Property is Power! When Dehumanization Becomes Policy

Property is Power!

When Dehumanization Becomes Policy

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When Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States, circulates or amplifies an image depicting the first Black President of this country Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as monkeys, the nation is being told something important about itself. This is not a lapse in judgment. It is not dark humor. It is not political theater. It is an intentional act rooted in one of the most enduring and violent tropes in Western history the reduction of Black people to something less than human.

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That image is not accidental. It is not harmless. And it is not disconnected from power.

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I am deeply hurt by this moment. But more than hurt, I am deeply alarmed.Because history makes one thing unmistakably clear dehumanization is never the conclusion of an argument, it is the beginning of a process.

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We are living in a time when many insist racism is behind us. When progress is spoken of as permanent and irreversible. When the presence of Black success is used as evidence that the system is now fair. And yet, here we are,watching Barack Obama, a former President of the United States, publicly reduced to animal imagery by his successor, Donald Trump, with little institutional resistance and even less accountability.

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That silence matters.

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History shows us that authoritarian and anti-democratic movements do not begin with laws or violence. They begin with narrative control. With ridicule. With the steady normalization of contempt. Hitler did not begin with camps; he began with caricatures, propaganda, and the erosion of empathy. Across cultures and continents, the pattern remains consistent once people are symbolically stripped of their humanity, stripping them of their rights, resources, and property becomes easier to justify.

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This is why this moment cannot be dismissed as merely offensive. It is consequential precisely because it signals what is now acceptable. It lower the cost of cruelty. It prepares the public to tolerate exclusion. And symbolism, in a society built on hierarchy, always precedes policy.

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We are witnessing coordinated efforts to weaken institutions that preserve historical truth attacks on museums, on honest accounts of race, on the authority of places like the Smithsonian. We see the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives under the language of neutrality and fairness. These developments are often treated as separate controversies, but they are part of the same architecture. Cultural erasure and economic dispossession have always moved together.

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Racism in this era rarely announces itself loudly. It operates administratively. Through systems that claim objectivity while producing unequal outcomes. Through lending standards, appraisal practices, zoning laws, and capital flows that quietly but consistently disadvantage Black communities. Intent is denied, but impact is undeniable.

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When Black leadership is openly mocked and dehumanized especially whenthat mockery is modeled by Donald Trump himself, it sends a signal throughevery layer of these systems. Appraisers feel safer undervaluing. Lenders feelsafer tightening. Policymakers feel safer dismantling protections.Dehumanization at the cultural level creates permission at the institutionallevel.

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This is where Property is Power becomes unavoidable.

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Property is not simply about owning a home. It is about leverage, stability, and inheritance. It is the primary mechanism through which families secure their future and transfer opportunity across generations. In America, access to property has never been neutral it has always been shaped by race, policy, power, and this is not accidental, it is structural.

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Black homeownership gaps are not the result of apathy or ignorance. They are the cumulative outcome of historic exclusion and modern systems that continue to reproduce inequality while claiming color blindness. When Black communities are devalued symbolically, they are devalued economically. Equity is suppressed long before it is denied.

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Many of the moral giants who once forced this nation to confront its contradictions are gone. King is gone. Malcolm is gone. Medgar is gone. The institutions that once carried their urgency have been diluted, minimized, or neutralized. The responsibility of this moment now rests with those who understand how systems function and how power consolidates. The question before us is not where are the leaders, the question is whether we are willing to raise our hands.

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Silence in moments like this is not neutrality. It is consent. History will not judge us by our outrage, but by whether we recognized the season we were in and acted accordingly. Whether we defended access. Whether we protected the ground literally and economically that our children and grandchildren are meant to inherit.

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Property is Power because permanence is power. And dehumanization has always been the first step toward dispossession. The time to pay attention is now.

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Dr. Anthony O. Kellum – CEO of Kellum Mortgage, LLC Homeownership Advocate, Speaker, Author                                                          NMLS # 1267030 NMLS #1567030 O: 313-263-6388 W: www.KelluMortgage.com.

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Property is Power! is a movement to promote home and community ownership. Studies indicate that homeownership leads to higher graduation rates, family wealth, and community involvement.

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