Don’t Call Black Elected Officials Monkeys, Do Hold Them Accountable for Their Corruption

Rula Jebreal is an Afro-Palestinian woman whose people have been in the middle of a genocide these past three years. She recently became embroiled in controversy when she referred to House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries as a “monkey” and an “errand boy” for AIPAC. Jebreal’s statement – and the reactions to it from political circles and the people out here in these social media streets – provides some valuable lessons on the power of words, the use of psyops to divide the Black community, and the role of Black elected officials in addressing the needs of their people at this crucial moment.

First, I can say that I would never call a Black person a monkey or an errand boy. At the same time, people have been known to misspeak or speak out of turn or out of pocket. Certainly, there are many other choice words that I may have used. That Jebreal is an Afro-Palestinian woman provides an opportunity to engage in a diasporic discussion on internalized anti-Black racism among melanated people, and the harm we tend to cause to each other through words or actions.

However, it is interesting that Rula Jebreal’s black identity has been minimized and sidelined in this discussion over the “monkey” remarks. Her words have become a referendum on Palestinian Negrophobia – an excuse for some Black people to write off the Palestinian human rights struggle against apartheid and genocide, and drive a wedge between Black and Palestinian people.

It was interesting that as Black elected officials remain silent as white supremacists call Black women such as Angie Nixon and Ketanji Brown Jackson everything but a child of God, the Congressional Black Caucus issued a statement condemning Jebreal. Surely it is not mere coincidence that over half of the CBC members enjoy millions of dollars in financial contributions from AIPAC, which is the largest donor to the CBC. And not surprisingly, the CBC – known as “the conscience of the Congress” – has failed to issue any statement expressing Palestinian solidarity, or condemning Israel for its crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and the West Bank. Surely, the AIPAC money has bought their silence. This would make them water carriers for corporate lobbyists and their Trump donors, and a foreign government that is destroying Palestinian lives – and in any case doesn’t care much for Black people, either.

At a time when billionaire oligarchs are spreading the money around to select individuals, politicians and otherwise, some hand-picked Black individuals are being treated to an extra-large heaping plate of fried chicken wings, grits and salt pork. Once a revered human rights activist and advocate, Van Jones hasn’t been the same since he took that $100 million Jeff Bezos money, and now the Ellisons’ Oracle-Paramount money, as he justifies the killing of babies in Gaza in cartoonish propagandistic fashion. Hakeem Jeffries once supported Medicare for All, but surely the health insurance lobby provided him with financial incentives to reconsider his view. And with handsome renumeration from the pro-Israel lobby, he channeled Alabama Governor George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural speech and proudly proclaimed in 2014, “Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever!”

In these times, folks are taking the bag, and it changes them. Others had little integrity from the jump, in a political system with an unlimited corporate money supply that fails to address or deliver what the people want. We cannot fight against war, ICE, AI data centers, corruption, economic inequality and the health crisis when our elected officials are funded by the arms lobby, ICE contractors, AI, Crypto, Wall Street and Big Pharma. And Black faces are collecting that money – shifty-eyed, two-faced, compromised and robotic as they are – which provides absolutely no benefit to their constituency. If Black leaders are not improving the material conditions of their people, they are worthless. Vibes are not enough and will not put food on the table. We must demand more from Black so-called leaders, as these people are not celebrities or influencers. But this is nothing new.

As Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton said in “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation” in 1967, “Black Power means proper representation and sharing of control … It does not mean merely putting Black faces into office. Black visibility is not Black Power. Most of the Black politicians around the country today are not examples of Black Power.”

Similarly, in “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or community?” (1967) Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “The majority of [Black] political leaders do not ascend to prominence on the shoulders of mass support … most are selected by white leadership, elevated to position, supplied with resources and inevitably subjected to white control. The mass of [Blacks] nurtures a healthy suspicion toward these manufactured leaders.” Dr. King said that.

How glorious it would be if more Black leaders were more enthusiastic about reparations for slavery or the Black Panther Party ten-point program than self-enrichment, helping corporations or supporting the “right” of a foreign nation to kill dark-skinned babies. The fate of Black people and Palestinian people are intertwined with all oppressed people, and none of us will be free until all of us are free. We are catching hell for the same reasons, and some Black people are Palestinian and are being exterminated. If you don’t believe this is all connected and we are all connected, consider that only three nations voted no on a UN resolution condemning the transatlantic slave trade and calling for reparatory justice – the settler colonial states of Argentina, Israel and the United States.

Meanwhile, are we to believe that Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner – the son-in-law of Trump who has no official title in the government, and is a member of a crime family enriching themselves to the tune of billions – to discuss affordability? Would Hakeem Jeffries ever shout, “Reparations today, Reparations tomorrow, Reparations forever”? Of course not, because he is not paid to say that.