Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America is a grassroots socialist organization with many wonderful members, as well as two co-chairs. One of its co-chairs recently wrote a review of Asad Haider's Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump; the review was published in Jacobin and retweeted by the organization's official accounts.



We the undersigned members of the Democratic Socialists of America are concerned that she didn't read the book. We are further concerned that her review reflects a basic unwillingness to engage with the Black radical tradition. For example: "The Black Power movement called for more radical solutions demanding a revolutionary politics of racial unity. But no matter how militant the rhetoric, it was still based on a liberal belief that economic inequality could be dealt with by segregating the working class into racially distinguished units." We the undersigned have no clue how anyone could take that lesson from the Black Panthers, as the Panthers made Marxist internationalism and cross-racial coalition work central to their praxis.



This sort of reductive dismissal of Black politics is not appropriate for the leader of a predominately white radical organization in a predominately Black city. We call on the author to read Mistaken Identity as well as Black Against Empire and The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader.