Claims by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York to have a "vague recollection" of his uncle's antisemitic views have been called out by CNN as disingenuous.
Jeffries' claim to a "vague recollection" flies in the face of the revelation of a Binghamton University editorial in which Jeffries defended his uncle Leonard Jeffries and Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan.
"Do you think that a ruling elite would promote individuals who would seek to dismantle their vice like grip on power?" Jeffries wrote in February 1992, defending his uncle and Farrakhan, and the Black Student Union — of which he was an executive board member — for inviting them to speak at the upstate New York campus.
Leonard Jeffries, a Black Studies professor at City University of New York, came under widespread condemnation in the early 1990s after comments he made about “rich Jews” being involved in the African slave trade and “a conspiracy, planned and plotted and programmed out of Hollywood” of Jewish executives who he claimed were responsible for denigrating Black Americans in films. He was fired in March 1992. Farrakhan has frequently been a lightning rod for controversy regarding his antisemitic views.
"Dr. Leonard Jeffries and Minister Louis Farrakhan have come under intense fire," Hakeem Jeffries wrote in the editorial. "Where do you think their interests lie? Dr. Jeffries has challenged the existing white supremacist educational system and long standing distortion of history. His reward has been a media lynching complete with character assassinations and inflammatory erroneous accusations."
After Hakeem Jeffries' remark about a "vague recollection" was debunked, his office rushed to his defense Wednesday to denounce his uncle.
"Leader Jeffries has consistently been clear that he does not share the controversial views espoused by his uncle over 30 years ago," Jeffries spokesperson Christiana Stephenson told CNN in a statement Wednesday.
The editorial, in addition to debunking Jeffries' claim of hardly knowing about his uncle's antisemitic views, harshly criticized Black conservatives, calling them the "House Negro" according to CNN.
"The House Negro of the slavery era and the Black conservative of today are both opportunists interested in securing some measure of happiness for themselves within the existing social order," Jeffries wrote. "In both cases, the social order has Blacks occupying the lowest societal echelon."
Hakeem Jeffries' claims of lacking knowledge about his uncle were resurrected by CNN after it was learned he told The Wall Street Journal in 2013 of his "vague recollection" because he was away at college, shielded from the controversy by his mother and father, and having no "Internet" and no daily newspaper in Binghamton to read about it.
All without acknowledging the campus invite to his uncle and Farrakhan and his editorial defending his uncle.
"And so when a lot of the controversy took place and my brother and I were away at school," Jeffries claimed. "There was no Internet during that era, and I can't even recall a daily newspaper in the Binghamton, N.Y., area, but it wasn't covering the things that the New York Post and Daily News were at the time."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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