Simone Biles appeared to take a jab at former President Donald Trump and his recent comments about “Black jobs” following her gold medal win in the women’s gymnastics all-around final at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“I love my black job,” Biles wrote on Twitter early Friday morning in response to a tweet from a Philadelphia singer-songwriter, Ricky Davila, who’d started the bit. Davila had shared a photo of Biles with her medal and wrote, “Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job.”
The tweets not-so-subtly alluded to a line Trump has trotted out lately, where he’s claimed that migrants are coming to the United States and taking “Black jobs.” The remark has, understandably, garnered plenty of controversy and criticism, as it not only manages to stoke fears about immigration and the dubious notion that migrants take jobs from U.S. workers, but it also reinforces racial stereotypes about what kind of jobs Black people do.
The line garnered pushback and went semi-viral after Trump delivered it during the first presidential debate against Joe Biden (though it was largely overshadowed by Biden’s overall performance and the concerns it raised about his age and viability). While Trump has repeated the comment at some of his rallies since then, it returned to the popular consciousness this week when he used it during his appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists.
“I will tell you that coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs,” Trump said during the contentious interview. When asked to define a Black job, he said, “A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is.”
On a much more fun note, Biles made history with her all-around final win, a prize she first won at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The victory made her the first U.S. gymnast to win the women’s all-around competition twice and just the third gymnast to do it ever, following the Soviet Union’s Larisa Latynina (1956 and 1960) and Czechoslovakia Vera Čáslavská (1964 and 1968).
