NY Post
Left: Leonard Jeffries. Right: Laurie Cumbo.

Councilwoman Connected to Well-Known Race-baiter

Incoming Brooklyn Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who set off a firestorm last week with a Facebook post that blamed some “knockout game” attacks on tensions between blacks and Jews, once invited a known race ranter to speak at her museum.

Former CUNY Black studies professor Leonard Jeffries was listed as a featured speaker for an “African Day” event in 2011 at the Brooklyn Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, or MoCADA, which she founded.

Jeffries, who once declared that Jews financed the slave trade, has long been a divisive figure in the city. In 1994 Jeffries compared Jews to “skunks – who stink up the place” and has referred to whites as “ice people,” among other hateful remarks.

Cumbo said that she doesn’t have a professional or personal relationship with Jeffries but invited him to speak about Ghana ahead of a trip there being organized by her museum.

“Dr. Leonard Jeffries is seen as a foremost authority on travel trip to Ghana and he goes on them annually, and the museum had never planned a travel trip,” she told The Post.

But it appears that she has embraced similar phrases to Jefferies recently. At a candidates forum in May before the Progressive Association Political Action Committee, she suggested there was too much “Eurocentric” economic development in her district and not enough diversity.

“I’ve witnessed firsthand in terms of building an African art museum in Brooklyn and seeing an entire cultural district being built around me all of a Eurocentric nature,” she said, according to a recording obtained by The Post. “There is a cultural district that’s being built that will have no representations of any other culture except that of a Europenan based one.”

Jeffries has criticized public schools for “Eurocentrism” and demanded more focus on African history and accomplishments of African Americans.

Cumbo told The Post that she was merely advocating for more funding for minority-owned businesses, not less for developments by whites.

Earlier this week Cumbo apologized “for any pain I have caused” in a Facebook post in which she said many black constituents told her they feel threatened by “Jewish landlords” trying to move them out of the community.

She said she was only trying “to bring our diverse communities closer together.”

22 Comments

  • Milhouse

    “Dr. Leonard Jeffries is seen as a foremost authority on travel trip to Ghana and he goes on them annually, and the museum had never planned a travel trip,” she told The Post.

    What on earth is a “travel trip” when it’s at home? Is she incapable of speaking in grammatical English?

  • Citizen Berel

    Yawn.

    You cannot be a black politician and not be connected in one way or another with black people what hate Jews, and that doesn’t have to mean that the politician hates Jews, just that so many Black people hate Jews that it’s impossible for a black politician to be completely unsympathetic with that large a group of the people who brought them into office.

    You have to trail-blaze to be black (in Brooklyn) and to utterly dissociate from and reject Jew hating and anyone-other-than-black-really hating and politicians are not trail-blazers.

    • Milhouse

      You cannot be a black politician and not be connected in one way or another with black people what hate Jews

      Black Republicans seem to manage it.

    • Citizen Berel

      Because you are Milhouse and not a drive by…

      A black republican has as much a chance of getting elected to brooklyn city government as I do, even though I am a very good Citizen. But you are technically correct and I rephrase politician to ‘office holder.’

      City government is a machine and you cannot just become a top cog without making your way through the establishment, which consists exclusively in organizations whose cultural ethos is black power.

      Brooklyn City government is approaching democracy in name only, if it isn’t already there, and there is no way to reverse this trend.

      My guess is that a majority of voters are either told which name to vote for or the office is uncontested.

      Republican democracy is nearing the end of its life cycle (sadly). Even the framers realized that however great the system, liberty will never survive as but a systemic construct but would need to be “refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

      But there will be no war for liberty.

      And that isn’t our issue in any case.

      We just need to buckle down and prepare for the worst and focus on what really is in our hands, namely Torah uMitzvos.

      Political activism in our times, sadly, is about treading water (think: Czarist Russia) unless we need to go to outright (spiritual) war with the authorities (think:Communist Russia) G-d forbid.

      At any rate, Citizen Berel enjoys (the real) Milhouse’s comments.

    • Milhouse

      Thank you.

      If your remark was confined to Brooklyn, then there was no need to specify “black”. You cannot be a Democratic politician in Brooklyn, black or white, without being connected with black antisemites. It’s difficult to be a Democratic politician anywhere without doing ritual obeisance to black antisemites. Even if one doesn’t have to kiss Sharpton’s ring, one must be careful to always give him the unearned adjective “reverend”, and one must never say anything negative about him.

  • boy from the hood

    hi Laurie congratulation on yr new post ,
    i hope you will be there for us white people to ?
    because ft green / bed sty / crown heights is changing
    white Christians and many different types of races
    other then black and Hispanic are moving in to your district
    we are very concern about your opinion on the new game
    played by black youth .
    its a problem all over america black on white crime
    this nasty game called ” knockout ”
    its not a game its deadly
    and it s in OUR district . yrs and mine
    i hope you don’t turn a blind eye
    its not black vs Jew ..its black vs any one not black
    please help your district

    • Boy from the hood

      Not in most southern states, especially Texas, Alaska, Hawaii. I knew the media was powerful, but not that powerful.

  • watch your backs jews!!

    a leopard does not change its spots . we need leadership to combat all her anti semitism. she is not going to go away and we have to watch her every move and make her realize
    we aint gonna take it anymore!!
    rest assured she has no intention of being even handed or fair minded when it comes to the Jews. if she was upright she never would have made the comment to begin with.

  • 40 yr in the hood

    food for thought ?
    when she uses the word ” minority ” is she referring
    to only black ? because Jews are a minority to ..
    just a thought …

    Lorrie should change her act , because
    ft green -bed sty Clinton hill crown heights
    are becoming gentrified . which means white hipsters are moving in ,

  • Yossi A

    To #4
    Thanks for the heads up. It would have been more useful BEFORE we were asked to vote for rasist.

  • thoughts

    many thoughts here, and they are mostly good. She is obtaining a name, a reputation, and lets see what she does, and what kind of rep she gets. She has many choices/decisions to make. Let us see. We are watching you Laurie, and many other types of people are watching you too.
    I really wonder if she knows what she stepped in to with this community……
    just would be good to post the words that the Rebbe said to dinkins, something like “you represent myself as well as everyone here”…..who knows exactly how he said that?

  • Whaddyaknow?

    The gift that gives on giving – and she isn’t even in office yet. Enjoy your rights while you still have them.

  • wake up white folks

    in this case of ” knockout game ”
    she is up against white america
    her area is ft green -Clinton hill – bed sty –
    crown heights ,were white people are moving in
    you will see a lot of white s getting abused by black s
    they are the ones whom the blacks have to be concern about buying homes , and like they say pushing them out

    • Everybody knows how it is to live in predominantly black hood

      We should just state the obvious, its raining rimms and Cadies, we bring the cash they bring the houses, it all boils down to a free market economy.
      If the Black community wants to sell and move they can if they do not want we are not going to smoke them out. I did hear of some scrupulous land lords, not renting to the blacks. Its a simple business decisions,= Blacks play knockout= lower rent values, less Blacks in your area = less knock out

  • Yossel

    While there are no doubt many blacks who don’t hate Jews, black LEADERS do. They rely on Jew-hatred to get themselves positions of leadership much as the Nazis did in Germany in the 1920s (remember there was a horrible recession in German back then).

    The Arab leaders today do the same thing; the thing they use to unify their following is to blame someone else, usually the Jews, for their problems.

    We are weak physically and don’t fight back, we are successful and live high on the hog.

    For us, it is a message from Hashem. We need to re-focus on those things that the Rebbe cried and pleaded about, not fancy Chinese auctions, big luxury cars and renovated houses. All our fancy gashmius can vanish in an instant. if you don’t believe me, read German history from around 1930 through 1940.

  • To #18

    Chanina Sperlin ENCOURAGED her! You think he’ll backtrack now? He can’t even spell backtrack, let alone know what it means.

  • TO #5

    You’re wrong. Not anyone can be elected. Your chances are much BETTER if your black! and almost NONE EXISTENT if your a Jew. because everyone is out to show that they aren’t racist (whatever that word is supposed to mean….) And Yosselle, no one said you had to obey Chanina or any of the other shmigegi’s of the council. I did not vote for this nasty piece of work (to be nice), regardless (or inspite) of what the careless council said.
    It’s time we stop with all the philosophy and call a spade a spade. Jews work hard for whatever they have and don’t go around attacking and robbing people for what they want or need. Nor do they spend their time protesting that everyone is against them blah blah blah (even though that has truth to it), whilst the younger generation of blacks feel that they don’t need to work for their keep and can do what they feel like because they are brainwashed by their superiors that they are given a raw deal etc etc etc. Those black people who work and live decent lives don’t seem to have a problem with Jewish neighbors.

  • Fed Up

    Should it surprise anyone that Cumbo, a city council member is biased by taking sides. She is part of the same city council that has a black panther on its staff, Charles Barron. I wonder what she and Barron would say if a JDL supporter or member was part of the city council. It is likely that the two of them would cry racism. What hypocrisy!