For Herman Cain, no steering clear of race

[alp227]

Cain relishes the opportunity to provoke as a black conservative. The Republican presidential hopeful often volunteers in his speeches that he is not angry at the country that enslaved his great-grandparents. He proclaims that he “left the Democrat plantation a long time ago.” He quips that he is not the GOP’s “flavor of the week” but a tried-and-true flavor, “black walnut.”

(...)

Like other black conservatives, Cain plays down racism and emphasizes personal responsibility. But his message carries particular resonance because of his stature in the presidential race.

Some African Americans have bristled at his tone, saying he is denigrating his race. Particularly controversial were his statements that many blacks were “brainwashed” into supporting the Democratic Party and that he did not believe that racism in this country still “holds anybody back in a big way.”

“He’s engaging in a very dangerous, irresponsible type of rhetoric,” said Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia state conference of the NAACP. “It’s almost like he feels the need to be accepted in a different class or community, and somehow, by portraying his own race or portraying the poor as a problem, it’s going to advance his cause. I think he’s going to find that that’s not true.”

(...)

Cain, 65, spent his early years in the shadow of segregation. He was raised in a government-subsidized apartment complex in downtown Atlanta and later moved with his family to a brick home in the city’s Collier Heights neighborhood, a planned community that drew middle-class African American families.

In his memoir, “This Is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House,” Cain writes fondly of his time at Morehouse College — an all-male, black institution attended by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights luminaries. He credits his success in part to the fact that the college was exclusively African American.

He graduated in 1967, in the thick of the civil rights movement. But former classmates recall that while many students were demonstrating, Cain focused on his studies and the part-time jobs he needed to cover tuition.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-herman-cain-no-steering-clear-of-race/2011/10/17/gIQAdNkN4L_singlePage.html

[chollybocker]

1. How many books can one PAC buy?

[izquierdista]

2. Emphasis on the 'nut' part.