Abdul El-Sayed Assures Black Voters He’s Not [Racist] Like The Other Arabs

The Democratic hopeful said that black people's “experience with somebody who looks like me is not a good one.”

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said during a recent interview that some black Detroiters’ experiences with “somebody who looks like me” involve being “talked at from behind bulletproof glass,” catcalled, and sold single cigarettes at gas stations and stores.

During an interview with “The Root” publisher Ashley Allison, El-Sayed said some black Detroiters’ “experience with somebody who looks like me is not a good one.”

“You go into a gas station. You go to a party store. You’re being talked at from behind bulletproof glass,” El-Sayed said. “If you’re a woman, you’re being catcalled. If you’re a kid, you’re being sold a loosie out back. Being denied a bathroom.”

“I’ve always tried to be on the right side of that,” he continued. “But I also understand that, like, if that’s your experience with somebody whose name is like mine, that leaves a terrible taste in your mouth.”

The Five : FOXNEWSW : October 21, 2026 2:00pm-3:00pm PDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive.

[...]

- - Greg: But I hear party store. I think what Sayed, he is addressing the relationship between, I guess, blacks and Muslims as a conflict between identity groups rather than just individuals, which lets him off the hook of ideology.

So it’s like, you may have had a bad experience with a rude cashier at Wawa, and that somehow applies to an entire group of people. It’s like, oh, you must hate Muslims because the guy at the party store was mean to you.

Not everybody judges single interactions and that applies it to everybody else. Not everybody does it. That is the disease of identity politics, and why didn’t he frame it as a reverse. Why couldn’t the worker be black and the customer be Muslim? Why was the Muslim guy waiting on you and the black person being upset at the gas station? I don’t get it. ..

[...]

- - Emily: Dana, the pandering feels so obvious and transparent, but the question is, well, does it work, or do voters see that he’s just sort of catering to clicks rather than constituents?

- - Dana: Well, he’s not expanding his coalition. He’s running like be he’s behind and the merest poll today showed him running five points behind the Democratic governor candidate I went back and looked at the 2024 in Michigan, Kamala Harris won roughly 70% to 82% of the black vote and she lost the state. If he’s in the same neighborhood, th will be a problem for him. He had a tough primary, has not been able to lock that down, black voters are not as culturally to the left as the DSA would like, and I don’t think they will get there. They want opportunity, and they just reject that, and I think the third reason is, as we talked about on “Jesse Watters Primetime” last night, women, he’s, for me personally, I find it, like, repugnant, arrogant, it’s a turn off for me. I don’t love how - he has like fake empathy, and he’s always the victim. He can’t ever answer a simple question come every question has to be answered with a question. For example, what was it with Krista Mulcare, what about your sister in the Muslim Brotherhood, are your parents still with us? The reason we are talking about this for five weeks is because he can’t answer a simple question. I think the fact that he is running behind and is not expanding his coalition at this point shows that he doesn’t have it locked down but I’m not saying Rogers does, either. I think this is going to be an absolute nail biter in Michigan.

- - Emily: Jesse, how do you see it? \[...\]

- - Jesse; The beef is Arabs and blacks have trouble in the neighborhood because the Arabs came in and they bought all the businesses, and there was a little bit of an ethnic strife there, and then there was some theft and then there was some bad blood, so, that’s where it comes from.

- - Greg: Where’s the theft going, what direction?

- - Jesse: I think you know. The people that steal from the stores owned by the Arabs. So Abdul is saying, I’m not one of those bad Arabs.

- - Greg: Right.
- - Jesse: I’m one of those good Arabs.

- - Greg: Yes.

- - Jesse: So he is kind of talking down his own kind and that doesn’t come off well, it looks corny.

- - Greg: He says I don’t own anything, so you can’t be mad at me.

- - Jesse: He owns somewhere in the Middle East, “the fastest” Dubai.

- - Jesse: So he made the mistake in the primary. I’m going to campaign in college towns and the burbs and seed Detroit, and he almost lost because of that so when he tried to pivot back to the general and consolidate his base, it was too late and it just came off real bad, and he never pointed any black Michiganderer to his campaign. It’s all women. It’s all Muslime it’s all white guys...
https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20261021_210000_The_Five

Sounds like El-Sayed is claiming to have a Doppelgänger on the loose in Detroit who's been harassing the Black people there. Maybe the police should put out an APB on him. Sounds dangerous!

Though, actually, being "talked at" through bulletproof glass shouldn't be a problem for anyone with normal hearing. That's a frequent experience I have when going to the bank. The teller's words are a little muffled, but with some effort, one can still make out what's being said. Or is El-Sayed suggesting that one should feel offended by the simple presence of security measures?!

Regards,

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