The new initiative enlists black students and athletes to confront the Jim Crow regime in the South, while the group remains silent on boycotts targeting the apartheid regime in Israel.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and members of the Congressional Black Caucus at a May press conference to denounce the U.S. Supreme Court decision Louisiana v. Callais.
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo) At a May press conference on Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) stood in solidarity with NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson to launch the Out of bounds campaign. The initiative is a boycott targeting publicly funded universities in eight Southern states that seek to dilute black political representation through racial gerrymandering.
The call for a boycott followed the Supreme Court ruling Callais v. Louisianawhich gave conservative state lawmakers legal cover to redraw congressional maps that eliminate majority-black districts. “I want to thank everyone at CBC for their integrity,” Johnson said. said. “At this time when black representation is under attack, it is important that Radio-Canada remains in its tradition of being the moral conscience of Congress and the moral conscience of this country. »
“No black person should be on a playing field of institutions that make a living from our labor and yet in states that seek to reinstate a reality of sharecropping,” Johnson continued. “We will not tolerate a Confederate mentality about our work, our ability to contribute and our ability to be represented.”
The campaign urges black athletes, families, alumni and fans to withhold athletic and financial support from the universities of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, all states that have already redrawn majority-black districts in the wake of Callis. Organizers of the boycott say it will continue until states pass a voting rights law, repeal maps that dilute black voting power and restore congressional or judicial districts that reflect their black population and voting power.
But the campaign again calls attention to a glaring contradiction that continues to undermine the SRC’s moral standing in its challenge to the renewed reign of apartheid in American politics: its passive support for the apartheid state of Israel. Israel’s US lobbying arm, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has helped fund Republican lawmakers hostile to black voting power, while also contributing to the campaign coffers of CBC executives. Since January 2024, AIPAC has contributed at least $5,788,171 to 75 of the 80 Republican representatives in the House of Representatives in the eight states targeted by the Out of Bounds campaign. During the same period, AIPAC also distributed at least $265,355 to 13 of the 18 CBC House members representing these same Southern states. AIPAC spending is bipartisan, conditioned on the recipient’s demonstrated loyalty to AIPAC’s Israel-focused agenda.
The Out of Bounds campaign correctly targets the harmful impact of Callis decision on racial representation in the South – but the CBC remains conspicuously silent on the long-running Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that targets the displacement and disenfranchisement of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Although the organization has not issued any official statement regarding the BDS movement, its high-ranking members left a collection of remarks denouncing the BDS movement as an illegitimate form of political opposition.
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“What is unacceptable is BDS, is the attempt to delegitimize Israel. It is extremism. It is hatred. And we, as the Democratic Party, should be against hatred and extremism.” said Democratic Representative Richie Torres (NY-15), in a 2020 interview. In 2024, Torres expressed his dedication to Israel’s imperial enterprise, developer an audience: “I am a Zionist. I always have been and always will be.”
Torres’ colleague at CBC, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY-05), the first Black leader of either major political party in Congress, co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a 2017 law. Invoice it would criminalize supporting or providing information about boycotts targeting Israel. Jeffries has stuck to the AIPAC agenda, refusing to condition aid on the Israeli military – even as the apartheid state wages a genocidal war against the Palestinians. After AIPAC spent millions to defeat Jeffries’ contemporaries at CBC in the 2024 election cycle, Jeffries offered a deadpan response: “The voters have spoken.” » In 2025, Jeffries refused to join the Reject AIPAC Coalition, an alliance of Democrats and grassroots organizations aimed at protecting Democrats targeted by AIPAC. “I will continue to raise funds in the same way that I have done since I joined the United States Congress,” Jeffries said.
Denying AIPAC support in the caucus would be a crucial first step toward resolving this moral imbalance. If Out of Bounds asks black athletes to remove their work from institutions that profit from attacks on black political representation, how can a morally consistent CBC provide de facto support for AIPAC? The powerful Israel lobby uses its vast resources to support Israel’s brutal campaign of dispossession and genocidal war in the Middle East, while funding Republican politicians presiding over the resurgence of Jim Crow rule in the former Confederacy. No athlete or Black American should participate in the Out of Bounds boycott unless the CBC and NAACP also boycott AIPAC, unequivocally condemn Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, and oppose in principle the U.S. government’s massive spending on military aid to Israel – including funds to replenish its defense systems.
For years, the NAACP and the CBC have sat inactive and silent as AIPAC lays siege to progressive black political representation. The Israeli super PAC has invested millions of dollars in congressional elections to oust black politicians who oppose Israel’s political agenda, while funding and supporting Republicans with anti-black views who are also ardently pro-Israel.
The NAACP and the CBC said nothing when AIPAC spent record sums to remove CBC members Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Summer Lee and Donna Edwards from their seats in 2022 and 2024. Yet now that the GOP is drawing racially truncated districts, in a direct threat to CBC members who are tied to the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, both groups have cynically sought to make black athletes the public face of their Out of Bounds initiative. This allows CBC/Radio-Canada members to continue to line their pockets with AIPAC money. This unsustainable posture leaves college athletes, already rife with exploitation at the hands of the NCAA, risking their livelihoods to fight American apartheid, while the CBC quietly profits from the Israeli variety.
A look at the hastily redrawn and sanctioned congressional map Callis This decision allows us to see this hypocrisy in high relief. Black Americans make up about 32 percent of Louisiana’s population, but Republicans fought to limit black voters to 16 percent of the state’s representation in Congress, cutting the voice of black Louisianans in Washington in half. They achieved this goal by packing voting-age black Louisianans into a majority-black district, creating a 1-5 partisan map ensuring GOP dominance of the state’s congressional delegation. When federal courts forced Louisiana Republican lawmakers to add a second majority-black district for the 2024 cycle, conservative “non-African American” plaintiffs continuedalleging racial gerrymandering. In this spring Callis decision, the Supreme Court agreed, creating legal cover for Louisiana’s conservative-dominated state legislature to remove black representation from all state district maps.
AIPAC has not funded the campaigns of state legislators who authored or vote for redistricting bills in Louisiana, but it funds those that could benefit from the Republican Party’s desecration of the Voting Rights Act. One such beneficiary is House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-04), a central figure in the Republican redistricting plan.
The day after Clever decision, Johnson called Republicans will step up their redistricting efforts. “We want constitutional maps,” Johnson said. “All states that have unconstitutional maps should look at this very carefully, and I think they should do so before the midterm elections.” Two weeks later, the Louisiana Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee approved Senate Bill 121, which eliminated Louisiana’s majority-black Second District, confining the voting power of the black bloc to a single district and restoring the previously illegal 5-1 gerrymander in the state.
At a meeting of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee in May to discuss Senate Bill 121, state Sen. Jay Morris, the bill’s author, testified that the measure’s sponsors had eliminated the state’s majority-black 2nd district in part to protect Johnson’s seat. Since January 2024, AIPAC has contributed at least $794,269 to Johnson, a Trump lackey who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. As AIPAC funded Johnson, aka “Maga Mike,” this also contributed $26,250 to CBC Rep. Troy Carter (LA-02). According to FEC data, AIPAC did not directly pay money to Louisiana’s second CBC Rep. Cleo Fields (LA-06), whose congressional district was eliminated through the passage of Senate Bill 121. Yet seven months after Fields took office in January 2025, the lobby sought to integrate Fields’ staff in his propaganda machine through the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a wing of the AIPAC network which sponsors luxury trips to Israel for the legislatorstheir employees and members of their families.
Although Fields himself did not participate in the AIEF-sponsored trips, Troy Carter is a well-established cog in the AIEF’s indoctrination apparatus. According to July 2023 Gift Travel Disclosures, AIEF sponsored a $12,729 nine-day trip to Israel for Carter’s deputy chief of staff, and, months later, finance a trip of 51,366 $10 days for Carter and his wife in Israel and Rwanda “to cultivate U.S.-Israeli relations.” And before the AIEF rewarded Carter with lavish “educational” excursions to Israel, he had established a hardline pro-Israel line during his tenure as a lawmaker: in 2019, he vote for HB245, Louisiana’s anti-BDS Invoicewhich allows a public entity to reject a government contract if a supplier engages in a boycott of Israel.
Carter is not alone. According to gift trip deposits22 members of the current CBC roster or their employees have embarked on AIEF trips and received money from AIPAC. A major beneficiary is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, one of the most prominent supporters of Israel in the House caucus. receive at least $950,126 Since AIPAC. He and his team members have also participated in six AIEF-sponsored trips to Israel totaling $93,849 since 2022.
In 2024, a group of progressive organizations co-signed a letter addressed to Jeffries, the ranking member of the Congressional Black Caucus in the House, expressing concern about AIPAC’s interference in Democratic politics. The letter cited AIPAC’s support for the Gaza genocide as well as its retrograde record on black political representation. presentation, and urged Jeffries to reject AIPAC’s endorsement and contributions.
Jeffries has not addressed the substance of that letter in the two years since and continues to be a major recipient of AIPAC money. According to FEC data, AIPAC has contributed at least $229,677 for Jeffries’ campaigns since 2024. At the May press conference announcing the Out of Bounds boycott, Jeffries condemned Southeastern Conference schools for their reluctance to speak out against the South’s violation of the Voting Rights Act. “We believe the silence of these institutions is complicity,” Jeffries said. It’s also difficult to interpret Jeffries’ blatant silence on AIPAC’s interference in Democratic politics as anything else.
The reason for such complicity is simple; giving it up is expensive in an electoral campaign system dominated by money. For most CBC members, it is common to rely on AIPAC’s extensive fundraising network in their re-election campaigns. AIPAC’s largesse also helps protect CBC incumbents from major challenges from the left and maintain their seniority in Washington. The same logic ensures AIPAC’s hold over many other members of Congress; any legislator who rejects AIPAC money would be separated from the main stream of financial support.
The NAACP, which launched the Out of Bounds campaign, is not as directly involved in AIPAC’s legislative reign as the SRC is. But the civil rights group sentenced international atrocities before and in 2024, it released a statement urging the Biden administration to stop shipping weapons to Israel that target civilians. At a minimum, the NAACP should be held to the same standards it advocates for — especially as the group continues to portray the SRC as “the conscience of Congress.”
The NAACP has also played an outsized role in organizing boycotts against segregationist institutions – the same pressure campaign that the BDS movement uses against Israel. In the 1982 decision NAACP v. Cliborne Hardware Co.a unanimous Supreme Court affirmed that political and economic boycotts constitute a form of free speech protected by the Constitution. In the mid-1960s, the NAACP led a boycott of white business owners in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Some of these business owners sued the group and a Mississippi court detained the NAACP and individual participants in the boycott are responsible for $1.25 million in losses suffered by white marketers. In Clairbornethe high court overturned the decision, holding that the nonviolent elements of a politically motivated boycott were protected by the First Amendment.
When promoting the Out of Bounds campaign, NAACP President Derrick Johnson often reiterates that the eight states targeted by the boycott were all part of the Confederacy. That’s true, but they also share another affinity: They all passed laws to suppress the BDS movement seeking to deny economic support to the Israeli apartheid regime.
As of this writing, 38 states have adopted anti-BDS laws, notably in Mississippi, where CBC member Bennie Thompson represents the state’s only majority-black district. In March 2019, the Mississippi State Legislature pass the Israel Support Act of 2019. The bill requires the executive director of the state Department of Finance and Administration to develop and publish a list of companies that boycott Israel, and prohibits the Mississippi Retirement System and the state treasurer from investing in companies on the list. A few months after the bill passed the Mississippi state legislature, Thompson voted alongside 92 percent from the CBC in support of H.Res.246, a House bill opposing the global BDS movement (also in 2019, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker co-sponsored similar legislation in the Senate.)
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Some of the 32 CBC members who co-sponsored H.Res.246 are now at risk of losing their seats. eliminated by Republican racial butchery. They include Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (MO-05) and Rep. James Clyburn (SC-06). Marc Veasey (TX-33), who also opposed the BDS movement, decided not to run again, given that his district’s new map would all but ensure his defeat at the polls.
It is important to note that John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, co-sponsored H.Res.246 while co-sponsorship H.Res.496, Ilhan Omar’s resolution affirming that Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad. Of the 17 co-sponsors of this bill, only six were members of the SRC.
How can the NAACP and CBC ask young black people to risk their dreams and future financial gains in the name of protecting black political representation, when their political elders refuse to do the same when it comes to taking a stand against AIPAC? Asking an uncompensated or newly compensated teenager to use their livelihood to boycott voting rights while receiving money from AIPAC to pass anti-boycott legislation targeting Israel seriously undermines the integrity of the Out of Bounds campaign.
Efforts to dilute black political power are not limited to the South or the Republican Party. And it goes without saying that Republicans and Democrats are not at all equal in weakening the black vote. Racial gerrymandering is a blatant violation of voting rights. However, black Americans still find themselves facing a serious political double bind. As a simple matter of political survival, they must combat the blatant racism emanating from the Republican Party, which wants to eviscerate the voting power of black people. But they must also resist the passive racism of the Democratic Party, which supports black political power and black political representation as long as black politicians kneel to the Democratic Party establishment and its benefactors, including the pro-apartheid AIPAC lobby.
Both the SRC and the NAACP have a venerable history of fighting racial injustice. But that’s precisely why it’s so important to highlight the blatant and shameful hypocrisy of both groups behind the sacrifices of teenage Black student-athletes. For political and movement leaders to take civil rights seriously, they must regain grassroots political representation not only in the former Confederacy but also in Gaza and the occupied territories. Until they do, their silence will remain deafening, especially as prominent black lawmakers continue to cash secret AIPAC checks behind the scenes.
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Anthony Conwright Anthony Conwright is a writer and educator based in New York. He is currently working on his first novel, Speak, Darkness.