PHILADELPHIA – Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) suggested that Black families were better off in an era of racial segregation in America than they are now under President Joe Biden.
“During Jim Crow, the black family was together,” Donalds said Tuesday at a Black GOP outreach event in a gentrifying part of Philadelphia, as he emphasized that black voters are increasingly open to conservatism thanks to an emphasis on family values. “During Jim Crow, more black people were — not just conservative, because black people have always been conservative — but more black people voted conservative.”
He criticized decades-old policies that he said ultimately destroyed the American family by making generations of Black Americans dependent on the federal government for support. He cited former President Dwight Eisenhower’s creation of the civil rights-era Department of Health, Education and Welfare, then known as HEW, and subsequent policies enacted under former President Lyndon Johnson. He suggested that the Biden administration continue this dependency policy.
He also went a step further to say that there were defined gender roles in the home during previous generations, suggesting that liberals are out of step with most Americans in how they embrace gender equality.
“[T]There is anyway a difference between men and women here. People were created by God to be overcomers, to be hunters,” he said. “A black man in today’s America looks around and says, ‘How can I hunt for my people and hunt for my family?’”
One person in the crowd, largely made up of self-identified black Republicans, shouted “Bingo!” to express agreement with Donads’ comments.
The comments, first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, were quickly posted on X and distributed via email by Biden campaign officials, even prompting a response from the House’s top Democrat on Wednesday.
“It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually incorrect statement that black people were better off during Jim Crow,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a speech on the House floor, listing other aspects of that era – of lynching for the suppression of the black vote. “How dare you make such an ignorant observation? You better check yourself before you destroy yourself.”
The Biden campaign indicated they believe Trump’s outreach to Black voters will be undermined by their reporting missteps.
“Donald Trump spent his adult life and then his presidency undermining the progress that Black communities have fought so hard for — so it shows that his campaign’s ‘Black outreach’ is going to a white neighborhood and promising to take America back bring to Jim Crow,” Biden-Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Neither Donalds nor the Trump campaign immediately responded to a request for comment.
Donalds appeared at the event alongside Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) and former NBC Sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya.
“What scares me is that they’ve convinced people that they’re not strong enough to do it alone,” Tafoya said, pausing before continuing. “You have to suck the government’s teat and then you are attached for life.”
A woman at the front of the audience said the Democrats “tricked us into getting rid of our men.”
“We need our guys back,” said Roslyn Ross Williams, who works with the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity. “Many of us have bought the lies.”
Trump and his surrogates are pushing to reach Black voters as polls show larger numbers of Black voters could be won over to the Republican Party this cycle. A recent New York Times/Siena College/Philadelphia Inquirer poll of five key swing states found that more than 20 percent of black voters in swing states are open to voting for the presumptive Republican nominee in the fall.
Donalds also said that Black women may be turning away from Democrats’ positions on transgender policy: “Black women look at their sons and say, ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that my son could be a girl? No.'”
