Jew and Gentile Alike: Why Black and Jewish Democrats Need Each Other Now

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ended his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, with these words:

“Let freedom ring . . . When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.’”

That was not accidental language.

King did not simply say Black men and white men. He also said Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics. He was naming the fractures. He understood racism. He understood religious division. He understood antisemitism.

King knew the Jewish community had been standing with African Americans for generations before that speech, from the early organizing years of the NAACP through the Civil Rights Movement itself. Jewish lawyers, rabbis, students, organizers, and activists came south because they understood that civil rights was not only a Black issue. Blacks and Jews both had to be free for either community to be truly secure.

Blacks, Jews, and whites lost their lives in the struggle for civil rights. They did not wake up that morning expecting to die. They woke up believing they were part of something larger than themselves. Then their lives were taken because they stood against hatred.

That coalition mattered then. It needs to stand in unity now. We need each other.

Since October 7, Islamic Jihad’s propaganda has been working to turn African American and Jewish communities against each other, and to turn everyone including whites against Jews and Israel.

This needs to be said bluntly.

Anti-Israel Islamic Jihadists understand that the Democratic Party has long been home to African Americans, Jews, union families, immigrants, liberals, progressives, civil rights activists, and people who believe in pluralism. They have entered through the DSA and through progressive sympathy for a false victimhood narrative about Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas brutally started this war against Israel.

Their goal is to fracture that coalition from within.

They use the language of human rights while excusing or minimizing the murder of Jews. They use the language of liberation while denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. They use the language of anti-racism while repackaging some of the oldest antisemitic propaganda in modern progressive language.

We need to recognize what is occurring, because if we do not recognize it, we cannot confront it.

The fight against antisemitism is also the fight against racism.

That is why the Black-Jewish alliance matters. The moral principle behind it is still true. Justice cannot be selective. Human dignity cannot depend on which minority is politically fashionable at the moment.

We cannot allow extremists to hijack that language and turn it into a weapon against Blacks and Jews, or against Israel’s right to exist.

There is also a political reality Democrats need to face honestly.

Republican gerrymandering is exploiting this rift by creating internal Democratic conflicts where Black and Jewish incumbents are looking at the same safe Democratic districts.

That is exactly the kind of conflict Republicans would love to see.

But Republican mapmakers may have created an opportunity they did not intend.

Republicans have diluted some of their own seats. What looks like a safe Republican seat on paper now is thinner.  It may still lean Republican, but it is not untouchable and with a strong Democratic candidate will go BLUE.

I am calling on African American and Jewish Democratic leadership to sit down together, district by district, state by state, especially across the South, and think strategically.

Do not simply fight over the safest remaining Democratic seats.

Look at the whole map and be fair to both groups.

Right now, Jewish and African American incumbents are fighting over guaranteed blue seats. Democratic leadership should referee this. Divide up the safest blue seats by looking at all the states that have been gerrymandered. Then look at the red-leaning seats and decide which strong incumbents can win there.

Promise those incumbents money and support.

Republicans are not going to win every seat they think they are. Democrats need strong incumbents running in those districts.

The Jewish, white, and Black incumbents should not be primarying each other when there is a better path. Look at those districts and ask: which one of you is the stronger candidate in the red-leaning district?

Then make sure one Democratic ethnic group is not carrying all the burden.

With strong incumbents running in red-leaning districts, and with what is coming in November, some of those districts can also go blue.

But if we have two strong incumbents beating each other up, and only one makes it from the primary to the general election, that will not be the outcome.

Islamic Jihad’s propaganda and Republican gerrymandering are both reversing MLK’s vision.

Jewish and Black leaders, please work together again.

We need to reject the propaganda that says justice for Palestinians requires hatred of Israel.

We need to reject the lie that supporting Israel means indifference to Palestinian suffering.

Let’s embrace Dr. King’s vision.
Black men and white men.
Jews and Gentiles.
Protestants and Catholics.
Joining hands.

Now.