Uncle Bisseau was Zen. Nothing could bother him. He hummed every time we passed him. Not even the regular attempts of uncle Etoundi, who tried to steal his place as elder.
One day, uncle Bisseau arrived on a motorbike. We children were mesmerized. In his loud voice, he ordered us not to touch it. He threatened us with the worst punishments if we disobeyed his order. He had managed to buy this motorbike with his savings, working as a mason. He often took two of his friends with him and the three would disappear. We learned later that they were going to play songo’o in another neighborhood. Songo’o was a traditional game men used to play in my childhood at Fanta Citron, Mvog-Ada, the ghetto where I grew up in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
His four other brothers looked at him with resentment every time they saw him return with his two friends. They were an inseparable trio. Uncle Bisseau didn’t care about his little brothers’ discontent. The problem was that his wife, auntie Leonie, shared their anger and had told him several times that he could not continue disappearing like this.
She threatened to leave him. She threatened to return to her family, who were originally from Soa villiage, about fifty kilometers from Yaoundé. Nevertheless, uncle Bisseau continued his escapades with his two friends.
Auntie Leonie threatened not to cook for him anymore. She went so far as to say that he would have to take care of his laundry from then on. Uncle Bisseau answered her most often with the sound of his motorcycle disappearing into the distance.
This situation went on for at least two years. One evening, uncle Bisseau was heard asking: "Has anyone seen Leonie?”
My mother and aunts were silent.
An hour later, with auntie Leonie still nowhere to be found, he repeated his question, which was met again with silence from the women. Uncle Etoundi had had enough and shouted:
“She went to her family. She said she’s not coming back.”
He wanted the whole neighborhood to hear it. It was his way of humiliating his older brother and getting revenge for never being invited by his brother to ride the bike with him.
“She will be back,” uncle Bisseau replied curtly.
My mother and aunt Blandine let out their traditional “hum,” which meant “if you say so…”
A week had passed, still no auntie Leonie. A month, still nothing. Her absence had taken a toll on uncle Bisseau, who was forced to depend on his sisters. After two months, he seemed lost.
“What should I do?” he asked his sisters.
You must go to her family and ask them for forgiveness, as the custom says. And promise that your wife will never go back to them because you will make sure of it,” replied auntie Blandine.
He looked at her in amazement, as if to say that she was crazy. He didn’t see what he had done wrong. He told himself that auntie Leonie had overreacted; that she was too sensitive. He reckoned that it was up to her to come back; that he had done everything in the past to meet her needs.
“She warned you, didn’t she?” my mother intervened.
“No,” uncle Bisseau snickered. He paused as the women looked at him. “She was joking with her threats. She wasn’t serious. You women always do that. It’s your game!”
“I guess that no one was listening then,” retorted auntie Blandine ironically.
Uncle Bisseau then realized that he might have lost his wife forever; he realized that he had ignored her warnings because he thought that she belonged to him anyway, and would never dare leave him. She had a lot to lose, starting with the honor of being a married woman in a society where single women were looked down on. How did he miscalculate so much?
It is uncle Bisseau that came to mind as I chatted with some Black men in the past few days, following the landslide victory of former President Donald Trump on November 5, a resounding win driven by the significant support for him by young Black men and Hispanic men. Or, to be more precise, the rejection of Kamala Harris and the Democrats of whom these groups were considered some of the most loyal constituencies.
“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Mike Martin, a Black entrepreneur I met in Charlotte, NC., a month ago, told me on the phone, on November 8.
He laughed.
“I felt the heartbeat of the country. I felt the support that he had, and the increased support, especially among Black people who normally wouldn’t vote Republican. I could sense that there was a movement. I could just sense it,” he continued. “I’ve seen an uprise, you know. People speaking out about how all these crazy things that they’re trying to implement, you know, really are supported mainly by the Democratic party.”
He was referring to trans people’s rights.
Mike voted for Trump. He was one of about 3 in 10 Black men under the age of 45 who voted for Trump on November 5, roughly double the percentage he got in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, which is a wide survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. These Black men thus helped propel the former president, who received huge support from White folks as well, to the White house.
“Democrats believe that we as Black people are dumb and that we have amnesia, and we forget how life was under his administration compared to what it is now,” Mike said. “People go to the grocery store every day, and they’re faced with the impact of this administration. There are people who are looking for jobs now, who can’t find jobs, but who, under Trump’s administration, were able to find jobs very easily.”
He then brought up the now infamous Trump comment about illegal immigrants taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” during the debate with Democratic President Joe Biden last June, to prove that the now President-elect had a point and that he was right.
Or more directly, he agreed with Trump that illegal immigrants are taking Black jobs.
“The influx of illegal immigrants, you know, Black people, are feeling the impact of that. They’re like, these people are taking my job,” Mike said. “They used to be able to get a job very easily. Now, it’s hard to find a job, you know, in some of the fields that they were used to be able to get jobs, and now they’re being taken up.”
He said there has been a rebellion among some Black men.
Like auntie Leonie who had had enough, after sending many warnings, Mike said the Black folks he knows have had enough of the Democrats who only show up, according to him, on election years to get their votes.
We are not drinking the Kool Aid of the Democratic Party anymore. We have wised up to the tactics of the Democratic party, that they only come around whenever it’s election season, and then any other time you don’t hear from them, and they don’t do anything for you,” he said. “The tactic of the fear mongering didn’t work also, because people were like, you’re telling me that I should fear this person. But have you forgotten that he used to be our president, and things were fine. So why am I going to believe this lie that he’s going to take Black people’s right to vote. It’s just not true.”
Most of the Black men with whom I had spoken about this election over the past two months, as I traveled to the key swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, were not surprised by Harris’ defeat. During my trip, my conversations and encounters confirmed what the polls were showing, that some Black men were not enthusiastic about Harris’ candidacy. Their support for Trump was at around 20%, a level never seen for a Republican candidate. When I contacted some of these Black men after the election, their first reaction was that they had already warned me.
“You should have seen it coming,” Jayvon Nougaisse, 24, a PhD student in Augusta, GA., told me via FaceTime.
He said that Trump specifically tried to appeal to young Black men as early as 2023 and throughout his campaign. As a result, he was endorsed by some Atlanta young rappers, who are seen as influencers in the Black community.
He said that not only has Harris done nothing to distinguish herself from the President, but that the Biden-Harris administration has done nothing for Black men in the last four years.
‘The Vice President doesn’t receive much focus, just in general, but it doesn’t seem that she did anything too notable as far as I know,” Jayson said.
“Do you believe some things were done for Black people in the past four years, mostly Black men?” I asked him.
“For Black men, specifically?” he asked.
“Yes,” I responded.
“I don’t think so. No.” he answered.
Then he elaborated:
“I think there was stuff done for people as a whole, and I think there was stuff that helped everyone, including Black people, like student loan forgiveness.”
He took a breath.
“I think the emphasis on healthcare and improving like infant mortality among Black women specifically, that focus was really emphasized during the Biden administration. That’s all I can think of at the top of my head,” Jayvon said. “But as far as Black men specifically, once again, I still think that the issue of men, and Black men, feeling this way has not been talked about as much. And I feel like after this election, now, there’s going to be a spotlight on it.”
“What are the issues for young Black men, for example” I asked him.
“The single parent household, that is having a large effect, both mentally, emotionally, economically on young Black men,” Jayvon responded. “A lot of young Black men grow up in a single parent household.”
He added that studies show that the outcomes are “so much better” for children who grow up in a two-parent household versus a one parent household.
The economy, the sense that they have been taken for granted by the Democrats, and that they should vote for Harris because she was Black, are the few things that made my bros turn away from the Democratic nominee. But also, as others told me, they feel that Democrats are not listening to them and to men in general. They said Harris was not speaking to them. Since the evening of November 5, they have been called “sexists,” “macho,” and “misogynistic” because they voted for Trump.
“If you don’t agree with the pro-Harris people, instead of understanding you, they call you names,” Dia, whom I met in Philadelphia, PA, told me. “It only widens the gap between some Black men like me and Democrats. We are sick of wokeness and cancel culture.”
My 19-year-old son alerted me in 2023 that some of his Black friends were drifting away from the Democrats. This prompted me a few months later to start this series of articles on Black men and the presidential campaign.
“Trump and his supporters like Elon Musk have talked a lot about free speech. It appeals a lot to me and my friends, young men in general,” my son explained to me on November 8. “Since #Metoo, we have this sense that all men are bad.”
He told me that had Harris and the Democrats been present on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Kik and X, which are very popular with young men, one or two years ago, they would have realized that there was a huge need to find a voice, someone they respect, someone who can guide them, someone who won’t forget them.
“If the Democrats don’t understand this and don’t react, it’s going to get worse. They have to go to Joe Rogan, the platform most listened to and watched by men of all colors, if they want to talk to us. Joe Rogan is the Oprah of the 2000s,” my son said.
Jayvon told me that some young Black men he knows feel that Trump empowers them, like “they have a voice, and aren’t being immediately silenced.”
He also said that Trump successfully managed to spin his legal issues, saying he was the victim of the system, a narrative that speaks to many Black men who face injustices on a daily basis. They ended up identifying with him.
“If you think about Donald Trump’s trajectory, you know, we’ve heard about his bankruptcies, all the bad things he’s done. So. the fact that he is still able to be President is almost like an underdog story in an abstract way. It gives them hope that they can too.”
Democrats have begun the autopsy of their humiliating defeat. Some have taken the easy route of accusing Black men who voted for Trump of being misogynists. There is probably some truth in that, but in talking to my bros, there has been a general feeling that the party is not listening to them.
Case in point: many Black men, even those who voted for Harris, do not understand why illegal immigrants are receiving financial assistance while they are struggling financially.
Similarly, many Black people have a hard time with the double standard of Black inmates losing many rights, while trans inmates having access to gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy.
All these questions reinforced their feeling that they were not a priority for Harris and for the Democrats as a whole. For many Black men, when the government wants to address a problem to help a certain group, they take the necessary steps to do so. The Black community is always left out.
There is no doubt that there is a lot of complexity in the two examples above. While focusing on only these may seem superficial, in truth these are the issues that Black men are clinging to. They will continue to feel that they are overlooked when comparing themselves to immigrants or trans people. If the Democrats want to rebuild their coalition with the Black community, and especially with Black men, they have to start listening.
This is the only way to stop young Black men from flocking to the Right. The Democrats have a long road ahead.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.