Rep. Byron Donalds went on the defensive after Democrats from House Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the Biden campaign seized on comments he made about the benefits of Jim Crow for Black families.
Donalds, R-Fla., said Tuesday at a black voters rally in Philadelphia that he is beginning to see a “revitalization of the black family” that is “helping breathe the resurgence of a black middle class in America.”
He went on to say that black voters had become loyal to Democrats because of their leadership in the civil rights movement, but that Democratic policies were eroding their family values.
“You see, during Jim Crow, the black family was together. “During Jim Crow, not only were more black people conservative — black people always tend to be conservative — but more black people voted conservative,” Donalds, Florida, had said Tuesday at an event to reach black voters.
Rep. Byron Donalds went on the defensive after Democrats from House Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the Biden campaign seized on comments he made about the benefits of Jim Crow for Black families
Rumor has it that Donalds is being considered for Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nomination.
“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson – you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” he said, referring to the expansion of the welfare state and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Jeffries, D-N.Y., fired back on the House floor: “That is a bizarre, outrageous and idiosyncratic observation.”
“We wouldn’t be better off if a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered without consequences because of Jim Crow; we were not better off if black women could be attacked without consequences because of Jim Crow; we weren’t better off if people could do that. being systematically lynched without consequences due to Jim Crow, …how dare you make such an ignorant statement. You better check yourself before you destroy yourself.”
The Democratic National Committee also immediately condemned the comments.
“This is Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican Party: VP candidate Byron Donalds praises Jim Crow and suggests black families were better off during segregation. “Let’s be clear: Jim Crow tore apart Black families, and it is absurd to suggest that this was anything but a horrific stain on our nation’s history,” said spokesman Marcus Robinson.
Donalds returned to the criticism in a clip on X:
(Democrats) are trying to say I said ‘black people did better under Jim Crow.’ I never said that, they’re lying. But why should you be surprised? Because they always lie. This is the same Joe Biden who said if you don’t vote for him, you’re not black. The man is a liar. Sorry, just call it what it is. What I was saying was that under Jim Crow you have more black families, and the policies under HEW under the welfare state have contributed to the destruction of the black family. I said that. And I also said that in America today you’re seeing a new impetus for black families, and that’s a good thing.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ushered in by President John F. Kennedy and signed by President Lyndon Johnson, marked the end of the era of Jim Crow segregation.
Around the same time, the welfare state was expanded with the creation of Medicare for low-income Americans and the expansion of federal food stamp, welfare, and housing programs.
Donalds and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, appeared at the opening of a Trump campaign field office in North Philadelphia, which the Inquirer said was placed in a “mostly white” neighborhood.
The Biden campaign said the Trump campaign’s voter outreach and mention of Jim Crow were appropriate.
“Donald Trump has spent his adult life, and then his presidency, undermining the progress that black communities have fought so hard for — so it essentially signals that his campaign’s black outreach is going to a white neighborhood and promises America back to Jim Crow,” Biden-Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
At one point during the event, Donalds and Tafoya discussed the differences between black men and black women’s politics, as polls have shown that much of Trump’s rise in the polls among black voters has come from men.
“First of all, there is a difference between men and women anyway,” Donalds said. ‘People were created by God to be conquerors, to be hunters. That’s who they are. And so a black man in today’s America looks around and says, “How can I hunt for my people and hunt for my family?” … They look at what Joe Biden has done and say, ‘I can’t hunt! You took my spear. You took my bow.”
The Congressional Black Caucus – which Donalds claims has been denied membership – also took issue with Florida Republicans’ words and demanded an apology.
“This is a pattern of embracing racist ideologies that we see time and time again within the MAGA Republican Party. Rep. Donalds is playing his role as a mouthpiece who will say out loud the quiet parts that many won’t say themselves.”
‘His statements were shameful and beneath the dignity of a member of the House of Representatives. He should immediately apologize to Black Americans for misrepresenting one of the darkest chapters in our history for his own political gain.”