Planet of the Apes Revisited

I was watching the original Planet of the Apes movie series today and realized there are some oddly similar ties to America's race and labor relations and our history of slavery. Even the recent revamp/prequel of the series made me feel an alliance to the apes but with the original I see no way in which I'm not firmly on that side.

In the 1973 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes people have apes work as slaves in every possible area. The people of North America basically create a whole society that rests on ape slave labor. We find out in the movie that many of the apes are being brought over in a ship from some other country. These slaves are mistreated and the law does nothing about it unless they try to escape or "turn on their masters".

Then as always, the people who were put out of work by this labor force blame the apes instead of the people who deserve the blame, causing further abuse to the animals. To make the similarity worst the only good people seem to be Armando,circus leader who wants to protect and MacDonald, seemingly the lone black government working in the government who both tries to defend the main character (Caesar) and apes as a whole.

I'm wondering if the makers thought out what ideas they were promoting with this film. It basically divides the people into two camps; White people who like slavery and the Mexican and Black guys who don't like slavery. I was already ready for the humans to be killed when in the previous film in the series people tried to kill the ape babies. Now I couldn't help thinking 15 minutes in the film, 'isn't this a b*tch' and how much better the world would be if they just killed the white people.