No, it means he's saying that all the examples I gave are of people who aren't actually any good at what they do and are interesting only because for a black person to be able to attempt those tasks at all is remarkable. The stupidity and obnoxiousness of that doesn't depend on a comparison with animals.

In any case, one reason why people use metaphors is precisely the fact that the literal sense of the metaphor produces an effect. You call someone a "dancing bear", and your readers are going to get a mental image of a dancing bear and (in so far as they accept what you say) associate it with the person you're talking about. You don't get to do that and claim you're not comparing the person to an animal.

[EDITED to fix a trivial typo.]