Posted on 06/05/2024 10:13:32 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) suggested that Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era while speaking at a campaign event for former President Trump.
Donalds, who is on the shortlist for Trump’s potential vice-presidential pick, was campaigning for the former president in Philadelphia at a “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” event aimed at garnering Black male voters, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
During the conversation, the freshman lawmaker said he is starting to see the “reinvigoration” of Black families, adding that it is “helping to breathe the revival of a Black middle class in America.” Donalds also claimed that the nuclear family — or one with a mother, father and children living under the same roof — and its values have been eroded by Democrats and lost among Black voters after they supported the party following the Civil Rights Movement, the outlet reported.
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more people voted conservatively,” Donalds said.
The Hill has reached out to Donalds’s office for clarification on his statement.
The Inquirer also noted that the event attendees were majority Black, but about half of those who listed addresses on the event sign-in sheet put down addresses outside of Philadelphia.
The Biden campaign has slammed Trump’s effort to mobilize Black voters.
“Donald Trump spent his adult life, and then his presidency undermining the progress Black communities fought so hard for — so it actually tracks that his campaign’s ‘Black outreach’ is going to a white neighborhood and promising to take America back to Jim Crow,” Biden-Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika wrote in a statement.
Chitika said Trump and his campaign are showing Black voters that they will take away freedom and economic opportunities.
“From touting his mugshot to hawking fake sneakers, Trump and his campaign have shown Black Americans how little they think of us,” she said, adding, “Black voters are about to show Trump how little they think of him, his allies, and his racist agenda this November.”
NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson asked Donalds in a post on social media platform X whether he would be a member of Congress under the Jim Crow era.
“@ByronDonalds Do you think you would hold your current position under Jim Crow? Asking for the rest of Black America,” Johnson said.
During a speech on the House floor, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also criticized the Florida Republican for his “factually inaccurate statement.”
“That’s an outlandish, outrageous and out of pocket observation,” Jeffries said.
The Democratic leader argued that the Black community was not better off during a time when they could be lynched, “brutally murdered,” sexually assaulted, denied an education or the right to vote without consequences.
“How dare you make such an ignorant observation,” he said. “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”
Like I said, lbj was an evil, evil man.
My sister was a welfare worker for the County Welfare Department in 1968. Her co-workers did night time “home checks” and if a man was found in the premises the welfare mom lost her dependent child benefit.
What could possibly go wrong?
You misunderstood, but you are not the only one.
There is a difference between saying, "during the Jim Crow era," and "Because of Jim Crow restrictions."
What he did say was easily turned by the opposition. He shouldn’t have even mentioned it. He could have countered that in all sorts of ways without stepping right in it like he did.
“The diminishment of the nuclear family (black AND white)”
Jim Crow laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and remained in force until the mid-1960s. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, expanded in the 1960s, is often blamed for the decline of the black nuclear family. The weakening of the nuclear family was not due to Jim Crow laws but rather a side effect of the welfare program’s expansion during that period.
Look at the rate of single mothers. It was very low in the Black community before the 1960s social programs.
he’s not. Black families had to be stronger to survive jim crow days.
just like families today are stronger because of pride celebrations.
>> but to frame Jim Crow as family-friendly is insane.
I don’t see that as an accurate summary of what Byron Donalds said.
Democrats regularly claim that racism has never been worse than it is now, but if a Republican follows that incorrect logic, heads will explode.
What’s their place?
“Black families were stronger in the 1940’s and 1950’s despite the challenges of Democratic Jim Crow laws.”
“How dare you say that Jim Crow laws made life better for black families!”
It isn’t even up for debate. Statistics show this to be true. The Left is going to do what they do.
Trying to maneuver around them is a fools errand.
Speak the truth and let the chips fall where they may.
Like they wouldn’t anyway. Let’s continue to have this debate. From now on., Donalds should mention LBJ destroyed the black family, over and over again.
I think his contrast is perfect. Democrats of today are FAR WORSE than Jim Crow.
As with Noem, time to go to work!
I didn’t misunderstand. He made a very clumsy analogy that couldn’t have been better designed to be used against him.
It was a self inflicted wound. Why even bring it up that way?
YOU are being gaslighted by The Hill.
Yeah, he could have said something like “sixty or seventy years ago”. And the evidence is obvious about the difference between lives of blacks before the Great Society and afterwards. Before: 85% of black babies were born to married couples; today, 85% are born out of wedlock. Black-majority cities such as East St. Louis were livable. I worked there in the mid-seventies. Today it is among the worst of the worst. Black schools were not universally failing. Discriminination and segregation had to go, but that could have been done without sowing seeds of destruction — handouts, victimhood, and entitlement— in the black community. Those have destroyed plenty of non-blacks as well.
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