Rift between Black and Palestinian progressives deepens ahead of Democratic National Convention

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Aug 19, 2024 at 02:14 PM

Reading time: 4 minutes

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Images courtesy of TikTok

In what has been dubbed a culture war, Black Americans and pro-Palestinian activists have been engulfed in a heated debate for the past week, taking place on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). The controversy is centred around the upcoming US Presidential election and whether the Democratic frontrunner, Kamala Harris, should be supported by either or both communities.

The controversy originated when TikToker Tori Grier told her audience that she would prefer to vote for Kamala Harris as president rather than Donald Trump, although she doesn’t fully support the former. Grier went on to explain that she felt like several of her rights were at stake with this election, due to her identity as a Black woman.

Then, an anonymous commenter responded that Grier should remove the Palestine flag emoji from her biography line if the content creator was going to vote for Harris. Angered by the backlash she received from pro-Palestinian activists for her statements, Grier removed the flag and said that she wouldn’t publicly support Palestine again.

The controversy reached a boiling point during a TikTok livestream between Grier and Palestinian activist Maya Abdallah. Abdallah had previously made a video criticising Grier for not taking the Palestinian issue seriously enough and had been confronted with allegations of anti-Blackness for allegedly attacking several other Black content creators online who felt similarly to Grier.

During the livestream, Grier argued that Trump could facilitate even greater violence against Palestinians and Black Americans, which brings his controversial Middle Eastern policy, Muslim travel ban, and history of anti-Black behaviour to mind.

However, as the debate got more heated considering that Harris has largely supported the Biden administration’s divisive approach to the Israel-Hamas war, Abdallah began muting Grier multiple times.

This is what really inflamed the debate online.

Like many other Black content creators, TikToker Chris Cadence commented on the incident in a widely shared video: “The whole live just came off as Maya trying to clear her name of these racist allegations and going against Black women but in reality, she didn’t do [us] any favours. She muted her and she did everything just to get her point across and that’s where my issue stems from (…). These people think they know what’s best for us as black people and instead of taking the time to actually listen and hear where we’re coming from they choose to victimise themselves and say hey ‘I’m not anti-Black while not listening to a [Black] person.’”

Many users in Cadence’s comment section agreed, arguing that Grier was consistently being tone-policed and painted as “aggressive” during the livestream.

In the days following the livestream event, users also started to dig through Abdallah’s online history, pointing towards tweets and imagery which they deemed as racist—for instance, her participation in 2019’s Hot Cheetos Girl trend.

Abdallah has since taken to TikTok to apologise, saying that she “handled this in the absolute worst way possible.” The activist also attempted to explain her past behaviour and resurfaced online history.

Grier, on the other hand, hasn’t responded to the apology or intensified conversations around the livestream.

Ever since the livesteam incident reached viral heights, there has been a consistent influx of online commentary from Black and pro-Palestinian netizens who are sharing their thoughts on the wider question of whether voting for Harris could be ‘justifiable’.

The conversation took another turning point when content creator Rosol posted a video of herself crying on camera, claiming that Black Americans are “colonisers” who don’t really care about the Palestinian people.

Interestingly, her characterisation of Black Harris supporters as “colonisers” was endorsed by some within the community, who noted that the current Vice President would be sitting atop imperialist structures and continue a history of controversial US Middle Eastern policy.

However, other Black netizens felt deeply offended by the comments that painted them as complicit with imperialist and colonialist structures their community has fought and suffered from for decades.

It is clear that the perceived lack of solidarity with their plight has created a noticeable rift between the online Muslim and Black American communities, despite the fact that they have historically participated in joint activism.

However, with the Democratic National Convention (DNC) taking place this week from 19 August until 22 August, and many prominent Black Democrats and celebrities expected to attend in support of Harris’ presidential bid, the online debate is likely to intensify before it cools off.

Moreover, the discussion once again branched out into another one, this time centred around the history of slavery in the Middle East.

As a rebuke to being called colonisers, many Black and Brown content creators started to point towards the complicated history of the Middle East, which includes slavery and the subjugation of land and different peoples.

“Afro Palestinians. Where did they come from?” Content creator Shadow God responded in a stitch of Rosol’s video. “Do you think they just fell out of the sky? The vast majority were descendants of slaves. The Ottomans enslaved thousands of people from Africa and from Europe. And many of these people who owned the slaves, who were participating in the slave trade, were Arabs. Let’s not act like the Middle East is perfect without the West either.”

This video quickly reached viral heights with many users, some of them also Middle Easterns, agreeing with his viewpoint, highlighting once again how divisive the debate has become.

Still, some noted that Palestinians have lived under other empires for the last few centuries with no stake in the Arab slave trade, making this addition to the discussion irrelevant.

While there was a lot of division within the American progressive movement for the past week, there still continued to be calls for solidarity and mutual empathy.

Many noted that the criticisms on both sides were necessary for constructive discourse but shouldn’t deny or impair each other’s choices.

“Agreed, solidarity is imperative. We can vote for Kamala AND stand up, organise and fight against Israeli occupiers. Black and Brown lives in the US are at risk too. We need nuance and level-headedness,” one TikTok user wrote.

“Kamala is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-LGBT and pro-helping the middle class. A lot of communities will be voting for her in November. They got too much riding on this. Why even single Black people out?” someone else noted.

Meanwhile, Arash Azizi, a senior lecturer in political science at Clemson University, wrote an article for The Atlantic in which he highlighted that what Harris would do in the Middle East as president remains unclear. This ambiguity has allowed “all wings of the Democratic Party to see in her what they like,” although Harris has signalled multiple times that she is keen on taking a tougher course on Israel than the Biden administration.

This and many of her other progressive stances have largely earned her the support of multiple American household names such as Mark Ruffalo, George Clooney, Shonda Rhimes, and Ariana Grande.