A prominent Black New York City Democrat publicly compared the Democratic Socialists of America to white supremacists, exposing a racial fault line inside the party that its leaders have spent years trying to paper over.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards posted on social media late Sunday that "white supremacy comes in all forms," linking to a New York Times report that detailed how Black and Latino leaders in New York City feel sidelined by the DSA's agenda and overwhelmingly white membership. Richards, a liberal Democrat who has represented Queens for more than thirteen years, followed up by sharing a famous Malcolm X quote comparing white liberals to a "smiling fox", a predator more dangerous than the openly hostile conservative wolf, because it lures Black Americans with false promises.
The posts landed in the middle of a growing Democratic civil war over whether the party's socialist wing advances its own ideological priorities at the expense of minority communities. A 2021 survey found that 85 percent of DSA members are white. And the organization's recent electoral victories in New York have come in areas flush with upper-income, young, white voters, not in the historically Black and Latino neighborhoods the party claims to champion.
Richards did not mince words. His first post, "White supremacy comes in all forms", went up on X alongside a link to the Times report. His second post carried the full Malcolm X passage:
"The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the 'smiling' fox."
The choice of quote was pointed. Richards, elected borough president in 2020 after an eight-year stint on the City Council representing District 31, was not criticizing Republicans. He was accusing fellow Democrats, specifically the DSA's activist class, of exploiting Black voters while pursuing an agenda that does not serve them.
The New York Post reported that the exchange was triggered by a New York Times article published July 19 highlighting how the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party focuses on furthering the DSA's agenda while largely ignoring Black and Latino members and issues important to them across the five boroughs.
DSA state Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest responded by attacking the Times reporter and complaining that the story had omitted the fact that a Black member of the group represents one of the neighborhoods mentioned. But as another journalist pointed out to Forrest online, the article had already addressed that very point, suggesting Forrest had not fully read the piece before objecting to it.
The blowup did not come out of nowhere. It followed a June Democratic primary season in which Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member, endorsed two DSA congressional candidates, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, over incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, both of whom had proven track records and minority backgrounds. Both DSA-backed candidates won.
Ryan Adams, a political operative and managing director at the consulting firm Actum, put the pattern bluntly:
"While they are electing diverse candidates, the growth of DSA is coming in places that are seeing the most gentrification."
Adams added that socialism has a long history with communities of color, "but it's hard to argue the recent activity has been deeply intertwined with the communities." In other words, the DSA is winning seats in gentrifying districts where its white, college-educated base has moved in, not in the Black and Latino neighborhoods that have been there for generations.
The internal tensions within the Democratic left have been building for months. Sen. John Fetterman offered his own blistering assessment of his party's direction after socialist candidates swept Democratic primaries earlier this year, warning that the party was losing touch with working-class voters.
The racial tensions extend beyond elections. Cea Weaver, one of Mamdani's top advisers, previously referred to homeownership as "a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as 'wealth building' public policy." That remark drew a sharp response from Renee Gregory, president of Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant Inc., a group founded in 1978 to help keep Black homeowners in the historically Black Brooklyn neighborhood.
Gregory's reply to the Post was direct:
"White supremacy? I'm not white."
Gregory's point exposed the disconnect at the heart of the DSA's rhetoric. When a Black homeowner in Bedford-Stuyvesant hears a white political adviser call her home a "weapon of white supremacy," the ideology stops being abstract. It becomes an insult, and a threat to the generational wealth her community built.
The DSA has also faced scrutiny from the National Black Empowerment Action Fund, which has contended that the organization's agenda is bad for African Americans. That criticism, combined with the 85-percent-white membership figure, makes it difficult for the DSA to claim it speaks for the multiracial coalition Democrats need to hold together.
Richards's willingness to go public is notable because he endorsed Mamdani after the Uganda-born fellow Queens lawmaker secured the Democratic nomination for mayor in August 2025. But the endorsement did not stop Richards from breaking with Mamdani on policy.
When Mamdani's administration proposed a 9.5 percent property tax increase, claiming it was the only way New York City could survive, Richards pushed back. "New Era shouldn't price out black and brown New Yorkers," he told the Post. During a brutal and deadly cold snap, Richards called on the administration to remove people from the streets and break down homeless encampments, saying, "You can't let the people stay out there. These are people in crisis."
Those positions put Richards squarely at odds with the DSA's ideological priorities. The socialist wing of the party has generally opposed encampment removals and favored tax increases. Richards sided with the residents who have to live with the consequences of those policies, the homeowners, the taxpayers, the people sleeping outside in freezing weather.
The broader fracture within the Democratic left is not limited to New York. The DSA has been tearing itself apart internally over its 2028 endorsement strategy, and prominent figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the group's most visible members and a Latina, face growing questions about whether the organization's overwhelmingly white base can sustain a credible claim to represent diverse communities.
Adams also noted that before Mamdani became the DSA's standard bearer, the organization had lost races in neighborhoods with predominantly minority populations. The wins came later, and in different places. The DSA's electoral map tracks gentrification, not community roots.
That pattern matters because it undermines the DSA's core narrative. The group positions itself as the champion of the working class and the marginalized. But when its candidates win by carrying precincts full of young white transplants, and when its leadership dismisses homeownership, the primary wealth-building tool for Black families, as white supremacy, the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes impossible to ignore.
James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, has already warned that AOC has no path to the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, a judgment that reflects broader doubts about whether the socialist wing can build a coalition beyond its base.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has navigated the tension awkwardly, pivoting to praise a DSA-backed candidate after initially backing the incumbent she defeated, a move that illustrated how Democratic leaders are trying to accommodate the socialist wing without alienating minority voters.
Souffrant Forrest's response to the Times report did not help the DSA's case. By attacking the reporter and complaining about an omission that the article had already addressed, she gave critics more ammunition. It suggested that the DSA's instinct, when confronted with legitimate criticism from within the Democratic coalition, is to shoot the messenger rather than engage the substance.
Richards, by contrast, engaged the substance head-on. He did not hedge. He called the DSA's behavior a form of white supremacy, a charge that carries particular weight coming from a Black elected official who has spent more than a decade in New York City government.
Whether that charge is fair or overdrawn is a question the DSA will have to answer. But the numbers are not on the organization's side. An 85-percent-white membership, electoral victories concentrated in gentrifying neighborhoods, a top mayoral adviser who calls Black homeownership a tool of white supremacy, and a track record of backing candidates against established minority incumbents, those facts speak for themselves.
AOC herself has faced growing pressure from within her own ideological orbit, a sign that the coalition the DSA built is fraying at the seams precisely where it can least afford to, among the minority voters it claims to represent.
When a Black Democrat invokes Malcolm X to describe his own party's socialist wing, the left's diversity problem is no longer a whispered complaint at fundraisers. It is a five-alarm fire, and the people holding the matches built their careers promising to put them out.
