Trump’s claim that undocumented workers are ‘naturally’ fit for farm labor harkens to racist theory about enslaved Blacks

“The way that he talks about them, it’s like, you know, a step behind slavery,” said John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday remarked that undocumented workers are “naturally” suited for farm labor, sparking outrage and evoking long-debunked racist theories about Black and Brown people being better at outdoor labor because of their physiological makeup.

“You can’t replace them very easily,” Trump said of undocumented immigrants working on farms during an interview with CNBC. “You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They’re just not doing that work. And they’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tried.”

He added, “These people do it naturally.”

The president shared that he recently asked a farmer of undocumented workers: “What if they get a bad back?”

Trump continued, “He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die…they’re very, very special people.”

Trump on undocumented farm workers: "People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They've tried, we've tried, everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally … they don't get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die." pic.twitter.com/HxXtKtIPLa— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2025

John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, told theGrio that the president’s remarks about the physicality of undocumented workers reminded him of a “slave type of mentality” that was used to justify the enslavement of African Americans.

“The way that he talks about them, it’s like, you know, a step behind slavery. I hate to go there,” said Boyd. “I want to remind people that, whatever your views on immigration, these are also human beings in the flesh.”

The idea that a person has more “natural” physical characteristics that make them more suitable for labor, specifically outdoor farm labor, harkens back to U.S. slavery in the 1800s. At the time, white physicians in the South argued that Blacks had thicker skin, a higher tolerance for heat, and were immune to some illnesses–all of which were used to justify their enslavement and forced free labor.

“These fallacies, presented as fact and legitimized in medical journals, bolstered society’s view that enslaved people were fit for little outside forced labor and provided support for racist ideology and discriminatory public policies,” reports The New York Times.

Trump’s remarks came as he suggested his administration is currently mulling over policies to allow undocumented farm workers to remain in the country amid his aggressive immigration enforcement operations. White farmers have expressed concern that the removal of undocumented workers would impact their business and the U.S. food supply.

“We’re taking care of our farmers. We can’t let our farmers not have anybody,” Trump told CNBC. “We’re doing things that are…very difficult to do and very complex, but it works really well. We’re sending them back, and then they’re schooling, they’re learning, they’re coming in, they’re coming in legally. We have a lot of that going on.”

“There are farmers in this country who rely on that population to do the heavy work,” explained Boyd, who noted that Black farmers largely do not rely on migrant labor.

Reflecting on Trump’s immigration policies, the longtime civil rights activist said Hispanic laborers are being used in a manner similar to the way Black laborers were used in the Jim Crow era.

Boyd explained, “They didn’t want to pay Black people in this country; we went from sharecroppers, and they didn’t want to pay us. And then they brought Hispanics in, and now they didn’t vote for him, so they want them out of the country. It’s a colorism type of discrimination that’s going on in this country.”

However, the Black farmer advocate said the ability to do farm work is not a matter of physiology but rather of skill.

“These were people that were coming to the country, working seasonally, a whole lot of them, and doing the very hard work in 100-degree weather and extreme heat cold and rain. It takes a certain level of skill set to do this kind of work,” said Boyd.

The Trump administration’s focus on how its immigration policies are impacting farmers also comes as Black farmers are being starved out of needed federal assistance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has rescinded grants and programs intended to address racial disparities in the farming industry as a result of decades-long discrimination that was proven in a 1999 class action lawsuit.

“It’s disheartening, man, because we, Black farmers, have got a lost ball and high weeds here…they’re taking everything from us, and we just happen to be citizens,” Boyd told theGrio. “People need to wake up and look at the severity of what this administration is doing to people of color. Those who support President Trump’s race policies will soon find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

The Black farmer activist said the farming industry will not only be negatively impacted by Trump’s immigration policies but also by his global tariffs, which are already driving up food costs.

“Tariffs are killing us, as immigration policies are hurting America’s farmers,” said Boyd, who cautioned, “The people who are going to pay are the consumers.”