Don't tell me Ted Cruz's father Rafael doesn't speak for the Republican Party, because that's exactly what he's going around the country doing.  His latest stop was in Williamson County, Texas, where he spoke to Republicans about "the blacks".
The father of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said black people “need to be educated” about Democrats, so that they will vote Republican. Cruz, who made the comments at the Western Williamson Republican Club August meeting, added “the average black does not” understand that the minimum wage is bad.

The Aug. 21 meeting advertised that Cruz would “speak passionately on what can be done to return our nation to the principles that made America exceptional.” During the speech, Cruz spoke at length about a recent conversation he said he had with a black pastor in Bakersfield, California.

“I said, as a matter of fact, ‘Did you know that Civil Rights legislation was passed by Republicans? It was passed by a Republican Senate under the threat of a filibuster by the Democrats,’” Cruz said. “‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ And then I said, ‘Did you know that every member of the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats from the South?’ ‘Oh I didn’t know that.’ You know, they need to be educated.”
It's funny, because the civil rights legislation that "Republicans" passed is no longer necessary according to Republicans of today, because racism doesn't exist.  Certainly not racism like Rafael Cruz throws it around, am I right?

Cruz cited a book Please Stop Helping Us by Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

“I am going to try to encourage everybody I can to buy a book written by a black journalist. His name is Jason Riley. He wrote a book called Please Stop Helping Us, talking about how all the handouts to blacks have kept blacks in the poorhouse. And I’ll tell you what, I am going to make it my task to buy 15 to 20 copies of that book and hand it out to some black leaders to read.”

“Jason Riley said in an interview, Did you know before we had minimum wage laws black unemployment and white unemployment were the same? If we increase the minimum wage, black unemployment will skyrocket. See, he understands it, but the average black does not.”
Did you know that before minimum wage laws, blacks were slaves?  It's amazing his slective reading of history.  And frankly, Cruz wants to get rid of minimum wage so he can effective reinstate slavery.  The magical notion that corporations will magically hire more Americans and pay them more without a government mandated minimum wage is ridiculous.  After all, we'd have zero unemployment if wages were zero, right?

And finally, nothing says "I want to improve the Republican Party's standing with African-American voters" quite like "black people are too goddamn stupid to realize Democrats are using them."