I agree with you about the the soft bigotry of low expectations. In fact, I thought the rats refer to the Black community who always said, ‘we are diffeent from them’...
As a black man, I had that same reaction when Remy's father took him to look up at the exterminator's window display. So many black "leaders" reference historical pen-and-ink illustrations and black-and-white photographs of lynchings.