The mysteries of the Latino vote for Trump

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 7, 2024.

I’m furious at white evangelicals today, and especially at my white evangelical neighbors.

A little over a month ago, Hurricane Helene left our neighborhood looking like a disaster zone. To this day, we still have large trees down in our yards and streets. And while the businesses owned by white people were charging normal to above average prices to remove trees, the businesses owned by Latino immigrants were charging my white neighbors a fraction of the typical cost.

My next-door neighbor has a massive oak tree leaning over his house, which could crush his home if it falls. He told me while other companies want to charge him $20,000 to take down the tree, the Latino companies will charge him just $5,000 to do it. He also happens to have a Trump/Vance sign next to the tree.

So as I type, the morning after my neighbor voted to have these men kicked out of the country, he’s hiring them to work for him next to his Trump sign.

Latino support for a white supremacist politician

On one hand, it’s infuriating how my white neighbor would use Latinos for cheap labor to save his home while voting to rip their families from their homes.

But what’s also confounding is how so many Latinos supported a white supremacist politician who trashed their countries, their eating habits and their IQs throughout the campaign.

According to the NBC News Exit Poll, 45% of Latino voters went for Trump, up from 32% in 2020.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough chalked it up to Latinos being racist against Kamala Harris. He suggested, “A lot of Hispanic voters have problems with Black candidates.” And Al Sharpton agreed with him.

So did Latinos vote for Trump because they’re racist against Black people?

One of the marks of our white supremacist history, as Robert P. Jones details in The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, is that white supremacists set up racial hierarchies beneath them that serve their political cause and mask their racism. So perhaps there may be some racial hierarchies going on.

But one major part of this conversation needs to be about how worship music has become one of the most powerful weapons for getting Latinos to fall in line and bend the knee in these hierarchies.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.