It wasn’t a great week for Republican rhetoric about the Jim Crow era. Rep. For example, Dan Bishop, who is running for attorney general in North Carolina, thought it would be a good idea to equate the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in New York with the prosecution of African Americans in Alabama in 1950.
Historian Kevin Kruse explained shortly afterwards: “[N]oh, I don’t think Donald Trump has it as bad as African Americans in Alabama in the 1950s, because (a) he didn’t get shot in the street, (b) he was actually tried by a jury of his peers, and ( c) he won’t be sent to the damn electric chair.
A day later, one of Bishop’s GOP colleagues, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, shared some related thoughts of his own, suggesting that black families were better off during the Jim Crow era. NBC News reported:
“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 in remarks first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson – you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” he said, referring to the former Department of Health, Education and Human Services, a predecessor to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS ). ).
Donalds appeared on CNN last night and was asked if he regretted expressing apparent nostalgia for the Jim Crow era. He denied saying that, although there is video footage of the far-right congressman’s comments.
It didn’t take long for Democrats to push back against the rhetoric of Republicans in Florida.
“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,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the House floor. “That is a bizarre, scandalous and idiosyncratic observation.
“We were no better off when a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered with no consequences because of Jim Crow. 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. We would not be better off if children could be denied a quality education without consequences because of Jim Crow. We would not be better off if people could be denied the right to vote without consequences because of Jim Crow.
“How dare you make such an ignorant comment?” concluded the New York Democrat, the highest-ranking African American in Congress. “You better check yourself before you destroy yourself.”
The Congressional Black Caucus responded with its own condemnation, as did President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
It’s worth emphasizing for context that Donalds isn’t just a low-profile House GOP backbencher: He’s also a Trump campaign surrogate and contender for his party’s vice presidential nomination. The Associated Press reported yesterday that Donald Trump’s political operation sent the vetting paperwork to a handful of Republicans — and Donalds was one of them.
The controversy also comes against the backdrop of Democratic efforts to reach black voters, with the party claiming that Republicans are extremists on issues of race, among other things.
With this in mind, I can’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this story.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
