A Black Man’s Eulogy For Lindsey Graham: ‘Pro Ukraine.’ Anti-Black

Senator Lindsey Graham’s final days were spent supporting democracy here in Ukraine, but allowing Donald Trump to dismantle it in his home country he swore an oath to protect.

As an independent reporter and advocate for Ukraine who has been living here since 2009, I respect any lawmaker who advances the security interests of this country. Graham, who visited often, was the leading voice in the senate calling for more Patriot missiles to protect Ukraine’s skies, sending weapons to liberate its stolen lands and advocating for Kyiv’s rightful place in NATO. Without a question, he was arguably Ukraine’s most consequential voice in Washington.

Graham was also a xenophobic, Islamophobic bigot whose views undermined the national security and democratic values of the United States—and indirectly, Ukraine.

As a Black man, I cannot sit in Ukraine’s capital city and write the same tributes and well-wishes as other white foreign policy professionals who aren’t the targets of his Islamophobia, xenpphobia, anti-Blackness and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies. Graham supported Donald Trump’s racist deployment of ICE agents who hunt down immigrants, kill innocent Americans in the process and cause the deaths of dozens of people under the false guise of protecting America’s borders.

Being a Black American expert on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, you accept that many of your white peers care more about fighting Russia colonialism than defeating white supremacy. I’m not saying that all Republicans are racist. I am saying that many pro-Ukraine advocates in Congress support anti-Black legislation.

Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, backs the SAVE act, a xenophobic and racist piece of legislation that aims to suppress Black voters and, as the National Urban League notes, is a throwback to Jim Crow. Don Bacon (R-NE), another Ukraine supporter, also backs the SAVE Act. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who isn’t Ukraine’s strongest ally at all, had the decency to push through legislation that released military aid to Ukraine back in 2024.

Reportedly, the Holy Spirit moved his conscience.

I wish his Christian faith would compel him to fight anti-Black redistricting laws that all but eliminate Black electoral power in his home state of Louisiana and elsewhere. But that would be asking too much. You know, asking people to fight racist.

As a Black man who supports Ukraine, I am expected to be silent about all of this because Graham and other MAGA ilk are right on this particular issue. Republicans are more invested in getting Ukraine Patriot interceptors than they are in protecting Black folks from racist cops who shoot and chock us dead.

In fact, they create the laws that make it harder for peopel of color to cast ballots.

When Graham wasn’t here in Ukraine (he visited 10 times) rightfully advocating for more weapons support, he was one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders and said nothing about his racism. He never outright condemned Trump for referring to mostly-Black nations as “shit hole countries.” When Trump said Haitians eat dogs and cats, Graham pivoted to pushing Trump’s racist lies that immigrants are behind non-existent rising crime rates against U.S. citizens.

Unlike his predecessor, Strum Thurman, Graham was not a loud, virulent racist. He simple built collations with racists for his own political gain.

Fuck him.

I’ll always remember Graham for praising millennial racist Charlie Kirk, even though the man’s last dying words were lies about so-called Black on Black violence.

Fuck him and Charlie Kirk.

In my experience, many pro-Ukraine Republicans share Graham’s views. Like Trump, they want to return to the “Good ol’ days” of segregation that included violent policing against Black people to keep them in their place. He actually said this during the senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. He said he was being sarcastic. I don’t believe him. I think he really does wish Black people were partial citizens. He once said Blacks can feel safe in South Carolina, so long as they are conservative.

Translation: Black conservatives make white people feel comfortable and won’t do anything that challenges racist systems because Black conservatives do very little, these days at least at the national level, to fight racial discrimination.

Back in 2016, he told Daily Show host Trevor Noah that he’d be in trouble if Trump won because he was a "young, black, liberal guy from Africa” and that “is not going to work with him.” Graham knew that Trump was a racist bigot from the jump, but continued to support him up to the day that he died.

Fuck Lindsey Graham.

While the white foreign policy world hails his Ukraine support and tough stances against Russian imperialism, these same white folks will have no critiques about white supremacy— because, for many of them, it doesn’t exist. These are the types of white people with which Black professionals in the foreign policy field must share office space. I am sure Black folks are in meetings right now rolling their eyes as their white counterparts lift up Graham as a great American, washing over the fact that he backed Trump’s racism.

That’s why when I reflect on folks like Graham and how he’s remembered as an Ukraine supporter, I cannot help but mention he was not a friend of Black America.

If you are a Black person with any dignity, being a professional in white-male dominated fields of defense and national security is extremely isolating. Whenever I speak at events that center Ukraine, I am invited to discuss my work on the intersection of Ukraine, race and U.S. politics. I am always the only voice on stage that argues, for example, that Trump’s racism undermines Ukraine’s national security because his obsession with defending U.S. borders against fake threats from Brown people is more important than prioritizing the real Russian threat that’s colonizing Ukrainian territory.

And let’s be real: had Trump won in 2020 instead of Joe Biden, do you really think he would have sent as much military and other aid to Ukraine? Most Black voters backed Biden by almost 90 percent of the their votes. Black people, in effect, are Ukraine’s most supportive voters in U.S. national politics. Yet, Graham’s career shows he had no positive impact on their lives, be it in his home state or the rest of the country.

Graham, who was once one of Trump’s most vocal critics, ended up kissing his ass because it was politically expedient to do so. What’s ironic is that the very MAGA racism that is destroying America undermined his efforts to advocate for Ukrainians’ safety. Trump spent this entire 2024 campaign, essentially, calling Ukraine welfare case and vowing to cut funding.

He followed through on that promise with devastating results for Ukraine: the country is separate for Patriots, has limited weapons to repel Russia, Putin has a friendly White House that is applying more pressure to Kyiv than to Moscow, few sanctions against Russia exist and we a dumb war that siphons attention from Kyiv. Ukraine would have been better off with the Black lady in charge.

But, hey, that’s just me.

Ukraine has fewer resources because white people like Graham cared more about advancing racism at home by supporting Trump than a collective devotion to security in the U.S. and abroad.

Paradoxically, Graham spent his final days pushing a sanctions bill targeting Russia. I truly appreciate that. I love Ukraine and I love my friends here, many of whom have become family. But I must also accept that Graham loved Ukraine far more than the Black Americans he represented. We didn’t care much for him, either. Exit polling show only 6 percent of Black residents in South Carolina supported him in 2020 and only 10 percent approved of his performance, according to poll conducted in May.

South Carolina has the sixth most highest number Black farmers in the U.S., but Graham argued that a provision in the 2021 American Rescue Plan that granted them access to funds to account for decades of racial discrimination amounted to reparations.

“We can express sympathy for Senator Graham’s loved ones without erasing the harm caused by his words or ignoring the farmers who are still struggling today,” The National Black Farmers Association wrote in response to Graham’s death.

If Graham’s death is to teach us anything, we should be reminded that the best type of Ukraine advocate is equally devoted to dismantling white supremacy and Russian imperialism. They should care as much about the Palestinian baby as they do the Ukrainian one. They should care as much about defending democracy at home as they do abroad.

Graham clearly cared deeply about the latter and little about the later.

But I understand why some of you, especially Ukrainians, would think fondly about Graham. You should. He cared about you. He loved you. He thought more of you than he ever did for me, his fellow U.S. citizen. He defended your democracy. His senate votes undermined ours—his.

He supported policies that risk reversing every piece of progressive legislation that helps people of color exist as full U.S. citizens. That is his legacy for pretty much any U.S. citizen who is not white, male and straight.

But, hey, he was pro-Ukraine, right?

My condolences to any pro-Ukraine person out there whose only priority is Ukraine and has the luxury of not being burdened with his xenophobia, homophobia or racism. I am sure he will be missed.

By you.