“If you’re a Republican presidential candidate, you recognize that most Black people aren’t going to vote for you. But the most likely segment of Black people to vote for you is Black men, and a particular sort of Black man,” Johnson told CNN. “It wasn’t surprising that after Trump became the President-elect, a parade of Black men — celebrities and athletes including Steve Harvey, Ray Lewis and Kanye West — went into Trump Tower. If you’re a Black man and a celebrity or an athlete, that usually means that the money you have is new and that you grew up either poor or working class.”
Johnson believes that there’s something about this brew of economic security, hypermasculinity and bootstrap self-determination — “he has accomplished so much almost all by himself,” Walker says of the President in a spot airing on Black radio stations — that can make Trump resonate with some Black men.
