By the Republican National Committee

REPUBLICANS ARE COMMITTED TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY

• The Republican National Committee (RNC) is celebrating Black History Month by recognizing the extraordinary contributions of the Black community to our country.
• Last cycle, the RNC made a multimillion-dollar commitment to our strategic minority engagement efforts, including in Black American communities across the country.
  • Thanks to that historic commitment, Americans elected John James (MI-10) and Wesley Hunt (TX-38) to Congress, growing the total number of Black Republicans in Congress to its highest total since 1877.
  • Overall, the Republican Party gained 6 points with Black voters this past midterm election cycle and we remain committed to building on those gains ahead of the 2024 election.
• Our commitment is not new; the Republican Party has a long history of electing Black leaders and empowering Black Americans through historic firsts.
  • In 1870, Republican Hiram Revels (R-MS) became the first Black American to serve in Congress as a U.S. Senator.
  • That same year, Republican Joseph H. Rainey (R-SC) became the first Black American member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
  • In 1879, Republican Blanche K. Bruce (R-MS) became the first Black American to preside over the U.S. Senate.
  • In 2013, Tim Scott (R-SC) became the first Black American to serve in both chambers of Congress.
  • In 2020, Republican Mark Robinson became the first Black American elected Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina.
  • In 2022, Republican Winsome Sears became the first Black woman to serve as Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor.
• Since 2022, the Republican Party has seen a shift from Black elected officials who are giving up their long-held party affiliations to identify as Republicans.
  • In February 2022, South Carolina Councilwoman Harriet Holman switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to recognize her pro-life and conservative values.
  • In July 2023, Mesha Mainor, a Georgia state legislator from Atlanta, switched her party affiliation to Republican after she was outcast from the Democrat Party for her support of school choice vouchers.
  • In September 2023, Eric Johnson, the Mayor of Dallas, flipped his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican and called for more mayors to champion “law and order” and fiscal conservatism.

BIDEN’S SUPPORT AMONG BLACK AMERICANS HAS FALLEN AS REPUBLICANS MAKE INROADS

• Biden’s radical policies have hurt the Black community, leading Black voters to increasingly reject Biden – and the Democrat Party – for failing to best represent their interests.
  • A recent poll found Biden’s approval among the Black community has dropped 25 percent since 2021, while another found that just 50 percent of Black adults approve of Biden.
• Biden’s failed policies for Black Americans has come on top of nearly half a century of racist and racially insensitive remarks from Biden.
  • Biden has spent decades lying that he was a part of the Civil Rights movement, falsely claiming he marched and helped desegregate businesses.
  • Biden worked with segregationists in the U.S. Senate to oppose busing to help desegregate schools, saying he did not want his children growing up in a “racial jungle.”
  • During just the 2020 election, Biden declared that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” and that “you ain’t Black” if you don’t vote for him.
  • Biden has repeatedly lied about getting arrested while attempting to visit Nelson Mandela.
  • Biden once even said that “I’m like the token Black or the token woman, I was the token young person.”
• Meanwhile, Republicans are committed to the Black community and continue to welcome new members into our Party of liberty and opportunity.

BIDEN’S FAILED ECONOMY HAS LEFT BLACK AMERICANS BEHIND

• Black Americans are being left behind in Biden’s economy, burdened with higher prices and lower wages when accounting for inflation.
  • Black voters ranked inflation as their top issue in determining who to support during the recent midterm election.
  • 80 percent of Black voters have a negative view of the current economic conditions.
  • In a troubling sign for Democrats, Black voters in Representative Jamal Bowman’s (D-NY) district admit that they are dissatisfied with “Bidenomics” claiming it “hasn’t really hit them in the pocket.”
• Wage gains have slowed dramatically for Black Americans compared to other demographic groups.
• According to a study by the Dallas Fed, inflation is disproportionately hurting Black households, with 53.7 percent of Black Americans stressed by high inflation compared to just 43.6 percent of white Americans.
  • Black Americans bear the brunt of rising prices, as necessities make up a larger share of Black families’ budgets while Black Americans disproportionately live in food deserts and are forced to either pay higher prices at convenience stores or travel further for groceries.
• Biden created an economic climate that is hurting the Black community, yet he signed legislation to give $80 billion to the IRS for additional audits and an army of 87,000 new IRS agents who will disproportionately target minority Americans.
  • Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the IRS as other taxpayers according to a study by economists from Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and the Treasury Department.
  • In 2021, the IRS audited Americans earning $25,000 a year at five times the rate of other groups and directed “more than half” of its audits at those making less than $75,000.
  • The five counties with the highest audit rates are all predominantly Black, according to a 2019 study.

BLACK AMERICANS HAVE BEEN DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED BY RISING CRIME

• Crime is on the rise in Biden’s America, often disproportionally impacting Black Americans in Democrat-run cities across the country.
  • Last year, Washington, D.C., had the highest number of homicides since 1997with 274, up 36 percent from 2022.
  • Memphis, TN, experienced record-breaking homicide levels and ended 2023 with the highest murder rate in the nation among large cities.
  • Chicago recorded the largest spike in robberies in over 20 years.
  • Oakland saw an increase in robberies, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts.
  • All the while, pharmacies and retail stores are closing due to out-of-control crime.
• As crime surges across the nation, Democrat officials are astonishingly still pushing to defund the police.
  • Only 28 percent of Black Americans support the Democrats’ defund the police policies.
  • Instead, Black Americans want police to retain a local presence and believe that defund the police is a “contributing factor to violent crime.”

BIDEN’S OPEN BORDER POLICIES ARE NEGATIVELY IMPACTING BLACK AMERICANS

• Biden’s open border policies have allowed drugs like fentanyl to pour into American communities, further contributing to the drug epidemic.
  • Black men are the most likely demographic group to die from a drug overdose.
  • In Democrat-run Washington, D.C., nearly every overdose death in 2022 involved fentanyl – with Black D.C. residents accounting for 84 percent of the opioid deaths since 2017.
• Unchecked illegal immigration has overwhelmed state and local governments, leading to “extremely painful” budget cuts for essential services like police, sanitation, and education.
  • In Chicago, city officials have sparked outrage by converting a closed school in a primarily Black neighborhood in to a shelter for illegal immigrants.
• Illegal immigration significantly harms the economic bottom line of working-class families, with Black Americans hit especially hard.
  • Black men are the biggest victims of low-wage illegal labor.

DEMOCRAT SCHOOL CLOSURES HAVE HURT BLACK STUDENTS

• Democrat-run cities kept kids out of the classroom for far too long, despite the fact that these school closures disproportionately hurt low-income and minority students.
• The NAEP report, better known as “the nation’s report card,” found that reading scores fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years, while math scores saw their first ever decline since NAEP began tracking achievement in the 1970s.
  • This decline was even worse for minority students, with reading scores for Black students dropping by 7 points and math scores dropping by 13 points since 2020.
  • Low-income, Black, and Hispanic students were put at a further disadvantage due to school closures, “in part because their schools were more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time.”
• The Harvard Center for Education Policy found that students who learned remotely for the majority of 2020-2021 “on average… lost the equivalent of about 50 percent of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window.”
  • This study also found that low income, Black, and Latino students fell further behind compared to students who are high income, white, or Asian, leading to “the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation.”

BIDEN’S STUDENT-LAST AGENDA HAS LEFT BLACK AMERICANS IN THE DUST

• Biden is only concerned about wealthy student loan borrowers and his teachers’ union donors, leaving students behind.
• Biden, who is “not a charter school fan,” has already taken steps toward fulfilling his pledge that charter schools would be “gone” if elected president.
  • In March 2022, the Biden administration proposed, and later backtracked on, a rule that would have given traditional school districts virtual veto power over competition, essentially stymieing the growth of charter schools.
  • A clear majority of Black Americans support school choice.
• Biden also pushed for a student debt bailout, which experts warn would cost taxpayers billions, worsen inflation, and disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
  • Canceling student debt would worsen economic inequality as nearly two-thirds of all student debt is owed by the top 40 percent of households.
  • “All serious economists agree” that student loan forgiveness is regressive.

BLACK COMMUNITIES HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN BIDEN’S VACCINE MANDATE

• Biden supported Democrat vaccine mandates, which disproportionality hit the Black community.
• In America’s three largest cities – all run by Democrats – roughly 50 percent of Black residents were banned from going to restaurants, bars, and movie theaters.
• The vaccine mandate also hurt Black-owned businesses.
  • In the “less wealthy South and West Side neighborhoods” of Chicago, business had “gone down dramatically” after the vaccine mandate was implemented.
  • In Leimert Park, a predominantly Black community in Los Angeles, business owner Anthony Jolly said he believed that “people will make a decision to go elsewhere, where there is no mandate.”

  Originally posted here.