When it comes to America, racism is so pervasive that you can lift any stone and find it. A prime example is political discourse, which is often so reactionary that it exposes prejudicial attitudes and beliefs people would otherwise keep under lock and key. Take, for instance, President Trump, who shared a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama, the former president and first lady, as great apes. He faced criticism, and rightfully so, yet fewer condemn racism when it comes from the left or the center of the political spectrum. If you want to clean a house, you can’t ignore the corners, the dirt under the rug, or the dust on the ceiling fan and blinds.
A recent example would be journalist Rula Jebreal, a prominent voice on the left, calling House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a “monkey” while speaking as a guest on Wajahat Ali’s podcast, The Left Hook. While the comment arose as she expressed frustration over Democratic representatives accepting money from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and homing in on Jeffries due to his position of power within the Democratic Party, referring to a Black man as subhuman was just as racist as Trump sharing a video of the former president and first lady as apes. Political ideology is not a shield for prejudice. Yet many believe it is.
Also, those in the center benefit from the presumption that they’re more reasonable in social matters. Yet in America, a country still grappling with its legacy of racism, the middle of the road often upholds racism. For instance, when Black activists and others pointed out that a centrist, John Fetterman, then a Democratic candidate in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania, once held an unarmed Black man, Christopher Miyares, at gunpoint, their arguments were seen as irrelevant. Many compared this case to that of Ahmad Aurbery, a Black man killed after White men wrongfully accused him of breaking into homes while he was jogging. Nevertheless, Fetterman became a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.
Calling out racism on the right is like calling water wet. In other words, it’s an easy target, especially in an era where conservatives are using legislation to limit or prohibit the inclusion of Black historical narratives in the classroom and remove museum exhibits that expose the nation’s ties to slavery. But the presence of racism on the political right doesn’t mean that prejudice exists only in these explicit examples, or that those on this side of the aisle are the only ones capable of expressing hatred, disdain, or prejudice for Black people. While racism manifests differently throughout the political spectrum, it’s never been isolated to one side.
Surely those acquainted with our nation’s history will know that even Northern Union soldiers during the Civil War, those believed to be anti-slavery, were known to have expressed prejudice against Black soon-to-be Americans. For instance, one of the bloodiest civil disruptions in our nation’s history occurred in New York in 1863. Tens of thousands of White men participated in riots to protest the draft to fight against the Confederacy. Many expressed frustration that they’d be made to fight in a conflict wealthy people could opt out of, and news spread that the war could liberate millions of enslaved Black people. Abraham Lincoln, the president at the time, had to send at least 4,000 federal troops to fight mobs in the streets and quell the violence.
During the New York riots, Williams Jones, an innocent Black man, was beaten to death, hanged under a lamppost, and burned so badly that his only identifying feature was the loaf of bread he was trying to carry home. Americans tend to flatten historical and present-day narratives in a way that has limited our collective ability to call out inconvenient stories about racism. The image of Northerners lynching Black people may shock those who are taught that only those south of the Mason-Dixon line are capable of racism. And there are many other historical examples, such as Union soldiers drowning hundreds of Black refugees in the Ebenezer Creek in December of 1864. But by now you should get the point. Racism is not limited to any political side, and it never has been.
Anna Kasparin, a prominent voice on the left, recently referred to Jeffries as “scum,” asking whether, instead of calling Jeffries a monkey, the black community would prefer Jebreal to use the term “political prostitute” as a criticism of Democratic officials taking money in exchange for supporting Israel, despite human rights violations the country has committed against Palestinian people. In defense of someone she politically aligns with, she referred to those Jebreal called a Black man a monkey as “race vultures” and told them to shut up. How is this any different from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other conservatives condemning “identity politics,” and arguing they’d never surrender to the “woke mob”? If there’s one thing, White Americans on the left and right seem to agree on, it’s that Black people should shut up when it comes to race and racism.
The irony of the critique from the left is that we have great Black leaders such as Bernice King, the daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta Scott King, who have demonstrated how someone can call out the injustices in the Middle East without straying from her condemnation of racism within the United States. She argued that her father “would call for Israel’s bombing of Palestinians to cease” and for “hostages to be released,” promoting peace as he was known for. She shared this perspective after a comedian, a White woman named Amy Schumer, attempted to use her father’s speeches to support the current actions of Israel. While condemning antisemitism, Bernice King called out the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians and never stopped advocating for Black Americans in the process.
Some will likely excuse Jebreal calling a Black person a monkey, as if she was at a fever pitch of disappointment with their general political stance on Palestinians, but this is disingenuous. Black people have a long history of acknowledging the injustices Palestinians have endured. Indeed, Nelson Mandela, a South African leader known for his anti-apartheid movement, suggested in 1997 that the Israeli government was “slaughtering defenseless and innocent Arabs in occupied territories,” arguing “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.” In doing so, he explicitly connected the plight of Black people in South Africa to those living in Gaza. And in the modern era, the Black Lives Matter organization stated that they “we know occupation, we know state-sanctioned violence, and we know what it means to be dehumanized by a heavily militarized police force. The fight for Palestinian liberation is a fight for global Black liberation.” Surely those on the left wouldn’t have anything negative to say about these individuals or this organization. But if you only refrain from racism against those who share your worldview, you were never anti-racist to begin with.
Despite many Black Americans disagreeing with the political ideology of those on the far right, such as Clarence Thomas, a Black man who used his authority on the Supreme Court to diminish the fight for civil rights, or Stephen A Smith, a political pundit who often sides with the conservative interpretation of current events, you’d be hard pressed to find many Black people who would cosign a White liberal, leftist, centrist, or progressive calling these men monkeys or apes. And the same would go for Black women on the right, such as Candace Owens. Racism is wrong no matter who espouses it or the political beliefs of their target. Sadly, it seems a lot of White and racially ambiguous people don’t seem to grasp this nuance, and as a result, see racism as a weapon to use against those whom they disagree with, rather than something to universally show disdain for. You can’t be a trustworthy ally when racism lies dormant within you.
Sadly, White folks on the Left seem to use racism as a weapon whenever a Black person disagrees with them. If Jefferies declined money from AIPAC, the same foolish people calling him a monkey would be praising him. This exposes a deep-seated problem, as Black people seem to have very few true allies, just folks who use our plight to advance themselves politically and then disregard us when it’s not convenient or advantageous. There’s nothing wrong with folks on the Left calling out those in the center for supporting Israel despite the nation’s human rights violations; after all, it’s estimated that 64,000 children have been killed or suffered severe injuries in Gaza since 2023, and many more have endured life-threatening malnutrition and disease. But racist bullying is not the path forward.
And even when Black Americans make some progress by calling out racism on the Left, some try to use this as a gotcha moment against that side of the political aisle more broadly, to argue that those on the left are even more racist than those on the right. But making that claim is inaccurate, as Theodore R. Johnson pointed out in the Brennan Center, “study after study has shown that people who voted for Donald Trump had higher levels of racial resentment than those who did not.” Discussing this quantitatively is only part of the equation. Racism exists throughout the political spectrum — the right, left, and center. Your political ideology will not save you from prejudice, nor does being a liberal mean you’re above the fray.
Remember, in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, he famously called out racism from the center. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” There are White folks in this country who claim to be against racism but, in reality, hate it when discussions about racism are raised.
Even many White people who are not overtly racist seem to squirm in their seats at the mention of race, condemn discussions about prejudice as “identity politics,” and want the rhetoric to quiet down rather than for us to find workable solutions to the prejudice that permeates our society. Many Democrats, including those who consider themselves more progressive-leaning and those in the center, supported a holiday honoring Charlie Kirk, a white supremacist who referred to the Civil Rights Act as a mistake. While not as explicit as portraying a Black person as a primate, it achieves the same end. After all, Kirk suggested Black pilots were unfit to fly and that Black women in positions of authority took their spot from a White man, cosigning a white supremacist worldview.
As a Black person in America, it is utterly exhausting to see people use racism as a gotcha moment to make one another look bad rather than truly confronting the problem we face. Someone on the left calling a Black person a monkey is just as offensive as someone on the right portraying Black people as apes. And those in the center who turn a blind eye to racism, such as Fetterman’s decision to hold an unarmed Black man at gunpoint, or those who cosigned a holiday that elevates a white supremacist as an American hero, are also guilty.
When it comes to racism, America’s political home is dirty, with dust in the corners, on the fan, and on the baseboards. The windows are smudged, and it’s clear the dog tracked mud onto the kitchen floor tiles. And even the guest room has hidden dirt underneath the rug. There is no political safe space, nowhere entirely clean from anti-Black racism. Beware, because there are actually more Americans willing to claim they’re anti-racist than are actually aligned with this worldview, who want you to think the home is clean, even though it’s not. Rather than denying the pervasive nature of racism, we should grab a bucket and a mop, and yes, the duster, to rid ourselves of this filth whenever and wherever it is found.