Suspicion of Others is Bad Part 4 of ???

The limit of bad faith invocations of racism knows no bounds, as was evidenced by this truly preposterous bit of race-bating from the past week:

It should be obvious to anyone who has been paying any attention recently that the watermelon is a prominent symbol of Palestinian resistance, hence its inclusion in a poster promoting action on behalf of Palestine.  It should also be obvious that both currently and historically, there has been no better domestic advocate for Palestinian liberation than Black Americans (and vice versa).  While this faux outrage appears to be from the same playbook as always—that is, fanning the flames of racial hatred to divide marginalized groups with a common interest—I want to at least entertain a less paranoid reading.

Viewed through this lens, what does this critique become?  On a straightforward level, the accusation remains bizarre.  There is zero indication on the poster that the watermelon indicates an attack on Hakeem Jeffries.  There is no language attacking Jeffries, no indication that the symbol says anything about him, and zero indication of a connection between the symbol and him.  To infer such a statement from the poster requires the viewer to be centering Jeffries to an absurd degree.  The subject of the poster, the very people that require support, are the Palestinians!  Making the subject Jeffries, a man who is likely to be Speaker of the House a little over a year from now is, in and of itself, perverse!

With respect to the specific accusation of racism, the argument becomes both stranger and sadder.  Stranger in that Jeffries himself has invoked the rhetoric of one of the most racist politicians in recent American history to justify the continuation of a brutal settler regime.  It's dishonest (at best) to cry racism at the political communication of those less powerful than you when you use the pulpit afforded to you by your station to whitewash the discrimination of your own people.  And sadder because one who sees a picture of a somewhat delicious fruit and immediately translates that into suspicion of others has such a miserable and dismal way of viewing your fellow man!  Your self-loathing is such that you view a cry for solidarity as an attack!  Worse yet, it causes you to collapse all potential meaning, all possible interpretations of the world into merely your own personal paranoid fantasy.  One person promulgating this smear was at least helpful enough to spell this out:

Claiming that only you have insight into "the real meaning" and that everyone else is being a secret racist is wildly self-centered at the very best.  It's a claim that your own understanding of *everything* is so self-evidently true that misunderstandings are not even possible.  

Why is this important?  Like most other appeals to suspicion, this plays directly into the hands of the powerful.  Don't just take it from me; the powerful are happy to say this exact thing themselves:

The lesson here, as with every other instance in this series, is to question who your suspicion of others really serves?  Are your accusations meaningful and real enough to be worth forgoing opportunities for solidarity?  And do you really think the fucking watermelon is a coded racist message?