How white was the RNC in Milwaukee? Only 3% of the delegates reported they were Black

Back in 2016, Donald Trump made a concession about the Republican National Convention.

The delegates and audience were not racially diverse enough, Trump said.

"The truth is, I didn’t like it," Trump said during a television conversation with Bishop Wayne T. Jackson. "With that being said, I don’t like the job the Democrats have been doing representing African American people."

So how did the 2024 convention in Milwaukee stack up? Only slightly better.

Only 1,780 of 2,429 RNC delegates reported their ethnicity, according to convention officials. Of that number, 55 delegates said they were Black — representing 3% of the those who provided this demographic information.

That number, while still very small, is up from 2016 when only 18 delegates reported that they were Black — less than 1% of the total. That was the smallest share of Black delegates in an RNC crowd in perhaps a hundred years.

By contrast, the peak year came in 2004, during the reelection effort for George W. Bush, according to the Washington Post. That year, nearly 7% of the Republican delegates were Black.

Overall, Blacks make up about 14.4% of the American population, according to the Pew Research Center.

In a statement, Republican officials played up the 300% increase in Black delegates since the last convention in 2016.

"The growing representation of different perspectives and backgrounds within the Big Tent GOP is indicative of the groundswell of support for President Donald J. Trump’s vision to Make America Great Again," said RNC spokesman Kush Desai.

But Democrats said the numbers suggest that Trump's vision is not resonating with Black voters and other minority groups. Democratic President Joe Biden won more than 90% of the Black vote in 2020.

In 2016, the Democratic National Convention had 1,182 Black delegates out of 4,766 — roughly 25% of the total. Vox reported that half of the Democratic delegates in 2016 were people of color while it was only 6% of Republicans.

This year, officials reported that at least 234 delegates were non-Caucasian, or 13.1% of those who reported their ethnicity.

Democrats hold their convention next month.

"Republicans offer lip service and photo ops in place of meaningful outreach to Black voters, while Trump’s divisive rhetoric and insulting stereotypes — like suggesting that Black voters support him more because he is a felon — won’t win over Black Wisconsinites in November," said DNC senior spokesman Marcus W. Robinson.

Black delegates offered differing views on the racial diversity at last week's convention in Milwaukee.

Scherie Murray, a delegate from New York who is Black, said he'd like to see more than 3% of the crowd being Black, yet at the same time, Murray said she never felt out of place at the convention.

She said she attended a number of events over the past week just for Black conservatives.

But Murray said Republicans can do more to boost its numbers, including greater civic engagement and more involvement in the Black community. She said GOP officials should emphasize the impact of Trump's 2017 tax cut on minority communities and their financial support for historically Black colleges and universities.

As for South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott's suggestion that America "is not a racist country," Murray wasn't completely on board with him. She said she believes people, regardless of race, have the potential to be racist. But she added that class issues often get confused with racial ones.

Jerris Jackson, a delegate from California who is Black, said he didn't care how many delegates were Black.

"When I look at the crowd, I'm not really looking for people's race or color or ethnicity," he said while on the convention floor Thursday night. "We're all Americans. We all want to make America great again."

When asked about racism in society, Jackson pointed the finger at Democrats, saying they are responsible for discriminatory and racist policies over the years.

"I'm happy with the fact that Republicans are bringing in more people and broadening their base," said Rodney Harrison, a Tennessee delegate who is Black. He said he was seeing increasing racial diversity at the local level, too.

Several of the Black delegates predicted that Trump would either double or triple his share of the Black vote in November.

Not all Black officials walked away from the convention happy.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson says listening to Amber rose had his 'blood boiling'

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, the city’s first elected Black mayor, on Friday said his “blood was kind of boiling” listening to model Amber Rose’s speech as he sat in the convention hall. She proclaimed in her convention speech that she had concluded Trump was not racist.

Johnson, a Democrat, spoke specifically about the music video to rap song "Trump Trump Baby" by rapper Forgiato Blow. Rose was featured in the video, too, wearing a gold chain with a gold Trump head, complete with red MAGA cap, attached to it.

Johnson noted Blow’s tattoos and the pair’s gold chains, saying if they went to a conservative white neighborhood dressed like that someone would call the police on them.

“It's absolutely ridiculous, and it's not real,” he said. “They want these folks for their influence on other people of color and for their vote, but if they brought their true selves to those communities, to those neighborhoods, they'd be shunned."

Asked if he worried about the impact of speakers such as Scott suggesting the U.S. "is not a racist country," Johnson said some Republicans seem like they don’t want the history of racism to be told.

“As a Black person, I think about poor little Ruby Bridges going to school or the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas, and you see these vile images, these gross images of people just being racist and yelling just profanities and vulgarities and the N-word and all that stuff,” he said, referencing Black students who integrated segregated schools.

"They want to erase that … but that’s important so we don’t forget it," he continued. "If we really want to have racial healing in this country then we can’t forget what happened in the past. We can’t forget that."

Alison Dirr of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on X at @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How white was the RNC? Only 3% of delegates recorded as Black