Trump VP Contender Suggests Jim Crow Era Was Better For Black Families Than Now

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) suggested that Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era at a campaign event for former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

Donalds, the congressman from southwest Florida who is on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, made the remarks at a Trump campaign event called “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” that he co-hosted at a cigar bar along with Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX).

An article about the event by The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that it, along with an earlier campaign office opening that were promoted as part of a “Black Americans for Trump” effort, were attended by a lot of out-of-towners. “The room was majority-Black, but about half of those who listed addresses on the event’s sign-in sheet put down addresses outside Philadelphia,” said the report, adding that President Joe Biden’s campaign “wasted no time blasting the optics of not having any Black Pennsylvanians speak at the event.”

According to the Inquirer, the cigar event

was moderated by sports journalist Michelle Tafoya, who led a discussion on Republican outreach to the Black community. Donalds blamed the erosion of Black family values on policies supported by Democratic politicians and described the Jim Crow era with oddly favorable terminology, as a period in which “the Black family was together” and “more Black people voted conservatively”:

At another point, Donalds said he is starting to see the “reinvigoration of Black family,” which he described as younger people forming nuclear family units and “helping to breathe the revival of a Black middle class in America.” He went on to say that those family values had previously been eroded by Democratic policies that Black voters embraced after becoming loyal to the party due to the Civil Rights Movement.“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 Black people voted conservatively,” he said. “And then H.E.W., Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” he added, referring to the former U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.The so-called Great Society programs, spearheaded by former President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, included civil rights legislation, the creation of Medicaid for low-income Americans, and the expansion of federal food stamp, welfare, and housing programs.

Donalds is correct that the rate of marriage among Black Americans has

declined — and the rate of single parent families has increased — since the 1960s. A number of conservative economists have blamed these changes on government programs supported by Democrats. As Thomas Sowell wrote in 2004, “The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”

However, based on the Inquirer’s description of his remarks, Donalds omitted some important context, namely that Black voters were perhaps more inclined to vote for Republicans after the Civil War because that was the party that had supported ending slavery and the Reconstruction-era policies intended to expand voting and economic freedoms for Blacks.

And, of course, there is the not-insignificant fact that during the Jim Crow era, progress made during Reconstruction was rolled back, voting rights for Blacks were suppressed (both through racist laws and threats and violence imposed by groups like the Ku Klux Klan), and segregation was widespread, with Blacks being relegated to far inferior schools and other community facilities.