Could WotC done this better? Yes!
Is it comparable to 2005 b.s.? Not even close, and it would be bad to call that out as racism when we have still REAL racism to get rid off in the world.
I disagree re: "not even close". Yeah, the 2005 is just like straight up horrifying, but this is a great example of carelessness causing a company to "do a racism" because they just didn't bother to think about it. Is that different in the "type" of racism? Sure, but it's not at all good.
Re: the minstrel pose, it's a circular thing. Minstrel imagery using actual Black people became gradually unacceptable or less acceptable, and the same imagery just transferred, thanks to the magic of racism, to monkeys. Then this artist came along, and presumably unconsciously inspired by the minstrel-based "jolly monkey" images they'd seen, created this. Which effectively closes the circle. But it's really obvious to anyone who has seen minstrel imagery. At best, it looks like an accidental racist "dogwhistle". Importantly, a lot of Black people seeing it are instantly going to see the (hopefully unintentional) reference.
Combine that with the text re: slavery, which is another example of carelessness on multiple levels. Yes, it's a Planet of the Apes reference (though even as an Apes fan I didn't initially clock that), but that is a text allegorically
about slavery/racism (Planet of the Apes that is), and man's inhumanity to man. So you can't just sling that around, especially in the context of an ape race. It's thoughtless as hell and failing to understand the issue. It doesn't matter if the slavery was "brief", it's still messed-up to so casually invoke it in this particular context. On top of that, the writing makes it so the Hadozee were the beneficiaries of "liberators", when it could easily be spun that they liberated themselves (which again, is what actually happened in Planet of the Apes, essentially!), further just unnecessarily being careless.
It's absolutely right to call this out as racism. We can't only call out people spraying swastikas on walls or screaming the n-word in the street, but you seem to be saying that, until that's done, we aren't allowed to address this kind of thoughtless but still creepy racism. Just think what it's like to experience this - I don't get how people don't see this - like imagine you were reading a D&D book, and you saw an image that looked exactly like some imagery used by awful people to demean people like you. Would it being "unintentional" as you eventually work out reduce the initial horror and so on? No. Only later it might make it seem less bad, but it's still pretty awful!
It's like their tables and groups are so different from the masses.
This seems like it's been a pretty consistent theme in 5E too. To the point where I'm thinking maybe 5E leadership needs to change. Like, how many times does WotC need to show it's "out of touch" here before they consider changing senior D&D staff? Like, D&D's playerbase is mostly 20-somethings now (with a lot younger), maybe get some people nearer that age in charge? It's not exactly a wild thought - Ed Greenwood wasn't even 30 when TSR published the FR Grey Box! Maybe Perkins and Crawford need to be part of a slightly larger team, rather than seemingly jointly running the show?