And right here I believed Snoop Dogg was one of many chosen ones.
Again in 2017, the G-Funk rap legend had nothing however venom for then-President Donald Trump: He mentioned “Fuck the president” whereas smoking a blunt outdoors of the White Home and criticized him in interviews a number of instances. Snoop additionally creatively mocked his imagined assassination, twice, incomes a clap-back tweet from Trump.
However in an even bigger flip-flop than Shaq’s home footwear, Snoop sang Trump’s praises in an interview with The Times of London final week.
“Donald Trump? He ain’t performed nothing flawed to me. He has performed solely nice issues for me,” he advised the British newspaper.
Now this may be one other instance of Snoop trolling us, as he did with that complete “I’m quitting smoking” bit that was truly a failed product promotion, however I doubt it. It’s maybe probably the most high-profile instance of a troubling pattern: Black males shifting within the route of voting for Trump in November.
A New York Times-Siena College poll from October revealed that 22% of all Black voters in six battleground states ― together with my native Michigan ― would assist Trump in a normal election if it had been held at the moment. Black males appear to be main this cost: Trump secured 12% of our vote in 2020, up from 8% in 2016.
Contemplating that the Trump supporter archetype is that of an American-flag-shirt-wearing, far-right white wingnut from Center America, it’s each horrifying and sobering that, even with the data we have now about Trump, practically 1 in 4 Black of us would vote for him in states that matter.
This considerations me for a number of causes: First, there’s the ominous mixture of Trump steamrolling his opponents within the primaries and that mess of indictments hanging over him being positioned on maintain till he will get in workplace. I’m nigh sure that, wanting a medical emergency, he’ll run towards President Joe Biden within the normal election.
There’s additionally a palpable voter apathy (or antipathy) towards Biden, who has been on struggle mode in many of the recent polls of his matchup against Trump. Sentiment for Biden amongst Black of us mirrors how we felt in 2016, when #GirlIGuessImwithher co-opted Hillary Clinton’s horrible “I’m along with her” slogan to underline simply how uninterested we had been in her.
It’s a reminder that the voting public is extra prone to schlep to a voting sales space solely when it’s excited concerning the candidates. The 2008 presidential election hit a 40-year turnout high exactly as a result of everybody was excited to vote for Barack Obama; that election noticed the best Black voter turnout because the U.S. census started keeping monitor.
In distinction, voting for 2 white dudes who would each be of their 80s earlier than their time period was over doesn’t encourage ft to beat to the polls. It’s not ageist to recommend that Biden could be polling poorly now as a result of everybody thinks he’s about 5 seconds away from pulling a kind of Mitch McConnell freezes ― it’s science. And it’s a contributing issue to why loads of Black males are contemplating not voting at all.
Reprehensible although he could also be, Trump will not be a silly man: Pardoning a number of outstanding Black males earlier than he left workplace was a strategic transfer. He let disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, rappers Lil’ Wayne and Kodak Black; and Loss of life Row Data co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris, who is probably going why Snoop ran again all the pieces, stroll free.
These freed hip-hop figures sq. with rappers’ obsession with Trump within the Nineties and early 2000s. Distinguished Black males rapped about him being a paragon of wealth and energy, so maybe it’s not a stretch for them to leap in his nook, even in 2024…?
A lot of this, I imagine, is much less about Biden the person and extra about what he represents: the Democratic Occasion’s longstanding failure to enhance the Black situation in America. No U.S. president in both celebration has put any actual chips into making issues higher for us… not even Obama: Regardless that he broke loads of limitations, hoods that had been hoods in 2008 had been largely nonetheless hoods in 2016.
Nonetheless, Trump has given nobody any purpose to recommend that he’ll sweep in on his Magic Negro Cape and spend his ultimate 4 years in workplace reworking the Black expertise in America for the higher. There are completely too many examples of him saying racist things, enacting or upholding racist insurance policies, or just establishing an setting during which of us are comfortably on some Jim Crow shit to imagine issues will change. (Do you suppose the lethal Charlottesville tiki-torch protest would’ve occurred if he weren’t in workplace?)
There’s being pissed off in a bipartisan system that constantly fails us and there’s actively voting for a person whose fomentation of hatred is effectively documented ― or not voting in any respect, which could be the identical because the latter. Black males, I implore you: Simply because Trump isn’t calling you the N-word to your face doesn’t imply he doesn’t view you as one.
