More than a month into his second term, President Donald Trump has already made good on many of his dreadful campaign promises. He has ordered mass deportation of migrants and asylum seekers; cancelled federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) programmes; cut funding to underprivileged Black and Latino communities; and pledged to expel foreigners with legal residency who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.
It is clear that if we are to survive the next four years, minorities and oppressed people of all stripes must build solidarity networks to stand together and resist. To do so effectively, we must address any outstanding issues that could undermine cross-community solidarity. One cannot say they care about women’s rights, public health, racial equality, education or any number of things that liberals claim to care about and then allow a genocide to go on.
The 2024 election took place in the shadow of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people of Palestine. Despite the efforts of the Democratic Party to obfuscate and manipulate the issue, they could not simply wish away the horrifying images coming out of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
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They faced a mass mobilisation of people in the streets, in the primaries and on college campuses calling for urgent action to stop Israel. In a desperate attempt to distract from the rightful criticism they were receiving for facilitating genocide, the Democratic Party took aim at the cross-sectional coalition that formed to support Gaza.
In particular, the Democrats sought to break up Black-Palestinian solidarity. One way they hoped to do so was to frame pro-Palestinian protesters as single-issue voters. They claimed that the Palestinian and Arab communities and their allies were invested only in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and did not care about the struggles of minority groups here in the US.
Democrats emphasised that what was happening in Gaza was an external issue that concerned only that specific group of voters. The idea was to convince Black people – as well as women, LGBTQ and other disadvantaged groups – that their solidarity with Palestine was pointless and that their interests lay with the Democratic Party, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
When confronted with the particularly callus “single issue” talking point, typically I would ask: What “single issue” is genocide? One cannot say they care about women’s rights, public health, racial equality, education or any number of things that liberals claim to care about and then allow a genocide to go on.
If someone is OK with the extermination of one group, why would they not be willing to approve the extermination of others when the time comes?
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We got a glimpse of just how unserious the commitment of the Democratic Party and its liberal supporters to the rights of disadvantaged groups can be when they rushed to blame trans people for Harris’s defeat and some prominent members suggested dropping the “trans issue”.
The “single-issue voter” talking point was not the only one weaponised to undermine Black-Palestinian solidarity. The historic mobilisation on college and university campuses across the country was also attacked. Liberal media sought to portray pro-Palestinian activism not only as “anti-Semitic” but also as a pet project of the bourgeoisie, something only rich unaffected kids at Ivy League universities had time to care about.
What the media decided to leave out from this narrative was that mobilisations also took place at public universities and state schools, which Black and brown students overwhelmingly joined. The fact that students of colour faced the brunt of police violence and criminal prosecution was also conveniently omitted from public conversation.
In parallel, the Democratic Party also made some of its members of colour become the face of its unacceptable stance on Gaza. Biden’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield was instructed to vote down ceasefire resolution after ceasefire resolution and repeat the mantra about Israel’s “right to self-defence”. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had to avoid any and all questions about the Palestinians during pressers. Vice President Harris, herself, was tasked with “acknowledging” the humanity and suffering of the Palestinian people, while the Biden administration continued to approve weapons sales to Israel.
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The Democratic Party used Blackness as a shield against any criticism and they did it under the guise of diversity. Unsurprisingly, the guise was dropped whenever Black or brown members of the party spoke out. In such cases, Democrats did everything possible to demonise and sideline them. When Member of Congress Cori Bush faced an unprecedented mass spending campaign by AIPAC to oust her in the primaries, none of the Democratic leadership came to her defence.
Nevertheless, the talking points worked and managed to penetrate even otherwise progressive spaces. A good example was an online conversation between content creator Tori Grier and TikToker Maya Abdallah that took place in August.
Tori as a Black woman argued for voting for Harris, outlining her very real fears of a second Trump presidency, while Maya rightfully pointed out the Democratic candidate was refusing to stop facilitating a genocide. The fallout of the heated debate between the two spread online, with some social media users renouncing their solidarity. This is exactly where the political elite wanted us to be.
As the Democratic Party courted the Black community, it made no effort whatsoever to talk to the Arab Americans and other pro-Palestinian groups. And even in “courting” Black people, the Democrats still managed to be as condescending as possible, pulling out the tired and racist trope of “Black men becoming more conservative”.
It is this strategy and the party’s disingenuous framing of genocide and minority rights that I believe led us to the fascistic fever dream that is the Trump presidency.
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Many Arab Americans – as well as members of other minority groups – voted for Trump. I, as a Black man, would not have tried to convince these people to vote for the “lesser evil” while their families were being exterminated in Gaza.
Others in the Black community have felt differently. A small but vocal contingent of Black people on the internet has insisted that we should defy the boycott of Israel, “buy Starbucks” and stop supporting the Palestinian cause. While this was mainly a social media phenomenon, the effects in real life are there. When I talk to members of my community who may be less informed on what is happening overseas, the same few talking points arise: “Isn’t this conflict thousands of years old?” and “Israel is defending itself.”
The truth is, it is not the first time the Black community has been split over Palestine-Israel. Recall the clash between iconic Black writer Audre Lorde and fellow Black feminist June Jordan. In the early 1980s, Jordan openly criticised Israel for invading Lebanon and for its “genocidal aims as regards the Palestinian people”. Lorde rejected this stance. She understood the ways that the US entrapped and used Black people here and abroad, but she was unable to connect it to the struggle of the Palestinians the way Jordan did. This fracture caused a deterioration in their relations.
While differences in opinion persist today within the Black community, ultimately, it is my belief that the contradictions present in defending the Democratic Party are increasingly becoming untenable to manage. The ways that Democrats use their platform to manipulate narratives – similar to the way Republicans do with their base – leads to confusion, not greater political participation from Black people.
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For those who still embrace the talking points about the pro-Palestinian movement, it may be a good idea to ask what the Democratic Party has done to win their loyalty.
This is the party that in response to the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 decided to send its leadership to do a photoshoot in kneeling in Kente cloth but then spent $17.4bn on funding the police countrywide two years later. This is also the party whose members and affiliated talking heads put a lot of effort into demonising the Black Lives Matter movement and stealing all popular momentum from it.
More recently, the Democratic Party went out of its way to push forward the highly unpopular “Cop City” project in Atlanta. The city, famously run by affluent Black Democrats, has taken draconian measures to ensure that all resistance – including from members of the Black community – to this police training campus project be squashed.
Let us also remember that while Trump is every bit of the monster Democrats claim he is, they themselves seem OK with him. That is because for years, the Democratic elite have relied on a host of rotating villains to keep them from having to fulfil any of their more progressive promises to their base. With this strategy in mind, in 2015-2016, they propped up Trump in the Republican primaries, believing that he would be the easiest candidate to beat.
In this context, the insinuation that the Democratic Party – or the Republican Party, for that matter – has the best interest of the Black population of this country in mind is not only insulting, but dangerous. To both of these parties, Black and Palestinian lives are of little concern; they matter only when or if it is politically and financially expedient.
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Many Black Americans like me see the parallel between the historical ways in which our people have been harmed and what is happening in Palestine. The brutal apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people directly relate to the mass killings and subjugation of Black people here in the US. There is a reason so many of the things we say in our community resonate with the people of Palestine and vice versa. Our mere existence is a threat to the status quo.
I see this realisation spread among my peers, and we all saw it at the Super Bowl, when Zul-Qarnain Nantambu, a Black performer, raised a Sudanese and a Palestinian flag on stage during the half-time show.
The past 16 months of genocide in Gaza have brought to the fore the close connections between the US military-industrial complex and the Israeli one, between the US army and the Israeli occupation forces, between the US police and the Israeli security establishment.
With Trump and his cohort of white nationalist extremists already unleashing police and other security agencies onto vulnerable communities, we – Black and brown people, LGBTQ, and pro-Palestinian activists – face the same threat, the same source of aggression.
Our power lies in united resistance. To buck the established order, we have to stand together.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
