Donald Trump's "They're Taking Black Jobs"

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About

Donald Trump's "They're Taking Black Jobs" refers to a quote uttered by former President Donald Trump while trying to comment on the role immigrants play in the U.S. economy during the 2024 CNN Presidential Debate in late June of that year. Trump's quote prompted jokes, memes, controversy and confusion among netizens as to what he meant by "Black jobs."

Origin

On June 27th, 2024, while speaking about immigration and the economy during the CNN Presidential Debate, former President Donald Trump stated that immigrants were taking American jobs from Black and Hispanic workers, saying, "They're taking Black jobs now and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people." The moment was shared on YouTube^[1] by the official NBC News channel that day (seen below).

Shortly after the quote was uttered on live TV during the debate, it started to be referenced in numerous memes and jokes around social media, particularly Twitter / X. For example, on June 27th, X^[5] user @Naijaboy41 posted a meme using a clip from the 2002 comedy Undercover Brother with a reference to Trump's statement, accumulating over 4.4 million views, 122,000 likes and 17,000 reposts in roughly 24 hours (seen below).

Me clocking into my new black job pic.twitter.com/4o0wN36wx5

— Naijaboy41 (@Naijaboy41) June 28, 2024

Spread

Donald Trump's "Black Job" comment quickly went viral on social media that night and in the following days as netizens started to share memes and jokes about what he meant by that. For instance, on June 28th, 2024, X^[2] user @slothtitss posted the Drake Helps Lil Yachty With the Laptop meme, captioning it as, "me realizing the job market hasn’t been hiring because we weren’t applying to black jobs." The post (seen below) received more than 1.7 million views and 81,000 likes in a few hours.

me realizing the job market hasn’t been hiring because we weren’t applying to black jobs

pic.twitter.com/4BzGcbBo69

— 🦥’ (@slothtitss) June 28, 2024

The statement was also the subject of comedy skit videos on TikTok, as user @evolve_america^[3] uploaded on June 28th, a POV video (seen below, left) joking about Trump's "Black Jobs" quote. The video amassed roughly 7,100 likes in a few hours. On the same day, TikTok^[4] user @cam.farrar also mocked Trump's quote (seen below, right), which received more than 7,100 likes in a few hours.

@evolve_america What a night!!! Trump said “immigrants are taking the Black jobs” . I knew something was going on in the job market so yall send me some black jobs 🤣🤣 #fyp #blackpeople #blackjob #debatenight #presidentialdebate #biden #trump #cnn ♬ original sound – Evolve America

@cam.farrar whats your Black job? i didn’t know i was limited to certain jobs based on my race 🙃 #presidentialdebate #election #biden #trump #fyp ♬ Do u remember zest bounce – Ziah150