Opinion
OPINION: From Alonzo Harris (“Training Day”) to Andre Logan (“Get Out”), here are some Black fictional characters I could see supporting Trump.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
There’s lots of talk about Black voters shifting over to Trump but it’s just talk. The leading scholar on Black Republicanism, Leah Wright Rigueur of Johns Hopkins University, the author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican,” says most Black people “will not choose the Republican Party because, one, they believe Republicans are racist and racially antagonistic, and two, there are no [Republican] policies that they see affecting their day-to-day lives for the better.”
Many thoughtful political analysts think Trump will end up with around 12-18% of the Black vote, which is around what Republican presidential candidates have typically gotten when they weren’t running against a Black presidential candidate. But, as disgusting as it seems, that means just under one-fifth of Black voters are Trumpers. As much as we might look down on them, they exist. Now I refuse to talk to them outside of Twitter (I will never call it X) because they’re anti-Black. So I’m going to talk about which famous Black fictional characters might support Trump, and I’ll use some of Rigueur’s research to help explain why. I’m doing it that way because if I talk too much about real Black Trumpers I’ll probably vomit.
David A. Love
Associated Press
Associated Press
Sophia A. Nelson
Associated Press
TheGrio Staff
Sophia A. Nelson
Associated Press
One thing you did not see on this list were Black women (even though several suggested Hilary Banks from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” Whitley Gilbert from “A Different World” and Clair Huxtable from “The Cosby Show”). But there’s a reason why there’s no Black women here. According to Rigueur and Johnson, “Black women have been particularly resistant to Trump’s capitalistic, individualist appeals… Black women are least likely to vote Republican. This is because Black women are more policy-oriented when examining presidential candidates than Black men—who place more weight on candidates’ attributes such as experience, race, and persona.” This makes sense—Trump’s appeal is not about policy. It’s about personality. If you like Trump it’s because you like him and you like how his personality is starkly different than anything we’ve ever seen in politics. Rigueur and Johnson say Black Trumpers are “more amenable to Trump’s theatric masculinity and his mythology of being a self-made billionaire… They prefer his crude, straightforward manner to politicians’ disingenuous placations.”
It’s telling that while most Black men are not fooled by Trump’s toxic masculinity foolishness, almost no Black women are.
Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of Masters of the Game on theGrioTV. He is also the host and creator of the docuseries podcast “Being Black: The ’80s” and the animated show “Star Stories with Toure” which you can find at TheGrio.com/starstories. He is also the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is the author of eight books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter.
STREAM FREE
MOVIES, LIFESTYLE
AND NEWS CONTENT
ON OUR NEW APP
