> Gorillas are much better behaved than primates in general so I wouldn't be insulted if somebody called me a gorilla.
Then again, you likely don't belong to a race that was subjugated for centuries by people comparing them to monkeys or gorillas to intentionally dehumanize them.. Black athletes in foreign countries still get bananas thrown at them on the field. I can assure you, this isn't meant as a compliment.
Eberhardt described an experiment based on the
Rodney King case. Participants viewed a video of
police officers beating a Black suspect. Participants
who saw words associated with apes before
watching the video believed the officers’ actions
were more justified, compared to participants who
did not see the animal imagery. In a separate study,
Eberhardt found that people are more likely to
consider animal language (such as “barbaric,”
“animalistic,” etc.) appropriate and necessary in
court cases of Black defendants compared to White
defendants. News articles describing Black
defendants are more likely to use animal language
than articles about White defendants.
In addition, news articles of Blacks who received a
death sentence contain more animal language than
the articles of those with life sentences. “So not only
are Blacks associated with apes, but this
association is linked to justifications of violence and
death,” Eberhardt concluded. “It’s almost as though
the rules for what moral treatment is get shifted for
Black suspects and defendants.”