Igrew up in a Black church. There are scenes from those sacred Sundays that set the foundation for my politics. At times, there were two collection plates: one for weekly tithes and one for people in need. That latter collection supported congregants who could not pay rent, cover medical bills, or needed help burying a departed loved one. The practice did not have a name. It was simply understood that collective care was the way Black people worked together to survive in times of duress—that those of us who have should help those who have not.

Although I left the church, that tradition became the bedrock of my politics—why should people in America, the richest country in the world, starve, lack access to transportation, food, and healthcare? It did not occur to me until Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns that the practice of societal care, a foundational pillar in Black communities, was a boogeyman in the anxieties of moderate politicians, who derided the practice as “socialist.”

In my home of New York City, Black New Yorkers are living under duress as a caste of have-nots while the haves lavishly flourish, yet Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York, who is leading all candidates in Black support in the Democratic primary mayor’s race, discredits policies aimed at solving issues that disproportionately impact Black New Yorkers as “socialist.” “The far-left has become the Democratic Socialists of America,” Cuomo said during an April interview. “They basically preach a socialist economic theory: free transportation, free education, free housing, and tax the rich.”

The fact that Cuomo has robust Black support while vilifying policies rooted in the Black tradition of collective care is not contradictory. It is the result of a long-standing Democratic establishment project that has induced Black voters to believe that so-called socialist coalitions are white movements and socialist policies are not compatible with Black political interests. To put it in modern-day, rote racialized liberal dialect, it is white privilege to support a socialist candidate.

Since 2016, moderate Democrats have spread the myth of the Black pragmatic voter to pacify Black Americans from adopting political demands outside the corporate interests of the Democratic Party. We are told that because we are Black, we must vote pragmatically, since we have the most to lose if a Republican takes office. This narrative does not exist for white voters or political demands arising from America’s white aristocracy. America’s millionaire and billionaire class has carte blanche to make political demands that perpetuate economic deprivation in Black communities.

Yet despite the economic violence grotesque capitalism has inflicted on Black Americans and our communities, we have been led to believe it is far more practical to for us to support a corporate Democrat who will allow slow-moving capitalism-induced poverty and homelessness than it is for us to support so-called socialist policies and socialist politicians like Zohran Mamdani, who is advocating raising the minimum wage to $30 and taxing millionaires and billionaires to provide free transportation and universal child care. To put it plainly, the myth that Black Americans can only support establishment Democrats has conditioned us to take our suffering—which is a result of capitalism—for granted.

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According to a May Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill poll, Andrew Cuomo, who leads Mamdani 74 to 24 percent among Black voters, is the latest beneficiary of this deception. “You can’t have a socialist state in a capitalist nation. If New York became a socialist economy, everything is free,” Cuomo said. “We tax the rich at an exorbitant rate, the rich will move to Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Florida.” To be clear, 123 billionaires list New York City as their primary residence, the most in the world—and New York City is home to 384,500 millionaires, the most in the world. Cuomo mourns the prospect of losing this class but does not grieve for the exodus of Black families, Black children, and Black teenagers forced out of New York City by the rising cost of living.

Perhaps Cuomo is immune to the exorbitant rent prices and economic purgatory that plagues Black New Yorkers. According to 2023 data from Streeteasy, New Yorkers earning the median white household income ($93,919) can afford 64 percent of the city’s rental inventory, while New Yorkers earning the median Black household income ($53,075) can only afford 14 percent of the city’s market-rate rental inventory. During the first New York City mayoral debate, Cuomo told moderators that he pays $7,800 in rent. That means Andrew Cuomo pays more in rent per year ($93,600) than the median household income of Black New Yorkers, 13 percent of whom have a negative household worth, meaning they owe more in debt than the value of all their assets. While Cuomo proposed raising the current minimum wage to $20 by 2027, it is worth noting that during his tenure as governor, he blocked former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s attempt to raise the minimum wage in New York City.

During an interview for The Free Press, right-wing host Bari Weiss asked Cuomo how he plans to educate voters that Mamdani’s platform is impractical. “You have to hope they have a brain in their head,” Cuomo said. “It’s not real, but it’s appealing.” During his mayoral campaign, Cuomo has toured Black churches and delivered this message to Black audiences with rhythmic platitudes. Cuomo told congregants at First Corinthian Baptist Church, “You have to be idealistic, but you have to be realistic.” At Abyssinian Baptist church, Cuomo cautioned its members, “Pursue the ideal but have to live in the real.”

Despite Cuomo’s limited political imagination, I have had the opportunity to experience some of Mamdani’s so-called “impractical” proposals. The M116, one of the bus routes included in the Mamdani-led free bus pilot, runs through my neighborhood, where I live in a rent-stabilized apartment and have not had to incur exorbitant rent increases. Black New Yorkers are living in the real—a real struggle—and Cuomo has clearly indicated that his fight for Black New Yorkers will not match the fury of our oppression.