Well, a lot of Americans voted for Barack Obama, but later became Conservative. Antonia Okafor is a Nigerian-American woman who falls into this category.
Antonia Okafor is a political commentator and the CEO of EMPOWERED-an organisation devoted to the rights of women in College campuses. She is also big on gun rights and control as a gun right activist.
In college, she found her political beliefs shifting from left to right. She explains what happened.
“I grew up in a pretty traditional democratic family. When I was young, my mum would say “if you were to vote right now, you will vote for Bill Clinton” as a democrat growing up.
“I went to College and realised that I was actually taking public policy courses and realising that all those policies I was studying, I didn’t actually believe, especially the ones for the democratic parties.
“So I did a lot of research and realising that the values I grew up with, that actually coincidentally and ironically my mum taught me that if you work very hard, education is an equaliser for everyone, and that a traditional nuclear family is important to one’s success and having faith in Jesus Christ is important to succeed as well.
“These traditional values really made me realise that I was in a party that did not reconcile with my values and I needed a change.
“The only party that I believe was insistently focused on this issue was the Republican party, and so after 2012, I’m reliving a ballot box of voting for Obama. I had a hard time at that time doing that, realising that I’ll never vote again against my values. I won’t vote for democratic party not because they weren’t doing what was important, but because of my values.
“I think I was open to change because of what is going on right now; I think it’s to the worse degree because everybody is so Anti-Trump and because the media is so focused on making republicans look like racists and sexist and horrible people basically.
“I guess I just have this affirmative instinct to be around people and seek out information for myself. So I said, if they are really this bad, I want to see for myself. So, going out and talking to people who are republicans and finding out they weren’t bad people and that they were actually amazing people that shared the same values with me.
“The mainstream media says you must be a certain way as a black woman or think a certain way. It made me want to do my research and find out why they are saying this and I realised it was exactly the opposite and that was what inspired me to be more open and find out what my actual beliefs were.
“The mainstream media has been able to manipulate the conversation that if you are black, you should vote for the democratic party and that only white people are republicans or conservatives. Because you are black does not mean you must vote for democratic party; know your values, do not be manipulated” she said.
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