Kristoffer Ealy is a political scientist, political analyst, and professor in Southern California. He teaches American Government and political behavior, with a focus on political psychology, voting behavior, and political socialization. Subscribe to his Substack, The Thinking Class with Professor Ealy.
On Wajahat Ali’s The Left Hook podcast, Rula Jebreal spent several minutes building toward Hakeem Jeffries’ name. “Hakeem” is Arabic for “healer,” she explained, before announcing, “He’s not a healer, he’s a divider.” Then came the real indictment: “He is a bought-and-paid-by-AIPAC monkey,” followed by the prophylactic phrase people deploy when they know the next words require an attorney: “With all due respect—and I don’t mean it in a racist way.”
Unfortunately, “with all due respect” is not linguistic Clorox. It cannot bleach the racism out of what follows. Ali sat beside her nodding, never interrupting or performing the most basic duty of a host whose guest had just called the Black leader of the House Democratic caucus both a monkey and an errand boy. Within hours, the Congressional Black Caucus dispensed with the euphemisms: “To be clear, there isn’t a non-racist way to call Leader Jeffries—a Black man—a ‘monkey’ or ‘errand boy.’” Rep. Ritchie Torres was more concise: “Calling a Black man a ‘monkey’ is racist. Full stop.”
To her credit, Jebreal later apologized “with her full chest,” appearing on Joy Reid’s show to accept “full responsibility for a big mistake” and concede that there was “no excuse or justification” for using the word “monkey.” I believe that apology was sincere. It was also incomplete. She apologized for “monkey,” but unless I missed an entirely different mea culpa, she never apologized for calling Jeffries an “errand boy.”
That omission matters because the second insult was not merely debris scattered by the first. It carried its own racial meaning. Jebreal described growing up in occupied East Jerusalem with portraits of American civil-rights leaders displayed throughout her community, invoking the genuine historical solidarity between Afro-Palestinian and African American struggles. That history matters, but solidarity does not confer cultural omniscience. Proximity to the Black American experience is not the same as inhabiting it, and shared struggle does not erase the distinct vocabulary through which Black Americans—particularly Black men exercising authority—have been infantilized, subordinated, and denied agency. That is why this should be treated as a teachable moment, not merely another ritual of outrage, apology, and internet amnesia.
Calling a Black man a monkey is a racial slur regardless of the speaker’s race, ethnicity, nationality, or politics. Identity does not function as a semantic permission slip. But “errand boy” bothered me even more precisely because it is less spectacular. “Monkey” announces its racism with a marching band; “errand boy” slips through the side entrance wearing business casual. It reduces a Black man who leads one chamber’s entire Democratic caucus to a servant carrying instructions for more powerful people. That is racialized infantilization: the denial that a Black leader possesses independent judgment, political agency, or authority earned in his own right. Jeffries did not become House minority leader because AIPAC sent him out to pick up the dry cleaning. Criticize his donors, his votes, his strategy, or his leadership—every one of those subjects is fair game. But calling him an “errand boy” resurrects an old American hierarchy in which Black men may occupy impressive offices while still being described as somebody else’s help. Jebreal apologized for the word everyone immediately recognized as racist. She still owes an apology for the one too many people were willing to pretend was merely political criticism.
None of this happened in a vacuum. It had already been a revolting week for anti-Black political rhetoric before Jebreal opened her mouth, beginning with Laura Loomer’s attacks on Black women and the familiar Republican chorus suddenly developing a nationwide hearing problem. My disagreements with Hakeem Jeffries are no secret, but they are irrelevant to whether he should be discussed as a human being. He is a grown man and a powerful politician; he can withstand criticism of his record, donors, strategy, and leadership. He is also a Binghamton graduate with honors, holds a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown, graduated magna cum laude from NYU Law, served on its Law Review, clerked for a federal judge, practiced law, served six years in the New York State Assembly, and was unanimously elected to lead House Democrats. Educational credentials do not place anyone beyond criticism, but that résumé does make “errand boy” an especially ridiculous description. Jeffries did not leave NYU Law, wander into AIPAC headquarters looking for the mailroom, and accidentally emerge as the first Black congressional party leader in American history.
What should not be normalized is the use of political disagreement as a permission slip for racial degradation. Too many socialists have treated their hostility toward Jeffries as moral licensing—the social-psychological process through which allegiance to a supposedly righteous cause becomes an excuse to stop scrutinizing one’s own conduct. Once that exemption is granted, language that would be condemned instantly coming from MAGA gets laundered as “criticism” when it comes from the left. Racism, apparently, is supposed to stop being racism once it acquires universal health care and a tote bag.
