Yeah. And, rightly or wrongly, the more salient topics of racial injustice (e.g. unarmed black men being killed at the hands of police officers and vigilantes, with seemingly no consequence) have become increasingly threaded into sports and entertainment the past 5-6 years as these are two arenas where there is incredible representation of influential black Americans, who choose to bring awareness to these issues. And Republican/conservative commentators do a pretty crappy job when these topics are broached. Laura Ingraham telling LeBron James to "shut up and dribble" was pretty dumb, unpopular and basically did nothing to challenge pre-existing notions most Americans had on the Republican party and its racial/social politics of the past 15 years.
The other issue with appeal to black voters is the dearth of visible black conservatives today. Candace Owens' track record as a conservative (let alone a politically active person) is pretty unreliable: she says
she did not vote in either the 2012 or 2016 presidential elections(she would've been of age to vote in both.) Larry Elder may be the most established black conservative voice in American commentary. Allen West was at one point pretty significant but I'm not sure if he's still active(???) After that, it becomes less-defined. Omarosa stopped supporting Donald Trump. Michael Steele's status as a "conservative commentator" is sort of at odds with his positions on the Trump presidency. David Clarke is no longer prominent. The two recent presidential candidates befitting "black conservative" hold very little stature in today's politics, Herman Cain and Ben Carson. And to use an Ohio example, Ken Blackwell basically packed in his political ambitions after his failed 2006 gubernatorial run. The most promising person within the Republican Party to possibly make a push in courting African-American voters in the next 5-9 years is Sen. Tim Scott (who is a good person and good politician.) Past that, there's nothing in the cupboard.
