Thanks to an eyebrow-raising comment about “Black jobs,” Trump has launched a new meme across social media mocking the very idea. Black Twitter in particular, after asking “what the heck is a Black job,” is delivering the goods with reactions and jokes to the idea that a job could have a race.
As much as President Joe Biden appeared to struggle through the 2024 debate, he didn’t say anything nearly as absurd as Donald Trump’s remarks about racially coded professional positions.
What are Black Jobs, Trump?
“Black jobs” is something that tumbled out of the wild mind of former President and current candidate Donald Trump on the debate stage on June 27 while he was trying to attack Biden on the immigration issue.
“The fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border,” he said. “They’re taking Black jobs now, and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking Black jobs, and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re gonna see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”
The idea that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs from U.S. citizens, a popular right-wing talking point that is completely false, is older even than both of these candidates. However, this may be the first time that a presidential hopeful claimed that jobs could be Black or Hispanic. If he meant that immigrants are taking jobs from Black and Hispanic citizens specifically, that would also be an unprecedented claim from an official presidential debate stage.
After the words were uttered, Twitter users scrambled to try and figure out what a Black job could be. It’s unlikely that Trump will offer a clarification on his comments, but most appear to be assuming that this was an attempt to appeal to Black voters. It did not go well.
When straight answers to the questions about the meaning of the term “Black jobs” were not forthcoming, Black Twitter did what they do best. Joke tweets using reaction images and funny gifs and videos paired with remarks about Black jobs, including the working and pursuit thereof, proliferated across the platform on debate night and the day after.
“Doing the application for the black jobs like” wrote one user over a clip of the character “Loc Dog” from the 1996 film Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood filling out a job application.
Others jokingly lamented that they would have had so much more success looking for work online if they had only searched for Black jobs instead of just “jobs.” Even Black politicians got in on this meme, including Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones, famous for being expelled from his seat for protesting the lack of gun control laws soon after the March 2023 Covenant School shooting.
He was later unanimously voted back into his seat as an “interim representative” and continues to serve to this day.
Black jobs meme examples
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