either by their parents being prejudiced or their  parents not correcting them when stuff goes down. It's us parents, folks. No way around that.

I just stumbled into your blog and landed smack dab in the middle of a maelström of astute and relevant writing. Your text is intelligent without being snooty, and you can wax casual without sounding like you're pretending to be Akon (whose lyrics I like). I actually sat and read your posts, and believe me, it was time well spent. In the murky soup of internet blogs, yours provide substance.

I heard Jimi for the first time tonight on C-Span.  And you need to to stop!  You come off like a closet Queen, you say you got kids, well.  Help me understand Martin Luther, Rosa Parks, and many nameless man and woman hung from trees so that you may have the right to speak in public!  Now that you have this privilge all you can do is worry about you kids and how you gone raise them right.  What's your daddy and mamma name.  Influence is power, wheter you realize you have it or not is another issue. I respect the fact that you have somewhat made a name for yourself, but a good man leaves a treasure for his children, children.  That's two generations away, so really (Mr. It's hard but it's fair) we as black people must begin to consider one another at all levels as a whole. Unity is the 1st thing slave masters took for us by so call letting us into there world.  I don't what to bash you brother because ain't got all my stuff together and have know real room to talk.  But truly consider two thing: 1.) You do represent the young black man ( or atleast the ones in your age group) when you speak, so speak positive and of unity for all man kind; 2.) If you wasn't alive who and how would your kids be affected by this USA moral demies.  Help change for good, you have some power and you know it. Selah