Washington.- Donald Trump warned during his debate with Joe Biden and again at a rally this Friday that migrants were taking “African American jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” from Americans, infuriating critics who called it a racist and insulting attempt to broaden his appeal beyond his white conservative base.
While President Joe Biden’s shaky performance in Thursday night’s debate sparked widespread concern among fellow Democrats about his preparedness, Trump also repeatedly made false claims and repeated conspiracy theories he has long promoted during his campaign.
Trump suggested without evidence that Democrats want migrants to displace Americans as voters, and described the state of the nation under Biden as worse than during the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has often downplayed the march’s racist overtones, once saying there were “fine people on both sides.”
Trump’s description of a country on the brink, besieged by unfettered immigration and plagued by racial strife and economic chaos, echoed his long-standing rhetoric about the state of the U.S. It’s a pessimistic view that has long appealed to the Republican Party’s largely white, far-right base but has also alienated other Americans, especially voters of color.
“The fact is, his big blow to African Americans is the millions of people he’s allowed to come across the border. They’re taking away African Americans’ jobs,” Trump said during the CNN debate. “They are taking away the jobs of African Americans and they are taking away the jobs of Hispanics. And you haven’t seen it yet, but you are going to see something that is going to be the worst in our history,” he warned without specifying the danger.
But Trump and his allies believe that such rhetoric may have more appeal among African-American and Hispanic communities, which have been dissatisfied with Biden’s performance in office this year. Trump repeated the comments during a rally Friday in Virginia.
The phrase “jobs for black people” was widely condemned by Democrats and African-American leaders as vague and insulting.
“Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison joked Friday during a news conference with former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in Atlanta. Other prominent Biden allies, including Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson and Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock, also condemned Trump’s remarks after the debate.
“There is no such thing as a Black job. This misinformed characterization is a denial of the ubiquity of Black talent. We are doctors, lawyers, school teachers, police officers and firefighters. The list is endless,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. “A ‘Black job’ is an American job. It’s troubling that a presidential candidate would seek to make a nonexistent distinction. But the divisive nature of this comment is not surprising for Donald Trump.”
Trump’s allies rejected the criticism as not reflecting the president’s overall message.
“He was referring to African-American jobs. And we’ve been using that term for a long time,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Federation of African-American Conservatives. “It’s any job. Instead of African-Americans having unlimited access to all kinds of jobs, illegal immigrants are taking their jobs away.”
Much economic research shows that immigration has helped increase employment, with a 2024 paper by economists Alessandro Caiumi and Giovanni Peri finding that immigration between 2000 and 2019 had a positive effect on the wages of less fortunate workers. educated born in the United States. Still, separate research has suggested that greater immigration may have hurt the wages of less educated African American men, although it was one of several factors.
Asked to clarify what Trump meant by describing a “black job” during an interview with NBC News, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is black and is being considered to be Trump’s vice presidential nominee, sidestepped the question, talking instead about homeless veterans.
Some African-American adults do believe there is a chance that immigration will hurt the job opportunities of workers already here. According to an AP-NORC poll conducted in March, about 4 in 10 African-American adults consider it a “significant risk” that the number of jobs available for American workers will shrink when immigrants come to the United States, either legally or illegally. But the poll also found that about 3 in 10 African-American adults believe it is a major benefit to have immigrants fill jobs that Americans don’t want.
In some communities like Chicago, rising numbers of immigrants have led to greater economic anxiety and concerns that government resources are not being allocated fairly. In cities like Chicago, Denver and New York, racial justice groups have been at the forefront of mitigating potential conflicts between communities of color and the undocumented over issues such as employment.
For some African-American activists, the comments did little to change the state of the presidential race.
Michael Blake, founder and executive director of the Kairos Democracy Project, said “it’s hard for anyone to believe that (Trump) means he’s taking away quality jobs.”
“It’s our responsibility to tell the story of the benefits of diversity, rather than the fears of it. And the notion that these people are taking it away from you is a message of fear rather than asking, ‘How do we all win?'” Blake added. “When you embrace all races, we all win. We must not allow fear of the past to suppress the prosperity of the future, because we can all win.”
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