‘I love my black job’: Simone Biles sticks it to former Cheeto-in-Chief Donald Trump as Mark Hamill awards her another medal

Gymnast Simone Biles, who won two gold medals at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games, has been as fierce on social media as of late as she has has been in competition, and one of her recent politically-oriented X posts had actor Mark Hamill applauding.

Biles first threw shade at retired Olympic gymnast MyKayla Skinner, who, before the Paris Games, suggested the U.S. gymnastics team’s work ethic isn’t what it used to be. Then, after taking home gold in the women’s all-around competition, Biles shared musician Ricky Davila’s post on X, captioned “Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job,” along with Biles pictured posing with her medals. Biles added to the post, “I love my black job 🖤,” a swipe at Donald Trump.

According to Hamill, Biles belongs in more than one hall of fame

Mark Hamill noticed Simone Biles’ post, which makes sense because Hamill is an outspoken Donald Trump critic and Kamala Harris supporter. (And we’re not sure which we’d prefer: Olympic gold medals, or flowers from Luke Skywalker.) Biles’ post refers to comments Donald Trump has made in his second campaign for president, that American immigrants are taking “Black jobs.” But since then, Trump has failed to define what a “Black job” is.

Trump’s “Black jobs” comment was challenged in a disastrous National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) interview, which saw the former president claim to be the best for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, and cast doubt on Kamala Harris’ Black heritage. When asked to define a “Black job” at the NABJ, Trump responded, “A Black job is anybody that has a job, that’s what it is. Anybody that has a job.”

The immigration versus “Black jobs” debate

Trump’s “Black jobs” comment isn’t the first time immigration’s impact on Black employment and wages has been disputed, as noted in Mark Hamill’s comments section. The Obama administration studied how immigration could economically affect Black Americans. Around that same time, in 2013, the Black American Leadership Alliance marched against an immigration reform bill they said would harm Black workers by letting more workers into the country legally, according to U.S News & World Report. But then, as now, that position was controversial.

“If passed, the proposed immigration bill will be costly for all Americans but will harm black American workers more than any other group. Mass immigration and amnesty puts African-Americans from all walks of life out of work and suppresses wages, causing them to compete with aliens willing to work in poorer working conditions for cheaper pay,” the alliance wrote in a letter opposing the bill.

But Walter Ewing, a senior researcher at the Immigration Policy Center, responded, “Playing a racial blame game in which immigrants are singled out as the cause of minority unemployment may be politically expedient, but it doesn’t hold water when it comes to evidence. The fact is that minorities living in high-immigration cities tend to have lower unemployment and higher wages than minorities in low-immigration cities. Immigrants create jobs, they don’t steal them.”