Kamala Harris and fortifying Black-Palestinian solidarity | US Election 2024

Over the past month, as Kamala Harris’s campaign for the US presidency has gained momentum, hopes she would take a strong stance on the genocide in Gaza have dwindled.

Her candidacy has brought disillusionment among supporters of the Palestinian cause, and with it, growing tensions between anti-genocide activists and Harris supporters.

The tension was reflected in a bitter exchange earlier this month between TikTok creators Maya Abdullah and Tori Grier, which fuelled a debate on social media about racism and disparate community interests. Grier’s supporters argue the Black community should vote for Harris to avoid increased violence and discrimination under another Trump administration. On the other hand, Abdullah’s supporters contend Palestinian Americans should not be pressured to vote for someone who has enabled the genocide of their relatives in Palestine and that allies from other ethnic and religious groups should stand in solidarity with them.

It is unclear to what extent this debate is changing voting attitudes, but if it deepens, it could affect Black-Palestinian anticolonial solidarity at a critical moment in history. This would be a loss for both communities.

History of Black-Palestinian solidarity

The engagement between the Black and Palestinian communities in the United States and beyond has a long history. Its roots lie in the recognition that for Black and brown people, oppression manifests itself in similar ways: as white supremacy, structural racism, Islamophobia and imperialism which subjugate, dispossess and kill.

It is no coincidence that in the US, the Black liberation movement features influential leaders like Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Huey P Newton, Angela Davis and others who have spoken up about the colonisation and occupation of Palestine. In the 1960s, amid the civil rights struggle, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party repeatedly emphasised the need for anticolonial alliances to confront white supremacy, Zionism, capitalism and imperialism.

The African anticolonial struggles also repeatedly made parallels with the Palestinian struggle. To this day, the Palestinian cause remains close to the heart of the South African and Algerian nations, who led their own struggles against colonial rule.

In 1969, seven years after it liberated itself from French colonial rule, Algeria hosted the inaugural Pan-African Cultural Festival, positioning itself as a leader of revolutionary struggle. Hundreds of delegates attended the event from 31 independent African nations, including representatives from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). The festival was crucial in uniting the struggles of Africa and Palestine into a broader global movement against imperialism.

More recently, over the past decade, the pro-Palestinian movement has supported and directly engaged with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as it has risen against anti-Black violence, particularly following the murder of George Floyd. For a growing number of Black Americans, the parallels between their own oppression and that of Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and occupation have become apparent.

After Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza, key organisations of the Black community called for a ceasefire. Among them are the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the leading civil rights organisation in the US, the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and The Martin Luther King Jr Center. In June, the NAACP issued a bold statement, urging the Biden administration to halt weapons shipments to Israel.

Black students and organisations, alongside Palestinian and Jewish anti-Zionist groups, among others, came together in the student anti-genocide movement, demonstrating their shared commitment in the fight against all forms of racism. They rejected Zionism as a white supremacist European project, like other manifest destiny ideologies underpinning Western settler-colonial ventures, including in the US.

A similar alliance drove the Uncommitted Movement, which called for Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in presidential primaries to pressure President Joe Biden into meeting their demands for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel.

Divide and rule

Over the years, the strength of Black-Palestinian solidarity has been increasingly recognised as a threat by Israel and American Zionists. They view intersectional and anti-colonial solidarity as a threat because it challenges and dismantles divisive Zionist propaganda.

In the past, liberal Zionist media and major Zionist lobbies have launched smear campaigns against BLM, accusing the movement of anti-Semitism. After October 7, there has also been a concerted media effort to convince the Black community that Palestinian liberation is “not their battle”.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has consistently targeted Black politicians who have challenged Zionist interests, often through coordinated smear campaigns. A notable example is US Representative Ilhan Omar, who has faced relentless attacks seeking to unseat her and damage her reputation.

This year, AIPAC successfully unseated Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, who have been vocal advocates for Gaza and Palestine, by pouring massive amounts of money into their opponents’ campaigns during the Democratic primaries.

In this context, a rift between the Black and Palestinian communities would play into the hands of Israel and its Zionist supporters.

When debating whether to support Harris or not, it is important here to note who she represents. Though she is a woman of colour,  her politics reflect those of the liberal bourgeois class – referred to by Martin Luther King Jr. as “white moderates” – which undermine progressive and anticolonial agendas under the guise of practicality.

Once in office, she may pay lip service to the antiracism struggle, but would do little to challenge racist structures and institutions. She would likely continue to strengthen the military-industrial complex, promoting economic policies that enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor, and upholding “tough on crime” practices which disproportionately harm people of colour and poor communities.

Some argue that Harris is the “lesser evil” within the American duopoly, given her emphasis on diverse representation and promises of social reform, yet she may emerge as a more “effective evil” – a term coined by the late journalist Glen Ford to describe President Barack Obama’s ability to push through right-wing policies, while assuaging progressive pushback.

The reluctance to feature a Palestinian voice at the Democratic National Convention, along with Harris’s both-sideism narrative in her acceptance speech, reflect Ford’s framework.

Solidarity against genocide

It is important to remember that the forces driving genocidal violence in Gaza are the same ones fueling global oppression. The settler-colonial projects in the US and Israel share core white supremacist ideologies and capitalist-imperial interests, oppressive tactics, aggressive strategies and propaganda techniques.

These powerful networks of colonial and imperial interests, bolstered by the military-industrial complex and surveillance technology, shape US policies including those which enable and dominate Israel-Palestine, from police militarisation to the violent crackdown on immigration and marginalised communities.

For this reason, the genocide in Palestine has far-reaching implications for people of colour and other marginalised groups. Palestine acts as a testing ground for military technologies and the normalisation of extreme violence which can be deployed against oppressed peoples in the Global South and BIPOC in the Global North, who are disproportionately affected by white supremacist, corporate capitalist policies.

A unified Black-Palestinian front is essential to resist these forces and their genocidal aims. Without this solidarity, both communities remain weaker and more isolated in their struggles against their common enemy.

Unity, solidarity and the recognition of a shared struggle against oppression strengthen and drive principled grassroots movements like BLM and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Dismantling racist capitalist oppression requires an unwavering commitment to revolutionary principles and rejecting alliances with counterrevolutionary forces. True liberation in the US and Palestine can only be achieved through a broad antiracist and anticolonial movement.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.