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.”
That’s fine.
I see them as cause and effect. And knowing what I now know, I condemn them both.
What would have been your solution to the lack of Civil Rights suffered by Black people in those days?
The point of these articles was the growth in family, job opportunities in hospitality jobs like hotels and trains (despite "separate but equal"), the increase in education levels and income stability, etc.
What makes documenting this period extremely important is how it was all lost after LBJ's "Great Society" program.
From Wikipedia: Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
Excerpts:
The golden age of black entrepreneurship
The nadir of race relations was reached in the early 20th century, in terms of political and legal rights. Blacks were increasingly segregated. Cut off from the larger white community, however, black entrepreneurs succeeded in establishing flourishing businesses that catered to a black clientele, including professionals. In urban areas, north and south, the size and income of the black population was growing, providing openings for a wide range of businesses, from barbershops to insurance companies. Undertakers had a special niche in their communities, and often played a political role, as they were widely known and knew many of their constituents.
Historian Juliet Walker calls the 1900s-1930s the "Golden age of black business." According to the National Negro Business League, the number of black-owned businesses doubled rapidly, from 20,000 in 1900 to 40,000 in 1914. There were 450 undertakers in 1900, rising to 1000 in this time period. The number of black-owned drugstores rose from 250 to 695. Local retail merchants—most of them quite small—jumped from 10,000 to 25,000. One of the most famous entrepreneurs was Madame C.J. Walker (1867–1919), who built a national franchise business called Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, based on her development of the first successful hair straightening process.
Booker T. Washington, who ran the National Negro Business League and was president of the Tuskegee Institute, was the most prominent promoter of black business. He traveled from city to city to sign up local entrepreneurs into the national league.
Charles Clinton Spaulding (1874–1952), an ally of Washington, was the most prominent black American business leader of his day. Behind the scenes he was an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, with the goal of promoting a black political leadership class. He founded North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, which became America's largest black-owned business, with assets of over $40 million at his death...
Educational growth
Continuing to see education as the primary route of advancement and critical for the race, many talented blacks went into teaching, which had high respect as a profession. Segregated schools for blacks were underfunded in the South and ran on shortened schedules in rural areas. Despite segregation, in Washington, DC by contrast, as Federal employees, black and white teachers were paid on the same scale. Outstanding black teachers in the North received advanced degrees and taught in highly regarded schools, which trained the next generation of leaders in cities such as Chicago, Washington, and New York, whose black populations had increased in the 20th century due to the Great Migration.
Education was one of the major achievements of the black community in the 19th century. Blacks in Reconstruction governments had supported the establishment of public education in every Southern state. Despite the difficulties, with the enormous eagerness of freedmen for education, by 1900 the African-American community had trained and put to work 30,000 African-American teachers in the South. In addition, a majority of the black population had achieved literacy. Not all the teachers had a full 4-year college degree in those years, but the shorter terms of normal schools were part of the system of teacher training in both the North and the South to serve the many new communities across the frontier. African-American teachers got many children and adults started on education.
-PJ
How could Donalds have said it better when - as you say - Sowell’s words support Donald’s thesis?
Donalds was using Jim Crow as a time stamp and not a preferred social status. The left is taking what he said out of context just like they do much of what Trump says.
Let the problem gradually work itself out. Kowtowing to the demands of professional agitators always ends badly.
The legacy of your precious “civil” “rights” “movement” is “Diversity Equity Inclusion”, Pride Month, and BLM/Antifa. As was inevitable.
He wasn’t entirely wrong, but it was a mistake to put it that way. Look to the future, not to the past.
Should we have left the oppression of the English king to ‘sort itself out’, too?
A civil rights movement would necessarily happen, because it was right to change these conditions.
(Or do you think that ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ only applies to White people?)
I get it that you don't care. But here's an observation.
Ken Griffey Jr's father played in MLB. Same thing with Barry Bonds.
So if you play baseball, usually your father taught you how to play the game.
I wonder what happened in 1964? (Hint: Great Society)
Work itself out?
I played baseball, my father knew nothing about it, or any American sport. But I didn’t make the pros.
And I once saw both Griffeys playing in the same outfield in Boston.
Nice. A rare moment in baseball history.
The actual “civil” “rights” “movement” that happened in the real world was the product of professional agitators who did not have the best interests of America in mind. Their activities established that the way to get what you want is to riot, or threaten to riot, until you get it. 60-70 years later, we have DEI being shoved down everybody’s throats. We have Antifa and BurnLootMurder following their ‘50s & ‘60s forbears burning cities ... they learned well from your precious “civil” “rights” “movement”. “Climate Change” agitators follow suit.
We’d all be better off without it, especially black people who are concentrated in urban hellholes and convinced that only Big Daddy Government can help them. Which, of course, it never does.
I understand your *political* concerns, but Civil Rights is a moral one. Your solution to just let it work itself out is careless, Uncaring and frankly immoral.
We may forgive people in the long past for their ignorance; but I can’t accept that allowing the deprivation of Civil Rights of Black people in the US to just ‘work itself out’ would be at all moral - especially for a people with our American claims to the lofty political philosophy delineated in our Founding documents.
Its true. LBJ’s New Deal destroyed the black family. That and rap.
He could have said something there are prominent black scholars (maybe even named them like Thomas Sowell & the late Walter Williams, etc.) who support this view or something like that. That his comment looks less isolated and more mainstream.
Typo: Left out a word!
That his = That way his
What the Congressman said is undeniable. The question is why. Part of why is the breakdown of the American family for whites as well as minorities during and since the 1960s. But, what has been terrible for whites, has been devastating for blacks, with Hispanics something in between. As to why the Congressman would be questioned, it is because of left-wing ideology. They live in their own reality and, so, deny the obvious truth. Nothing they say can be accepted unless validated by credible evidence.
per Vital Statistics of the United States, Bureau of the Census, 1941, p. 10, Table R
1920 12.5 percent of nonwhite babies were born to single women
1930 14.1
1940 17.0
per Table 1.1, p. 2.Live Births, Birth Rates, and Fertility Rates, by race: United States, 1909-2000. illegimate births: Stephanie Ventura, Trends and Differentialsin births to unmarried women, Dept. of Health and Human Services, May 1980. pp. 48-50, Table 2;
1940 14.0 percent of nonwhite babies were born to single women
1950 14.9
per Stephanie J. Ventura and Christine A. Bachrach, Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940-99. National Vital Statistics Reports, 48(16) October 2000. pp. 28-31, Table 4
AND
updates from CDC
1950 18.0 percent of nonwhite babies were born to single women
1960 21.6
1970 34.9
1980 49.8
1990 66.5 percent of black babies were born to single women
2000 68.5
2010 72.1
2020 64 (while still catastrophically high, the prior trend has been reversed)
The so-called “civil” “rights” “movement” that actually happened was destructive to property, injurious to the civil society, very beneficial to Big Government, and totally immoral.
You accuse me of being “uncaring”?
BWAHAHAHAHAHahahahahaha!!!
That’s what bleeding-heart liberals call me.
I take it as a compliment.
Enjoy your “Diversity Equity Inclusion” tyranny, have a happy “Pride Month”, and don’t complain next time Antifa/BLM/ClimateCreeps decide to riot or block roadways.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.