A/74/274 surprise at the competence and capacity of people of African descent. Mr. Gillum ’s opponent, Ron DeSantis also referred to old racist tropes linking people of African descent to monkeys and implying lesser evolutionary achievement, saying “the last thing we need to do is monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases”. 26 34. In Brazil, the recently elected president, Jair Bolsonaro, called refugees from Haiti, Africa and the Middle East dangerous and “the scum of humanity”. 27 He disparaged a black settlement founded by the descendants of slaves, saying: “They do nothing; They are not even good for procreation”. Bolsonaro also referred to black activists as “animals” who should “go back to the zoo”.28 Racial stereotyping in cultural production: textual and visual misrepresentation 35. The use of blackface, racialized caricatures and racist representations of people of African descent is offensive, dehumanizing and contemptuous. Such images, which have found their way into mainstream culture across the globe, perpetuate negative racial stereotypes. These representations were solidified in the works of nineteenth century writers, who speculated about the evolutionary spectrum of primates, with monkeys and apes at the least evolved end, continuing through savage and/or deformed anthropoids and culminating with white people at the other end (as the most evolved). 29 People of African descent were theorized to reside somewhere between the deformed and the simian. This representation was used to bolster growing stereotypes that people of African descent were innately lazy, aggressive, hypersexual and in need of benevolent control. Images such as the sambo, the coon, the pickaninny, the mammy, the sapphire and the Jezebel are just a few of the dehumanizing and iconographic misrepresentations of people of African desc ent that can be traced to the early period. Such representations were taken as fact and were internalized and continually transmitted and legitimized through popular culture and in the writings of some of the leading academics. 36. Current misrepresentations are also evident in cultural traditions that nod to colonization and the trafficking in enslaved Africans. A more recent example of the enduring nature of stereotypes can be found in Ramin Ganeshram ’s A Birthday Cake for George Washington, a picture book about the former President’s chef, Hercules, and his daughter, Delia, both of whom were enslaved by Washington. 30 The book’s depiction of Hercules is reminiscent of the early caricature of the happy sambo, the docile enslaved person who was contented with his state of enslavement. 37. Enslaved people were never content with their enslavement. At every stage of their enslavement, enslaved Africans fought the racist superstructure that sought to justify the exploitation of black bodies. Such stereotypes, as with all stereotypes, are not intended to portray truth. In her recent book, Never Caught: the Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, Eric Dunbar Armstrong __________________ 26 27 28 29 30 19-13272 See Gina Martinez, “GOP candidate criticized after saying black opponent would ‘monkey this up’”, Time, 29 August 2018. Available at https://time.com/5381672/ron-desantis-andrew-gillum/. See Federico Finchelstein, “Jair Bolsonaro’s model isn’t Berlusconi. It’s Goebbels”, FP, 5 October 2018. Available at https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/05/bolsonaros-model-itsgoebbels-fascism-nazism-brazil-latin-america-populism-argentina-venezuela/. See Adam Forrest, “Jair Bolsonaro: the worst quotes from Brazil’s far-right presidential frontrunner”, Independent, 8 October 2018. Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-who-is-quotes-brazil-president-election-run-off-latesta8573901.html. See Gustav Jahoda, Images of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western Culture (Routledge, 1999). Ramin Ganeshram, A Birthday Cake for George Washington, Scholastic Press, 2016. 11/22