Atlanta, Georgia – At a barbershop in the suburbs of Georgia’s capital, a debate has sparked over a trim.
Fifty-four-year-old owner Goody does not believe Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump can make meaningful inroads with Black voters like himself, in the final stretch before the United States’ presidential election on November 5, despite what recent polls may show.
His regular customer, 53-year-old Gardy Leandre, a private tax director who moved to the US from Haiti while in high school, disagrees.
“I’m telling you as a taxman, I know he did great things by bringing the economy back,” he said of Trump’s time in office, which ended after he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Goody pushed back, reminding his old customer of the many controversies surrounding Trump, both during his presidency and since.
What about Trump’s comments on Haitian immigrants, falsely suggesting they eat pets? Leandre tells him Haiti would be better off under Trump, and that he wouldn’t actually get rid of immigrants who work.
What about Trump’s response to the disastrous Hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico in 2017, when he threw paper towels at a crowd of people in need? Leandre pivots and talks about support for small business owners.
What about the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol, when Trump supporters overran the building as politicians inside ratified Biden’s win?
“I’m not going to give him a pass on that,” Leandre told Al Jazeera. “But at the end of the day, if I want my 401(k) [retirement savings] to go up, if I want to put food on my table for my kids, I gotta go for Trump.”
Goody grows exasperated. What about Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic? What about the Muslim ban?
“I understand all the nastiness about Trump, trust me,” Leandre finally said. “But there’s an election Trump, and there’s President Trump.”
“Man, you were in New York for the Central Park Five,” he told Leandre, referring to Trump’s racist campaign against a group of young Black and Hispanic men wrongfully convicted of a brutal New York City rape in 1989.
“Trump was bred off racism.”
The conversation, under an LED halo light and across from a faded poster of the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, circled questions that could determine which way Georgia goes in the upcoming presidential election. The answers could, in turn, make the difference in who enters the White House.
Will Georgia see the record level of Black and minority engagement that was a cornerstone of the coalition that delivered the key battleground state to Democrats in 2020, for the first time in 18 years?
And if that engagement does reach or exceed those levels, will Black voters’ new electoral muscle in the state still be used to achieve a victory for Democrat Kamala Harris?