Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb (D), the Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, said in remarks circulating Friday that the only reason he identifies as a Democratic Socialist is because he is black.
Rabb made the comments during a July 17 appearance on Roland Martin Unfiltered, tying his politics to a great-great-great-grandfather he described as a black abolitionist active 190 years ago. The Philadelphia Democrat claimed the man’s surviving writings match his own positions.
“The only reason I identify as a democratic socialist or progressive is because I’m black,” Rabb said. “In my district on 7th and Lombard, my great-great-great-grandfather was a black abolitionist who conspired against racial injustice 190 years ago. And I have literally the writings of him from back then and he’s saying the same things I’m saying.”
The five-term state lawmaker listed the policies he argued voters are demanding, and suggested they are not new, pointing to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
“People want to see universal basic income, a living wage for all, Medicare for all,” Rabb said. “They want this. And it was part of CBC platform, like I said, 50 years ago. So, this is just a resurgence of the same things that black folks have been leading on for a very long time, not just in Philly, but across the nation.”
Rabb’s campaign biography identifies the ancestor as Rev. Amos Noë Freeman, a Presbyterian clergyman and teacher it describes as having worked with the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. The nominee, a genealogist of more than 30 years, told the Katie Halper Show in May that Freeman met with black and white abolitionists at Benezet Hall, at Seventh and Lombard, inside the district he is running to represent.
Philadelphia’s vigilance committees supplied fugitive slaves with housing, clothes, medical care, lawyers, and directions farther north, according to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. The organization took on upwards of 50 cases between June and December 1839, with 46 people reaching freedom.
The CBC did press for national health insurance and a guaranteed annual income system in its 1972 “Black Bill of Rights,” according to the House of Representatives’ historical archive.
Rabb opened his remarks by declaring “the Mamdani effect is real,” naming Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Denver, Detroit, Trenton, and Harlem.
The comments come days after Queens Borough President Donovan Richards (D), who is black, criticized the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in a post Sunday.
“White supremacy comes in all forms,” Richards wrote.
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