Cain, the GOP's Black Friend, Has Come Undone

In his Daily News column, Stanley Crouch delves into the psyche of the GOP's support of former presidential contender Herman Cain. He argues that Cain was hit by tribal and racial politics more than anyone cares to acknowledge.

Twice as dark as President Obama, Cain proved that white Americans could support one of that tribe who was not at all light-skinned. Old black Herman did not look in the least like Halle Berry, NAACP chief Benjamin Jealous, Louis Farrakhan and others whose very existence suggests race mixing. His own skin seemed directly connected to the long, hard history of resistance and advancement that had nothing to do with Obama’s pastoral Hawaii. Like a rapper, he was the real thing.

Cain was not only dark-skinned and conservative, he was a businessman. He was from the South and claimed to have needed no civil rights movement during his steady rise in the business world. To hear him tell it, he made it on his own because of the quality of his work, the way all of the rest of his race should. As if being divinely spoken to from the clouds above us all, Cain asserted that black people had been brainwashed by the liberal media into voting for Democrats. Any who listened had been hearing this talk for months.

This black Republican was not afraid to say that America needed a businessman in the White House. It needed less regulation, no abortion, no same-sex marriages and no paranoia about an unprotected environment. It was clear as day that Herman had not drunk the poisonous soft drink of liberal pronouncements.

Read Stanley Crouch's entire column at the Daily News.

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