In a recent speech, Trump painted a picture of humanoid predatory animals hell-bent on torturing, killing, and raping beautiful, innocent teenage girls. Trump’s speech should not be regarded as the return of the superpredator idea, because the idea that young Black and Latino males are roving, predatory beasts never really disappeared.

The belief that some things are natural while others are unnatural is part of the common currency of human thought, but we rarely pause to consider exactly what it means to say that something is unnatural. It’s important to do so because this concept is politically very potent.