In the multitude of paradoxes of the adults of my childhood at Fanta Citron in Mvog Ada in Yaoundé, Cameroon, there was one that stood out.
The parents in our shanty neighborhood loathed the government, which was absent from our lives. “All thieves, all corrupt,” the men repeated against the members of the government every day at songo’o, the traditional game they played which had become their sanctuary.
Usually, a game involved two players. The others glanced at and passed around a newspaper that one of them had managed to buy. The bulk of the headlines talked about the government’s turpitudes. It must be said that in my neighborhood, people mainly read the so-called independent newspapers. Strikingly, the articles did not come from reliable sources. Yet, their information was taken as gospel by the inhabitants of my neighborhood.
I do not remember hearing any positive remarks about the government, which was on trial every day at songo’o. From time to time, uncle Amougou, who liked to show off, tried to defend the members of the government, but it was done more to annoy his fellow players than out of conviction. In my world, every government official or public servant, including the police and the army, was treated as corrupt.
Conversely, women were less intransigent, less accusatory and more conciliatory. Most of them dreamed of seeing their children become civil servants. They were aware of all the upcoming administrative tests and recruitment campaigns. They then pushed the young adults, who met the necessary conditions, to apply. The army and the police, whose salaries were among the highest and guaranteed, were their first choices.
The rumor mill said that one could not get in without bribing officials, or that everything was done through co-optation and nepotism. The inhabitants of my neighborhood were at the bottom of the social ladder, which meant that we had no network or powerful connections, so there was no hope of seeing one of us become a civil servant anytime soon. The women often talked about collecting money through their tontines so that they could bribe officials. But they still had to find out which door to knock on.
The paradox is that the same men who never missed an opportunity to insult the government, often joined forces with our mothers to try to find the best way to help one of us get a job in the government. They were difficult to comprehend. They expected nothing from the government, but at the same time, they were ready to do anything to ensure that their children became civil servants.
“You never know. The government can change,” my mother replied to me when I posed this paradox once. “And if one of your cousins gets in, you can’t imagine how our lives will change, including yours.”
“But uncle Bisseau and all the men at songo’o say that the government has ruined the country. They say that the government has messed up and that they are all corrupt,” I remember saying to her.
“Yes, but all your uncles hope that things will change. They hope that the government will improve our lives at some point,” my mother told me.
I was stunned. Behind their criticism and disenchantment with the government, was there a form of latent optimism? They hoped that the agents of chaos, as they said back then, could transform into agents of an order that would benefit them. It made no sense to me.
In any case, it is a comparable paradox that I detected while discussing the victory of Donald Trump against Kamala Harris with some of my Black bros in my barbershop in Harlem, New York. It had been two months since I had seen my barber and his colleagues because I had spent the last weeks leading up to the presidential election traveling to swing states with large Black populations to capture the voices of men who seemed disenchanted with Harris’ candidacy. It was in my barbershop that I had my first confirmation several months ago that some Black men were drifting away from the Democrats.
—Did you see the election, bro? They are talking s***, they are talking crazy,” my barber greeted me on a warm evening in mid-November, when I had barely closed the door of his barbershop. He was referring to Trump and his lieutenants’ statements about carrying mass deportations of illegal immigrations since the Republican nominee was declared the winner on the early hours of November 6.
I nodded.
He stopped. He seemed excited. It was like he wanted to take a victory lap. He looked like someone who had just won a bet. I understood from his smirk that he wanted to say ‘I warned you about the Lady,’ the name they gave Kamala Harris.
The young Black man sitting in his chair turned around to give me a “hey man.” He also seemed to have realized that I had lost a wager on the winner of the presidential election. Two stations away, my barber’s colleague was listening, with a big smile.
The barbershop was not full, unlike my previous visits. It was 6pm on this Thursday night. It was warm, unusual temperatures for mid-November. Usually, all the stations would be occupied and the customers waiting for their turn would sit on the long bench provided for that purpose.
My barber was wearing a white T-shirt promoting the boxing match between legend Mike Tyson and YouTuber Jake Paul scheduled for the next day. “Team Tyson” was written in large letters on the front of the T-shirt. Posters of the fight, which illustrates the power of business in sports, and boxing in particular, were plastered on the walls.
I tried to dodge.
“Tyson is going to get knocked out, bro. He is too old.”
But it was in vain. What interested my barber was politics and Trump. He wanted to talk about it, more in relation to what it meant for his business and the people around him. I was struck by the divergence between the media coverage of the President-elect and what my bros in the barbershop saw the coming months looking like with him at the White House.
“Honestly, I’m not that concerned,” said the young customer, to whom I asked the question twice after hearing him say that Trump’s second presidency will be “similar” to the first one with the sole difference that he will have “more power in the Senate and in the House of Representatives and probably more Supreme Court justices.”
He didn’t understand all the alarmism from liberals and anti-Trumpers.
“Does this mean that you don’t expect his second term to be worse or a threat to American democracy?” I asked.
Personally, I’m not concerned,” he answered. “I’m concerned for other people, the people in the south. We live in New York, a pretty Blue state, I don’t think that much will happen to us.”
“That’s his last time, right?” my barber asked, referring to a joke Trump made while talking to House Republicans.
“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out’,” the President-elect said. He also said something similar last July, while meeting with Christian leaders.
I responded that U.S. Presidents have a two-term limit, according to the Constitution, which means Trump cannot run again in 2028.
“I know people who voted for him. They believe he’s going to be good, you know, for the economy, for business, for money, man” my barber said.
He said that many of his clients and people he knows have high hopes for the President-elect. Some expect financial benefits and an improvement in their daily lives.
“Man, I have someone telling me he’s going to give us checks. That’s something, man,” he said.
“Is business that bad?” I asked him.
“The business is not going good, bro,” he replied. “The business is not good. I don’t know if the economy is down but business is not good here. You see this time you came, it’s like there is nobody. Usually on Thursday, I am fully booked, and the people walking in and asking to get their haircut I say ‘Come back in two hours.’“
He continued:
“I know people who are good customers, like giving me tips, good money, but right now when they come, they say ‘I will tip you next time.’ It’s the same thing next time, man. People are still going to work but I don’t know maybe people are spending money differently now. It’s not like before.”
His colleague jumped in.
“People are tired, bro. We are tired,” he said.
Then he stood up, moved towards us, and went into a tirade about everything that was wrong with the Democrats. As in previous conversations with them months ago and from what I’ve heard from other Black bros, immigration or better, preferential treatment and financial assistance to illegal immigrants who have arrived since 2022 is a big problem for the bros. This anti-immigration sentiment has been fueled by inflation which has affected their purchasing power.
— “A lot of people come in this country, and you can see them with your eyes, and they give them favor, too much. Listen, they put some people on a five-star hotel, giving them food stamps. They’re taking like, $350 per week. Don’t do nothing but sleeping.”
He was obviously talking about the financial assistance that New York City, which has seen the arrival of more than 200,000 illegal immigrants since 2022, is providing. There is, for example, a debit card program to 2,600 families to buy food. A family of four with young children is receiving $350 per week for a month, according to city officials.
He continued:
“This is crazy. And these people do nothing. They fight the police. They steal. Who would be okay with that? Nobody, you know. Nobody is going to be okay with that. That’s the problem. That’s a big problem.”
Besides immigration, my bros are opposed to the aid provided to Ukraine which is at war with Russia, following the invasion of the country by Moscow in February 2022. My bros still don’t understand what this help is for, while their livelihoods are hanging by a thread.
“Why are we giving them money?” intervened a patron who arrived during the anti-immigration rant. “We need the money over here.”
I don’t know whether the people in the barbershop are part of the 100,000 new votes that Trump got in New York City compared to 2020, but it seems that they want to give the 47th President a chance. They are not scared of him. They don’t think that the American democracy is at risk. They don’t believe he is a “fascist” as Harris called him during the last days of the campaign.
In fact, it is quite the opposite. Paradoxically, there is a form of moderate optimism about the President-elect, even if, as they say, Trump’s enemy is that he trusts himself too much according to my barber said.
This over-confidence could backfire on him and cause him to make mistakes that might cost him the support of his newfound voters, like some of my bros. But absent of big mistakes, my barber and the bros that day at the barbershop believed it is likely that the Democrats will not taste victory any time soon.
“If Trump does the right thing, bro, like he sends them back and nobody comes through the border, and business is good, the Blue might not come back to power anytime soon,” the second barber warned.
The Blue refers to Democrats, and them is illegal migrants.
“It’s going to be tough for the Blue, man,” my barber agreed.
I was astounded given the fact that my barber, his colleagues and some of their clients were aware of the flaws, the racist statements, the threats made by Trump. They talked about them. Sometimes they questioned his remarks, sometimes they chose to ignore them. He has won them over by promising them that their wallets are going to be full with money again. They believe him because they are also convinced that America is now split in two: The United States of the Top vs. The United States of the Bottom. The elites vs. the average Joe. It is not just about race anymore. They think Trump knows how they feel and what they are going through, simply because he says out loud what they only dare say among them.
Furthermore, they feel that the Democrats are not in touch with their pressing realities. They believe that the Democrats are more interested in helping foreigners than them. As paradoxical as it may seem, they believe that Trump is more in tune with their issues.
In the end, Trump was transparent about how he plans to govern and he won a clear victory. It is understandable that people want to approach his presidency with some optimism. My bros have hopes that he will be good for them. The next four years will prove them right or wrong.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.