Trump-endorsed Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker recently claimed that Black politicians have done “absolutely nothing” for the Black community.
While speaking on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a conservative podcast, Walker said that when he was at a Juneteenth Celebration, he thought about how civil rights icon Martin Luther King advanced the Black community’s civil rights “up to a certain point.”
“Now it’s up to our leaders who we’ve elected to office that are Black to take us even farther,” Walker said. “But yet they’ve done absolutely nothing but at least looked out for themselves. So we need leaders that advance us, not to take us back. Not looking in the rearview mirror.”
His comment could be seen as a dig at congressional Democrats. There are currently 63 Black Democratic congressmen compared to the 3 Black Republican congressmen. While the Black Democratic Caucus has sought to advance voting rights reform, police reforms, infrastructure reforms, and other programs that would benefit the Black community, those efforts have been unanimously blunted by the largely white Republican Congress members.
In short, Walker is blaming the wrong racial group for the lack of advancement in Black civil rights. He’s also ignoring the fact that his own party is against so-called “critical race theory”, diversity trainings, the Black Lives Matter racial justice movement, and other efforts to fight racist prejudice in society. In fact, Trump and other Republicans have referred to these as un-American and even “communist propaganda.”
So to think that his party will suddenly support Black civil rights if he gets elected is also a fantasy.