You said "If apes could talk to us." That would be a different situation than what is. They cannot talk to us without intensive sign language training. They are large, dangerous, unhygienic. I think that's why we can't accept other apes as human. We cannot deal with them as direct neighbors. They'd chew our faces off the moment we got them angry.
They, in turn, cannot consider us to be like them. We are too afraid of germs, too weak, too focused upon houses and money and society and other things they care nothing for.