At a certain point, conservatives should probably just shut up before they say something really stupid and racist.
Conservative activist Rafael Cruz argued that African-Americans need to be “educated” to oppose minimum wage laws, citing the work of a Black conservative member of the Wall Street Journal editorial boardA black conservative said it, which makes it okay, except that it really doesn't.
“Jason Riley said in an interview, Did you know before we had minimum wage laws, Black unemployment and white unemployment were the same? If we increase the minimum wage, Black unemployment will skyrocket,” Cruz said during a speech to the Western Williamson County Republican Club in Texas last month. “See, he understands it, but the average Black does not.”Except that Jason Riley really doesn't understand it, and Rafael Cruz doesn't either. Because basically what both are saying is that in order for black people to be employed, their employers must be able to pay them like slaves. I have no idea why black people might consider that offensive, or why conservatives seem to think that the minimum wage only affects the unemployment rate for blacks. These things are a mystery to me. But you were saying?
After repeating a common conservative misrepresentation of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s views, Cruz recounted a conversation he had with a Black pastor in Bakersfield, California, during which he mentioned that Republicans favored the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.I don't even know where to begin with this. First of all, I'm calling bullshit on this supposed conversation that Rafael had with a black pastor, because there's simply no way in hell that Rafael knows more about the history of civil rights legislation than a black pastor does. And second, he conveniently ignores the part where those Democrats who opposed civil rights legislation mostly started voting Republican after that.“I said, as a matter of fact, ‘Did you know that civil rights legislation was passed by Republicans? It was passed by a Republican Senate under the threat of a filibuster by the Democrats,’” Cruz told the audience. “[He said] ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ And then I said, ‘Did you know that every member of the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats from the South?’‘Oh I didn’t know that.’ You know, they need to be educated.”
All in all, though, you have yet another example showing that yes, indeed, the conservative movement is filled with racists, and I'm sure Rafael didn't have these sorts of conversations with his son. And once again, conservative attempts to pretend to care about "the average black" really just show that they're incredibly racist assholes who talk down to blacks, not because they're actually seeking the votes of blacks, but because they're pandering to the sorts of white people who really, truly believe that blacks were better off during slavery. Or you thought that "economics" were why they always bring up black unemployment when they're talking about the minimum wage?