In the gallery of characters of my childhood in Cameroon, uncle Amougou was and remains an enigma. He was the youngest of five boys, and the second to last of my maternal grandmother’s eleven children. He was calm, quiet, but adept at making shocking and unexpected comments. He liked to proclaim everywhere that he was a contrarian, an independent thinker, a free man, thus suggesting that his siblings were followers. Uncle Amougou was fascinating to observe.
At Songo’o, the traditional game men used to play during my childhood, uncle Amougou also played the provocateur. Politics being one of the favorite topics of discussion of the men of our neighborhood, my young uncle never missed an opportunity to assert his so-called free thinking. The majority of the men of the neighborhood were angry with the government. Insulting and finding humiliating nicknames for members of the government and the president was one of their favorite word games. Uncle Amougou had proclaimed himself the defender of the government, to the great fury of the other players. When the others accused President Paul Biya, an autocrat and strongman, of all the problems of the country, uncle Amougou argued that public school was almost free and that Cameroonians had freedom of expression.
His favorite counteroffensive was the following sentence:
“Go live in neighboring Gabon and let’s see if you can insult President Omar Bongo as you do with Biya.”
At the time, the press in Gabon was said to be completely subservient to the government.
His other line of attack was as follows:
“With Biya, we have security. We don’t have a civil war. Look at Ivory Coast, look at Congo-Kinshasa? Take your things and go live there. I’ll buy you the plane ticket.”
Ivory Coast and Congo-Kinshasa, which became the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), had been stable countries for a long time, before being shaken by political and military crises that cost the lives of thousands of their people. The DRC remains unstable until today.
It took everyone a while to understand that uncle Amougou really meant what he said. Maybe it was just his way of seeing things. Maybe he really believed them. Uncle Etoundi nicknamed him “Opposant,” which, in French, meant the one who is always against the others. The nickname was adopted by almost everyone.
My aunts had resisted calling him that, but when he had annoyed them enough, they would end up saying: “Opposant, go away!” Uncle Amougou would leave, smiling. The last line of resistance had fallen. Uncle Amougou had finally earned the respect of the others.
The family meetings that would follow were spicy. His four older brothers would lead the dance as often. But they did not hesitate to ask for his opinion. They knew that, as contrarian as he was, uncle Amougou enabled them to see other perspectives; he pushed them to ask themselves more questions. And above all, he pushed them to question themselves.
“A lot of my friends, who used to be Democrats, now support Trump,” Michael M., a Black businessman I met here in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 1, told me, when I asked him whether polls showing that 13% of Black voters in this key state, which Kamala Harris has set her sights on, are reflecting reality. “A lot of them are waking up to the reality that the Democrats only start talking to the Black community whenever there is an election. All of a sudden, they start placating to Black people, and talk about what they want to do for Black people, and then when they get in office, none of those things that they promised actually comes to fruition. They don’t live up to what they committed they were going to do.”
Michael is in his early forties. He is a business owner and a real estate investor. Like my uncle Amougou decades ago, he presented himself as a “self -thinker”. “I do not typically follow the norms of my family and friends,” he told me. While he said that his family and his friends know his positions, he nevertheless asked that I don’t mention his last name, for fear of repercussions.
In June, Ricky Jones, the Black owner of Rocky’s Barbershop in Atlanta, Georgia, told the media that he had lost many customers after hosting a Trump campaign event intended for Black small businesses. The event was called the Black American Business Leader Barbershop Roundtable. Trump surprised the attendees by phoning in during the event.
“A lot of Black people are starting to wake up. They’re starting to feel like they’re just being used,” Michael told me. “They’re being used as a pawn during election time. And so, I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of Black people not really excited about the Democrats during this election season. You’re seeing a lot of Black people coming out and supporting Trump. You know, they can see how their life was different under Trump, as opposed to [Joe] Biden and Kamala Harris. You know, they lived better. You know, they had more jobs and more opportunities, and they’re just not into the talking points of the Democrats anymore.”
Michael is a divorced father of three, two daughters aged 25 and 22, and an 11-year-old boy. The two girls have moved in together, while his son lives with him and spends every other weekend with his mother. Michael says that he voted for Donald Trump in 2016. He did it again in 2020 and intends to do so again this year.
“I am going to vote for Trump,” he said. “I feel like my life was better under Trump.”
“Can you give me an example?” I asked.
“So, I run a business, you know, and I see how my customers are impacted. You know, we’ve had more people, more businesses that have shut down, more than we had under Trump. People are really struggling to stay in business, you know, and that directly affects me. It affects my income. It affects, you know, how much money we make as a company,” he argued.
His real estate activity was negatively impacted under the current administration, he said.
“I’m a real estate investor. Interest rates are definitely higher than they were under Trump, and that affects the market, that affects people wanting to buy homes and stuff like that. So, I would love to be able to see interest rates go back to where they were when Trump was in office.”
In January 2021, when Donald Trump left the White House, interest rates were low because the Federal Reserve had to cut its key rate to almost zero, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, mortgage rates were as low as 2.65% for an average 30-year fixed rate mortgage, for example. In December 2019, well before the start of COVID-19 and while Trump was still president, this rate was at 3.78%.
Fast forward to 2024, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was around 6.92% in June. It has dropped somewhat to 6.22% as of today. The surge in interest rates under Biden is due to the fact that, from March 2022, the Fed was forced to raise its key rate to fight inflation, which increased the cost of loans.
Michael acknowledges that a president has no influence on interest rates. Yet he credits Donald Trump for the low interest rates of almost four years ago.
“I don’t know if he had anything to do with it or not, but all I know is that interest rates were better under Trump. People were buying homes, left and right. It made it easier for people to buy homes, whereas it’s harder for people to buy homes now,” he said.
The former president, who won North Carolina by just 1.34 percent, or 74,481 votes, four years ago, also managed to win over Michael and his Black friends with his rhetoric about Ukraine and immigration. When Trump’s comments about illegal immigrants taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” during the June 27 debate with Joe Biden, sparked an uproar among Democrats and some civil rights groups, Michael said Trump was simply describing reality.
“You see all this money going overseas, you see all this money, you see all of this support for illegal immigrants, you see many of our communities having to divert their resources to support the policies that are allowing illegal immigrants to come into the country,” Michael said, repeating misinformation from the far right that illegal immigrants receive thousands of dollars in monthly payments from the federal government. “Black people are seeing that. Immigrants are taking the jobs that they once were able to get. They’re seeing people, who are illegal immigrants, getting money, like a lot of money, when they’re struggling. You know, we’re Americans, and we can’t get this money, but you’re giving it to other people who are coming into the country illegally.”
People who enter the U.S. illegally are not eligible for federal cash assistance, with the exception of certain Cubans and Haitians. There are, however, federal assistance programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program that “provides supplemental foods, health care referrals and nutrition education — not cash — to low-income pregnant and postpartum women, as well as children up to 5 who are at nutritional risk,” the Associated Press reported in October 2023.
“Trump’s got common sense,” Michael said of what he likes about the Republican nominee for president.
The energy, he told me, is one of those topics that prove his point and show that Democrats and their presidential nominee are “out of touch.”
“Democrats are out of touch with reality, with trying to do everything electric,” he said. “It sounds good, but it’s not feasible. We still need gas, and I feel like we need to be energy independent,” said Michael, who doesn’t believe, like Trump, in global warming, despite the fact that the effects of Hurricane Helene, which caused extensive damage to inland mountain towns in North Carolina, are reigniting the debate over climate change.
Experts say that what happened in cities that were considered safe havens from the effects of climate change, because they are far from any coastline, is evidence that continuing rising ocean temperatures are contributing to more intense storms.
“I want to breathe clean air, and stuff like that,” Michael told me. “But I just don’t buy into the whole global warming thing. I just don’t buy into it, but that’s just me. I’m not saying that the Earth isn’t warming up. I think the Earth goes through cycles, you know, the Earth goes through cycles of warming and cooling. And I think right now we’re in a warming cycle, and I don’t know that we necessarily have anything to do with that as humans.”
“Drill, baby, drill” is one of Trump’s proposals on energy. He told Elon Musk in August that the biggest threat for the world “is not global warming.” He is also known for saying that climate change is a “hoax.”
When I asked Michael if Trump is a threat to American democracy, as Harris and others have painted him, he smiled.
“I can kind of understand why they may think that. The whole January 6 thing,” he responded. “But I don’t think you can base that on what happened on January 6 solely. I think you have to look at the whole totality of policies and stuff to say whether or not somebody is a threat to democracy or not. I just think that people are looking at one situation, one thing that happened, and are making a statement. It was not a good thing, but I don’t think that you can say that he’s a threat to democracy because of what happened on January 6.”
I then asked him whether, as a father of two daughters, he shared Trump’s position on abortion.
“ I feel like it should be left up to the state,” he responded, seemingly adopting Trump’s recent statements. “If you want abortion in your state, get everyone to vote for it.”
He described himself as being a conservative on this issue: “I just had a lot of conservative views on all of these things,” Michael said. “I think a lot of people were using it out of convenience (…) It’s just because you didn’t wear a condom, because you were horny or whatever. I don’t think that’s a legitimate reason to have an abortion.”
Michael has made a 180 degree turn vis-à-vis the Democrats, for whom the Black community is an important voting bloc.
"Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me,” Michael said about his big change of heart. “I think [there] is an awakening. I think that the hold that the Democrats had on the Black community is declining. I think that more and more Black people are seeing their communities decimated. They’re seeing crime increasing, and they’re seeing the correlation between the people that are in leadership and how their communities are doing.”
For him, there is nothing Kamala Harris could say that would change his mind: “You’re saying you’re going to do these things, but you’re in power now. Why are you not doing these things?” he said, shrugging his shoulders about the vice president’s campaign promises.
At the end, he said he has one question for Harris:
“Why am I going to believe that things are going to change when you are the president?”
As I ended our conversation, Michael seemed relieved. Not because it was a long discussion. I sensed it was because he felt like people are finally listening to Black men voting for Trump. He felt being part of those who are asking for a new equation for Black men in America.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.