Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) suggested Tuesday that black American families were more “together” during the era of legal segregation known as Jim Crow.
Speaking to Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) at a black voter rally for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Donalds said the Democratic-backed welfare policies of the 20th century are hurting black families.
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more black people were not only conservative — black people have always been conservative — but more black people voted conservative,” Donalds said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson – you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” Donalds said, referring to the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the “War on Poverty” programs spearheaded by Johnson defended, a Democrat, as president in the 1960s.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign highlighted Donalds’ comments on Wednesday, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) rebuked Donalds on the House floor, calling his comments bizarre and outrageous.
“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,” Jeffries said.
“We were no better off when a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered without consequence because of Jim Crow,” Jeffries said. “We were no better off when black women could be sexually assaulted without consequences because of Jim Crow. We would not be better off if people could be lynched systematically and without consequences because of Jim Crow.”
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4,000 black people were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Laws in Southern states and cities prohibit black people from sharing public spaces with white people. It is not clear what Donalds meant by black people voting “more conservative” at the time; Jim Crow laws often prevented them from voting at all.
Donalds’ office did not respond to a request for comment or context on his comments. But the congressman responded to Jeffries on social media, noting that he hadn’t actually said black people were “better off” during Jim Crow — just that black families were together more.
“What I was saying was you had more black families under Jim Crow, and it was the Democratic policies under HEW, under the welfare state, that helped destroy the black family,” Donalds said in a video.
Conservatives have long argued that cash welfare programs harm families, and Black families in particular, by providing assistance to single mothers, supposedly creating an incentive for family separation.
Researchers have said it’s not really clear that federal programs that help poor people with food, health care and cash assistance caused the decline in marriage in the 20th century, because so much has changed besides government policy.
