I found this political meme on Facebook while looking for something to fact check. It was posted on October 4, 2018 by the Political Memes page, which claims to be a “Top News Feed with a little Common Sense Political Humor”. It claims its news sources are “as REAL as it gets” and lists “ILoveMyFreedom.org, StarPolitical.com, WayneDupree.com, and Various Mainstream Outlets” as its sources. This meme shows Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Trump with captions under each, implying Clinton’s responsibility for “record black imprisonment”, Obama’s responsibility for “record black welfare”, and Trump’s responsibility for “record black employment”. The meme is clearly meant to paint Donald Trump as more beneficial to the African American community than the last two Democratic Presidents. Though this meme was posted in October of 2018, it seems to reference back to a tweet made by Donald Trump in January of 2018 in response to criticism from people like Jay-Z who took issue with Trumps characterization of African nations as “shitholes”. Trump’s tweet claims that “because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!”.

The first claim which I checked was that of President Trump being responsible for record black employment. First, I went to DuckDuckGo.com and searched “trump black employment site:snopes.com site:politifact.com site:factcheck.org“. This led me to FactCheck.org’s “Trump Takes Undue Credit on Black Unemployment” and Politifact.com’s “Donald Trump is partly correct in response to Jay-Z about black unemployment“. I also went to the Wikipedia entries for “Unemployment in the United States” and the Employment section of “Economic Policy of Donald Trump“.

From these sources, it seems that it is factually accurate that as of 2018, African American unemployment was indeed at its lowest recorded point “since recording began in 1972 and 2003” (Wikipedia, “Economic Policy of Donald Trump“). However, the downward trend in African American unemployment, actually started during Barack Obama’s presidency, following a peak in 2009 at the end of the Great Recession. This trend can be seen in the chart below, taken from FactCheck.org and based on information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to Politifact.com, economists also doubt the ability of any President to take credit or blame for statistics like unemployment during their presidencies, as “many other factors play into economic results.” The claim that African American unemployment is at its lowest under Trump is indeed a fact, as each of my sources and statistics confirm, though attributing this fact to Trump’s actions is misleading.

The next claim I fact checked was that there was record black welfare under Barack Obama. This one was more difficult to find information for, which I attribute mainly to the lack of definition of “welfare” in the meme. According to Wikipedia, welfare in the United States usually refers to “means-tested cash benefits…[or] means-tested programs that help individuals or families meet basic nees, including…healthcare through Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits and food and nutrition programs (SNAP)… Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and Medicare”. After getting this definition, I went back to DuckDuckGo and again searched Politifact.com, Snopes.com, and FactCheck.org for various permutations of “African American SNAP”, “African American food stamps”, “African American welfare”, Since the array of welfare programs is so wide, it was difficult to find any figures specifically relating to race. I did find one page on FactCheck.org from 2012 disputing Newt Gingrich’s claim that President Obama added more people to the food stamp program than any other president when in fact George Bush added the most. The page does concede that more people were enrolled in the food stamps program than ever before, but that Obama was not wholly responsible for this. Also, another page giving Obama’s Final Numbers on FactCheck.org claims that food stamp enrollment reached its peak of 49 million people in 2012, but had decreased to 43 million people by the end of his presidency. Wikipedia’s page on the snap program gives slightly different figures, but presents a similar trend. The Wikipedia page on the SNAP page does give a breakdown of race participation from 2010, with 22% of participants being Black and representing the second largest race bracket behind whites (37%), but does not provide a historical breakdown for how these figures change. Overall, the claim that Obama was responsible for record black welfare is nearly unverifiable. Not only does the lack of definition for welfare make it difficult to even find statistics, but there seems to be little available information regarding the racial distribution of welfare programs and nothing to suggest that Obama is single-handedly responsible for the peaks which exist in some programs.

The final claim I researched was that Clinton was responsible for record black imprisonment. This claim was much easier to research. On DuckDuckGo.com, I once again searched Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and Politifact.com for “Clinton black imprisonment”, which led to a FactCheck.org page on Bill Clinton and the 1994 Crime Bill and a Politifact.com page “Black Lives Matter activist says ‘the Clintons’ passed policy that led to mass incarceration“. I also searched the aforementioned 1994 Crime Bill on Wikipedia. According to these pages, it is true that the policies enacted by Clinton helped to overcrowd prisons and that a “disproportionate amount of minorities” ended up in prisons (Wikipedia). However, not all the increases in black imprisonment were due to President Clinton, with some of the increase attributed to Nixon’s war on drugs. While I could not find any figures to give the peak of black imprisonment, general incarceration figures do not seem to indicate a peak during Clinton’s presidency, but instead peak around the end of George Bush’s presidency. Thus, the claim that Clinton was responsible for record black imprisonment may have some basis in fact due to the 1994 Crime Bill’s influence disproportionately affecting minorities, but there is no information suggesting that the peak in black incarceration occurred under Clinton, nor that he would be solely responsible for the trend that might create a peak.

Overall, this political meme is one third factual at best, and even then is very misleading. The claims about Clinton and Obama do not seem based on any available figures and present a misleading picture of the ones which are. The claim about Trump is true, but misleading as Trump is not directly responsible for the record low in black unemployment and the trend started before his presidency.