In what must have been an effort to prove that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s dad went on a rant about how black people need an education. Speaking before the Western Williamson Republican Club last month, Rafael Cruz said that “the average black doesn’t understand” that minimum wage is bad.
During his speech, which can be seen on this Buzzfeed video, the evangelical pastor mentioned that he had to educate a group of black pastors in California that Civil Rights legislation was passed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
“’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 said.
Poppa Cruz then went on to say that he plans on buying 15 to 20 copies of the book Please Stop Helping Us written by conservative black author Jason Riley for black leaders. The book, according to Cruz, is evidence that black folks just need education on how to pick themselves up by the bootstraps.
“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.’ See, he understands it, but the average black does not.”
This isn’t the first time that the elder Cruz expressed doubt about the intelligence of blacks. Speaking at the FreedomWorks summit in February 2013, he said blacks were uniformed and deceived because they should be voting Republican.