‘He’s exactly half white’: Neil deGrasse Tyson uses Barack Obama to skewer the absurdity of racist monkey comparisons

VladTV, the interview show run by Vladimir Lyubovny, has been running segments of an interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson ranging from innocuous topics (his thoughts on early hip-hop) to more salient ones (he doesn’t want to be called a “Black scientist,” just a scientist), but the latest one is perhaps the most touchy of all: Tyson explains why white people look more like monkeys than Black people, and uses president Barack Obama as an example.

Vlad starts off the segment like this: “I know you did an interview recently [about] the racist things people have said about Black people and monkeys and so forth,” he said. “But you said when you scientifically look at white people [you said] monkeys are hairy, and white people are the hairiest people…”

“On Earth,” Tyson said, completing the thought and laughing. Vlad, who is white, admits, “I am really hairy.”

Tyson then displays his very-not-hairy arms and says, “I don’t shave at all,” and explains that some white people have hair from chest to neck.

“These were highly overlooked similarities,” Tyson said. Vlad then offers other similarities between white people and monkeys, like big ears and thin lips. “I look more like a monkey than anyone else,” Vlad observes.

Tyson explains that 19th century anthropology was probably “the most racist period in the most racist branch of science there ever was.”

When you start categorizing and ranking people, he said, you’re going to rank yourself at the top, and that will bias your perspective. 19th century anthropology energized the eugenics movement, which was adopted by Hitler and the Nazis to justify mistreating and mass-murdering Jews, minorities, and disabled people.

Tyson threw out a hypothetical: What if Black anthropologists had set the tone back in the 1800s? What comparisons would they have come up with? “They’d have to put themselves at the top, and now find all the similarities between white people and chimpanzees.”

They would start with the “fully hairy bodies,” the “huge ears.” The conversation then moves to former President Barack Obama.

“People say, ‘well how about Obama? First Black President and he’s got big ears.’ He’s exactly half-white,” Tyson said emphatically. “No doubt those big ears come from his mama! The point is, look how easy it is to be racist. And take a look at a chimpanzees’ lips. They’re razor thin, and we’ve got some very famous large-lipped black people … so they overlooked so much.”

There you have it. Even science is annoyingly biased, and white people look more like monkeys than Black people. Perspective’s a funny thing. Check out the whole interview below.