Things got rather heated when MSNBC host Joy Reid challenged Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) Thursday following his comments on whether life was better during the Jim Crow era.

Donalds was at an event in Philadelphia this week when he discussed how the black marriage rate was higher back then than it is now. His comments have come under fire by many on the Left, who have interpreted the remark to be about how Jim Crow laws benefitted black people at the time despite the fact that they kept them in segregation and prohibited them from voting. Reid tried to extract a further explanation during the segment.

“During Jim Crow, could your family have existed? You are in an interracial marriage. Your wife is a white conservative activist. Could your family have existed at all during Jim Crow?”, she asked.

“No, it could not, Joy, and we all know that,” Donalds replied, referencing the law against interracial marriage at the time. “But that’s why I am blessed to live in America today as opposed to America during that time. But we cannot ignore the realities of not having fathers in homes. That is important to our black people today and all people today as we move forward toward a better America.”

“What I’m grateful for is we do not live in the Jim Crow era and that fathers do not face that kind of lynching,” Reid said.

“So am I. I’m very grateful of that,” Donalds said.

“Perhaps don’t bring up Jim Crow when you’re trying to make that example,” Reid said.

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Donalds was raised by a single mother. Both of Reid’s parents were college graduates, meeting as graduate students at the University of Iowa. Reid’s mother went on to become a college professor while Reid was in high school after she divorced Reid’s father, who returned to the Congo.

According to the Census Bureau, over a third of black men and over a quarter of black women were never married in 1970. In 2020, these percentages increased to 51.4% for black men and 47.5% for black women.