As the 2024 election nears, Donald Trump is making major inroads with a particular voter demographic: black men.
In the last presidential election, Trump won 12% of the overall black vote, and a fifth of the black male vote. Recent polls, conducted before President Biden dropped out of the election, show that 30% of black men favored Trump over Biden.
The Post spoke to four who are voting for Trump for the first time in 2024:
Mark Fisher co-founded the Rhode Island Black Lives Matter chapter in 2020. Four years later, he’s voting for Trump.
“During the protests in Providence, I led from the front, putting myself at risk and putting myself on the front line,” said Fisher, who organized two major marches. “But our enemy is not white people. Our enemy is the overzealous government.”
Fisher said Biden has done little to help the black community while in the White House, while Trump’s pro-school-choice attitude and tough stance on the border have inspired him to reconsider his politics.
“Immigration is a political third rail,” said Fisher, a community organizer. “It’s political suicide, and that’s why nobody has ever addressed it until now, which is one of the reasons why Donald Trump has such overwhelming support — because he takes on those issues that most people want to actually talk about.”
He recently reregistered as an independent after a lifetime as a Democrat — and said he regrets voting for Biden in 2020.
“I felt like everything I heard from the media was gospel. I didn’t know any better,” he said. “ ‘Trump is bad.’ ‘Conservatives are racist.’ That’s what they use.”
As for the Democrats’ presumptive candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, Fisher said, “Kamala Harris is even less popular than Joe Biden … The worst possible thing for this country would be Kamala in the White House.”
He says the quality of life in predominantly black, Democrat-stronghold cities made him realize that left-wing policies don’t serve their constituents.
“These horribly poverty-stricken communities that have high crime also have failing education systems,” Fisher explained. “And then you add in the unprecedented, unchecked illegal immigration and everything … that the Democrats introduce into the black community is detrimental to us.”
“These people are not invested in the black community. They’re invested in keeping power,” he added. “They pander to black voters.”
Louis Kwame Fosu: ‘Republican policies better serve blacks and Latinos’
Louis Kwame Fosu said education is his No. 1 election priority — and it’s the reason he’s voting for Trump for the first time.
“Our public school system needs to be completely scrapped and overhauled to benefit working people. This system does not work,” Fosu told The Post. “We cannot have a whole generation of blacks and Latinos being forced to go to schools that do not educate them.”
Fosu, who lives in Washington, DC, and is the executive director of the Diversity Think Tank, said Trump’s pro-school-choice positions are more aligned with the black community’s interest.
“We hear that all these Republicans are racist and so on and so forth, but that’s a completely media-made construct,” said Fosu, formerly a professor of government at the University of Rhode Island. “When you actually look at policies that benefit blacks and benefit Latinos, Republican ones serve us much better.”
Since changing his political allegiance from Democratic, he says, he’s been the subject of harsh criticism from friends.
“If you’re a black person who supports Republicans, they attack you,” he said. “It’s no accident that you hardly hear any black leaders speaking contrary to what the Democrats want … They basically created an underclass, and, come every election, if you don’t support them, you’re ostracized in your community.”
But he’s undeterred by the critics, and now the attempted assassination of Trump is even more reason to get out to the ballot box.
“Especially for black men, when Trump was attacked, it was just so clear — like, my God, how they persecute this man,” Fosu said. “When the Democrats went after him for these charges for clearly victimless crimes, the black community saw that clearly. That was something that was just so glaring to us.”
As a black man, Syl Hall said, “There’s a little bit of social pressure to be a Democrat — but it’s also just not doing your homework and going on someone else’s word.
“I grew up with a lot of cousins that were into politics, and so I basically followed their views,” the Bronx resident, 52, told The Post. “I hate to admit it but, because they are African American, they mostly just voted blindly Democratic.”
After sitting out the last election, Hall’s main motivation to get behind Trump in 2024 is the state of the economy.
“When Trump was in office, I did see a lot more people working,” said Hall, a freelance video editor and employee at a seafood restaurant. “Right now we need to get our economy back on the road. Trump is a businessman.”
Living in New York City, the influx of migrants is also a big concern.
“I understand that people are trying to come from a bad situation into a better situation, but you have to do it the legal way,” Hall added.
Being “100% open” with his support for Trump, he said, he’s encountered some blowback.
“People just automatically say things about Trump that I know are not true,” Hall said. “I’ve been having arguments with almost every family member. And I tell them they have to listen to this guy’s policies. The only critique that they have that I think is valid is the way he carries himself. I do like the way he deals with other leaders around the world, but I don’t really like the way he deals with the media and some of the things he says are just inappropriate for our image as a country.”
As for Kamala Harris getting the Democratic nomination, he said, “It would be a bad move for the party. She’s not too popular, from what I’ve heard just chilling with regular people.”
Inflation is drawing Linwood Dillard III to the ballot box.
“The way money moved was different when Trump was in charge,” said Dillard, who owns a mobile barbershop in New York City. “I felt like I was getting more out of my money. I didn’t feel stagnant. I didn’t feel like I had to go to work or else I wasn’t going to eat that day.
“You can’t do anything. It costs $150 just to walk outside,” he added.
Dillard, 41, grew up in Harlem and lives in the Bronx, and says he was a “default Democrat.”
“I didn’t look at policies back then. I didn’t look at it like that. I didn’t know anything about politics,” he said. “But as I’ve gotten older, I’m watching how politics affect everything, how it all trickles down.”
Dillard didn’t vote in 2020 due to his distaste for Biden. But this time around, as inflation crushes him, he’s throwing his support behind Trump because of his economic policies.
“He’s a businessman,” Dillard added. “He’s going to run this country like a corporation. He knows what he’s doing. He knows how to make money.”
Dillard also said Trump’s no-nonsense personality is appealing to him.
“I’d rather a person be a straightforward a–hole than a person with a smile to your face that does stuff behind my back,” he said. “At the end of the day, [Trump] is the only person who is stirring up Congress.”
By Rikki Schlott
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