Recently, a video was shared on social media by Donald Trump that included a brief clip depicting Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes — a racist trope with deep, harmful roots. The post was met with widespread condemnation across the political spectrum, labelled racist and offensive, and was eventually deleted after hours of criticism and backlash from both Democrats and Republicans.

This wasn’t an “edgy joke.” It was an example of a dehumanising image being amplified by someone with enormous influence. When such imagery is circulated by public figures, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum — it shapes norms, it sharpens stereotypes, and it teaches, especially to young minds, that some bodies can be mocked and ridiculed.

Why This Matters for Children

Children absorb not just what we say but what our culture normalises. When racist depictions are shared and left unchallenged, children learn:

• who is presented as fully human and who is not;
• who it is acceptable to mock;
• whose suffering is visible, and whose is invisible.

The impact is cumulative and real. These images do not stay online for “just a moment.” They circulate, are repeated, are joked about, and become part of the background noise children internalise about race, worth, and belonging.

Why White People Need to Speak Up

If you benefit from a society shaped by racial hierarchies, racism is not an “other people’s problem” — it is our problem. Silence from white voices in moments like this isn’t neutrality; it protects comfort. It preserves the status quo. And too often, that status quo includes systems of injustice that harm our neighbours.

White people showing up and speaking clearly doesn’t centre us — it de-centres racism. It says that we will not leave the work of resisting racial harm to those who are already burdened by it.

Why the Church Can and Must Speak

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning is “the most segregated hour in Christian America.”  The quote is rooted in a sobering truth: Church communities in the United States — and in many parts of the world — have historically been and sometimes remain racially divided. Worship can be a place of beauty, but if it does not lead us to resist injustice, it risks becoming an echo chamber of apathy.

The Church should be one of the first institutions to confront racism, not the one that looks away.

Rooted in Scripture

From the very first chapter of the Bible, we are reminded of a truth too easily forgotten:

“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them…” — Genesis 1:27.

This is not abstract language. It means that every person bears the image of God — not some, not most, all. When any human being is reduced to an animal, a caricature, a stereotype, we not only demean them — we distort the truth about who they are. To suggest that one human is less human than another because of race is to invert the very image of God in which we are created.

What We Owe Each Other

To my Black friends, colleagues, and siblings in Christ: I see your pain, and I stand in solidarity with you. You should not have to teach us why racist imagery hurts. You should not have to carry that burden alone.

To my fellow white Christians: let us pray for eyes to see more clearly, ears to hear more deeply, and mouths with courage to speak more boldly. Let us be the voices that stand against dehumanisation, not the quiet that allows it to grow louder.

This is not about political point-scoring. This is about human dignity. This is about embodying the love of Christ in a world that so often forgets it.

Let us speak. Let us act. Let us be the Church that resists racism rather than reproducing it.

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God of justice and mercy,

we lament the harm caused by racism and the pain it continues to inflict.

Forgive us where we have stayed silent to protect our comfort.

Give us courage to speak, humility to listen, and faithfulness to act.