Rafael Cruz: The ‘average Black’ doesn’t understand why the minimum wage is bad

By Arturo Garcia
Tuesday, September 2, 2014 17:22 EDT

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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 board, Buzzfeed reported.
“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.”
Riley and other conservatives have argued for years that minimum wage laws disproportionately affect the Black community. In 2011, Riley wrote that they “remain politically popular, especially among liberals enamored of wealth redistribution schemes.”
More recently, Riley criticized Attorney General Eric Holder in connection to the federal investigation into the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last month, saying Holder should tell people protesting against police there to “pull up their pants and finish school.”
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 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.”
Cruz did not mention that one Democratic senator who opposed the bill, Strom Thurmond, switched sides and became a longtime Republican. Cruz also failed to mention that, according to an analysis by Harry J. Enten in The Guardian last year, no southern Republicans voted for the bill, while Democratic opposition to it was concentrated in party members from former Confederate states.
“It seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what they are doing when joining the Democratic party,” Enten wrote. “They recognize that the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans.”


voting results Civil Rights Act of 1964

Vote totals

Totals are in "Yea–Nay" format:

• The original House version: 290–130   (69–31%).
• Cloture in the Senate: 71–29   (71–29%).
• The Senate version: 73–27   (73–27%).
• The Senate version, as voted on by the House: 289–126   (70–30%).

By party

The original House version:

• Democratic Party: 152–96   (61–39%)
• Republican Party: 138–34   (80–20%)

Cloture in the Senate^:

• Democratic Party: 44–23   (66–34%)
• Republican Party: 27–6   (82–18%)

The Senate version:

• Democratic Party: 46–21   (69–31%)
• Republican Party: 27–6   (82–18%)

The Senate version, voted on by the House:

• Democratic Party: 153–91   (63–37%)
• Republican Party: 136–35   (80–20%)

By party and region

Note: "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:

• Southern Democrats: 7–87   (7–93%)
• Southern Republicans: 0–10   (0–100%)

• Northern Democrats: 145–9   (94–6%)
• Northern Republicans: 138–24   (85–15%)

The Senate version:

• Southern Democrats: 1–20   (5–95%) (only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
• Southern Republicans: 0–1   (0–100%) (John Tower of Texas)
• Northern Democrats: 45–1   (98–2%) (only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against)
• Northern Republicans: 27–5   (84–16%)

Now I don't know if the Cruz's are up to speed on our history but the United States Senate in 1964 was lead by Majority leader Mike Mansfield of Montana a Democrat. That's a pretty good sign that it was a democratically controlled Senate.
 The first civil rights act was proposed in 1941 by Vito Marcantonio democratic representative of NY 18th district. Full disclosure Vito was a socialist.
Vito introduced a second civil rights bill in 1942.
In 1963 the version similar to that which was passed was drafted by President John F Kennedy and presented to the House of Representatives on June 20 1963 by Representative, Manny Cellar a NY democrat. The bill was co sponsored by  James Roosevelt (D Ca.) and William McCulloch (R OH).


In the senate the bill was presented by two republicans Everett Dirksen (R ILL) and Thomas Kuchel (R CA) and two democrats Mike Mansfield (D MT) and Hubert H Humphrey (D MN).


The final bill was opposed by Senator Barry Goldwater (R AZ) He felt Title 2 The prohibition of unequal treatment in public places (Jim Crow) to be a violation of States rights


It cannot be determined if  "every member" of the KKK was a democrat. With the no southern republican votes in favor in the senate one would assume that the clan was of mixed political stripe.


Lyndon Johnson knew when he signed the bill that the solid south of the democratic party was in danger. 5 southern states swung to the republican side in 1964.


By 1968 the entire south voted against the co-sponsor of the bill Hubert Humphrey, Voting republican or for George Wallace an anti civil rights independent. The south has been solidly republican since.