Former President Donald J. Trump claimed during the presidential debate Thursday that immigrants entering the United States illegally were taking “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” an ill-founded claim that Democrats immediately seized on as evidence that Mr. Trump and the Republicans were not serious about cultivating support from voters of color.
It also sparked a slew of jokes and memes on the internet about what exactly a “black job” is.
“They’re taking jobs away from black people and they’re taking jobs away from Hispanics 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, referring to migrants crossing the southern U.S. border. He repeated the reference at a campaign rally in Virginia on Friday, adding that black Americans who have had jobs “for a long time” are losing their jobs to immigrants.
Black political strategists, elected officials and organizational leaders quickly joined hundreds of social media users to post photos of themselves in their workplaces and make jokes about the reductive and racist nature of the comments of the former president.
Among them was Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate to the House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands, who posted an X-rated photo alongside two women in his congressional office On Friday, the text was captioned: “Another day in Congress doing our ‘black work.’ »
Malcolm Kenyatta, a black Democrat from Pennsylvania and a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign, joked: “Have we ever understood what “black work” is? I wonder.
Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, also criticized Mr. Trump’s remarks, writing on X that black Americans “are not confined to one #BlackJob.”
Republicans, who have sought to capitalize on President Biden’s weakening support among black voters, have made immigration a cornerstone of their appeals to the bloc, whose turnout in November could decide the election. Mr. Trump has said migrants are “poisoning the bloodstream” of the country and has repeatedly claimed that migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are escapees from prisons and mental institutions, something the evidence does not support.
Immigrants have become a growing part of the American workforce in recent years, but economic experts say their presence is good for the country’s economy. And while Trump says migrant workers are stealing jobs from American citizens, the country’s foreign-born population isn’t large enough to offset the job gains of the past three years.
The Democrats are becoming more and more offensive. In a statement, Mr. Biden’s communications director, Michael Tyler, highlighted the wave of online responses to Mr. Trump’s comments, saying that black voters “dragged Trump all night for his racist remarks.”
“They know Trump has done nothing for black communities, so he’s trying to pit communities of color against each other to distract,” he said. “We’re not distracted. We see Trump’s racism clearly, and that’s why black voters will reject him in November.”
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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