Former President Donald Trump claimed during the presidential debate on Thursday that immigrants who entered the United States illegally were taking “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” a baseless claim that Democrats immediately seized on as evidence that Trump and Republicans were not serious about cultivating support among voters of color.
It also spawned a series of internet jokes and memes about what exactly a “black job” entails.
“They’re taking jobs from blacks and they’re taking jobs from Latinos, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history,” Trump said Thursday, speaking of migrants crossing the southern border of the Crossing USA. He then repeated the reference at a campaign rally in Virginia on Friday, adding that Black Americans who have been employed “for a long time” are losing their jobs to immigrants.
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Black political strategists, elected officials and organizational leaders quickly joined hundreds of social media users to post photos of themselves at their workplaces and joke about the relativizing and racist nature of the former president’s comments.
Among them was Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic representative to the House of Representatives from the US Virgin Islands, who posted a photo on social media platform X on Friday alongside two women in her congressional office with the caption: “Another day in Congress to do our ‘black jobs.’”
Malcolm Kenyatta, a black Democrat from Pennsylvania and surrogate for President Joe Biden’s campaign, joked: “Did we ever find out what a ‘black job’ is? People are asking about me.”
And Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, also criticized Trump’s comments, writing on X that Black Americans “are not limited to one #BlackJob.”
Republicans, who have sought to capitalize on Biden’s dwindling support among Black voters, have made the immigration issue a cornerstone of their appeals to the bloc, whose turnout in November could decide the election. Trump has said that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, and has repeatedly claimed that the migrants crossing the border into Mexico are refugees from prisons and mental institutions, something the evidence does not support.
Immigrants have made up a growing share of the U.S. workforce in recent years, but economic experts say their presence has been healthy for the country’s economy. And while Trump has argued that immigrant workers are stealing jobs from U.S. citizens, the country’s foreign-born workforce is not large enough to offset the job creation of the past three years.
Democrats have increasingly gone on the offensive. In a statement, Biden’s communications director, Michael Tyler, pointed to the online flurry of reactions to Trump’s comments, saying that black voters “swept Trump away all night because of his racist tirade.”
“They know Trump has done nothing for black communities, so he’s trying to pit communities of color against each other as a distraction,” he said. “We will not be distracted. We see Trump’s racism clearly, and that is why black voters will reject him in November.”
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