The Socialist Left (Still) Lacks Respect for its Black Critics Lawrence Grandpre

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are an ascending force in the Democratic Party. They have claimed victories not only in the New York City mayoral race with Zohran Manadi, but also in recent Democratic congressional primaries in New York and Denver.

This raises a historical question around how socialists have engaged with the Black left. Though many of their candidates are people of color, recent actions by the DSA-aligned left show that current socialist left has much to learn from the history of socialists' failure to effectively engage the Black community.

While Black folks have always been the most impacted by the poverty and joblessness produced by capitalism, they have consistently had to contend with class-first socialists arguing their desire to center race along with class are “splitting the left”.

Hubert Henry Harrison worked for the socialist party in the 1910s, but eventually left to become a pan-African “race first” socialist.  He argued that socialists have a paternalistic attitude toward Black communities and that they take credit for political results tied more to Black desires for self-determination than their socialist “propaganda”.  He wrote in 1919:

“The Socialist party thinks that the “unrest” now apparent in the Negro masses is due to the propaganda which its adherents support … Negroes in America are now reacting is not the exploitation of laborers by capitalists…It is not the Class Line, but the Color Line…we are seeking racial independence in business and reaching out into new fields of endeavor…Where Negro “radicals” of the type known to white radicals can scarce get a handful of people, Garvey fills the largest halls… racial solidarity…That is the secret of his success so far…”

Nearly 100 years later, something similar is happening, with class-first leftist ignoring the role of race in politics. Krystal Ball, a progressive journalist, explained on her show Breaking Points that Maryland’s primary election results, with a “progressive challenger” defeating a “more conservative incumbent state senator,” were a result of the larger progressive, class-centric wave. She was almost certainly talking about Malcolm Ruff’s victory over Dalia Attar, a race defined by grassroots Black civil society mobilizing for Black power in a majority Black district. Advocates worked for months uniting Black civil society around Malcolm, whose platform included advocating for measures that would support grassroots violence prevention, support juvenile justice reforms, and sponsor a bill that would tax endowments of large non-profits to fund reparations. Ball reading this race through the lens of a class-first movement shows she, like Harrison notes, continued to mistake Black political agitation as a result of their “propaganda” rather than grassroots desire for self-determination.

A more stunning example of this issue comes from a recent interview between podcaster Danial Denvir and journalist Briana Joy Gray. Gray is not a proponent of Black nationalism, but she is a critic of the racial blind spots of the socialist movement, including many leftist jettisoning the call to “defund police”.

In an interview with Denvir, Gray mentions the limitations of the DSA’s “entrying” approach of running Democrats, presenting the alternative approach of combining this tactic with 3rd party activism. Denvir says she is rehashing her “6-year-old debate about DSA’s approach”, and claims that the conversation is “not enjoyable” and “melting his brain”. When Gray mentions leftist efforts in 2021 to “force the vote”, demanding the Democratic caucus use the leverage of the appointment of House leadership to force votes on key issues like Medicare for All, Denvir stunningly logs off the interview. This is an incredible show of disrespect not only for a Black woman leftist fellow traveler, but for the idea that the DSA progressive approach could ever legitimately be questioned. Professor Alex Vitale reported on Briana Joy Gray’s show a week before this interview that arrests for low-level offenses have actually increased under Mandani. If Denvir respected critiques of DSA’s approach, he could hear Gray’s question as stemming from this sort of concern.  

Danial Denvir represents the kind of class-first socialist who does not respect Black criticism. He works for Jacobin magazine, which recently published a justification of the Young Patriots, a group of poor white populists Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton formed an alliance with, using the Confederate flag. This example is framed through the lens of Black folks getting over their “woke” objections to the flag to see their mutual class interests with the Young Patriots. In reality, Hampton’s connection with the Young Patriots was a coalition where Black folks were willing to trade resources controlled by working-class whites for resources controlled by working-class Blacks. This can be seen in Hampton's famous chant “yellow power for yellow people, white power for white people, Black power for Black people”. This was an explicit attempt to combine class politics with Black self-determination that Jacobin, as Harrison notes, reads through the lens of socialist “propaganda” as a call for Black people not to be so mean to working-class white people, even though they fly a flag used to bring racial terror and violence to their ancestors.

Denvir should apologize to Briana Joy Gray. Moreover, the DSA left, if they hope to win Black votes, should humble itself and respect Black community desires for self-determination. Outside of places like New York City and Denver, full of college-educated progressives, DSA’s current style of politics will not work as well without winning the working-class Black voters Malcolm Ruff won in Maryland’s 41st district. In Maryland, the left was not as successful as they were in New York, with an attempt to oust Senate President Bill Ferguson from a left insurgent sputtering out and a pro-AIPAC-backed Democrat winning in a mostly Black southern Maryland congressional district. Without an intentional effort to respect Black voters' desire for self-determination, progressive efforts to win with working-class Black voters will continue to fall short.

Lawrence Grandpre is a political commentator for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.