Is Herman Cain Embarrassed To Be Black

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By Leonard Pitts Jr.

In his Miami Herald column, Leonard Pitts Jr. tackles the issue of whether GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain is a self-loathing black man because of his alignment with the Tea Party. He concludes that the bootstrapper who grew up in the segregated South is uncomfortable in his skin, not because of his Tea Party alignment but because of his own personal ideology.

This is for those who keep asking what I think of Herman Cain. In particular, it's for those who want to know what the tea party's embrace of this black businessman turned presidential candidate says about my claim that the tea party is racist. CONTINUE....

Related articles

• Tea party fuels rise of Herman Cain. So how can it be racist? (csmonitor.com)
• Sean Penn accuses Tea Party of racism (guardian.co.uk)

Is Herman Cain Playing 'Plantation Politics'?

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By Michael Arceneaux

Like most of you, up until very recently I hadn't a clue as to what a Herman Cain was. And like many of you who have since been made aware of his presidential candidacy, I already miss those days of ignorance. While he can go on about being a different kind of political candidate, Mr. Cain's behavior suggests he's nothing more than the latest incarnation of an ever-lingering and consistently annoying cliché of American politics.

That being the antagonizing black conservative who bemoans racial politics yet conveniently and hypocritically finds ways to keep dabbling in it.

To Cain's credit, there are some positive attributes to him. As the son of a chauffeur to a former Coca-Cola executive who was tipped in socks, it's worth recognizing that Herman Cain is a self-made millionaire who at one time was the chief executive of Godfather's Pizza. Such a story embodies the American dream and is understandably alluring to some Americans in need of such symbolism. CONTINUE....

Herman Cain Suits Conservatives To A Tea Party

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By: Tonyaa Weathersbee

It’s not surprising that the Tea Party people would embrace a black man like Herman Cain.

The 65-year-old contender for the Republican presidential nomination reminds one of a younger, shaven version of Uncle Remus; the kind of black man whose success story serves as the comforting, de-contextualized tale they need to egg them on in their anti-government, anti-Obama fervor.

Cain is a man whose father, who, according to The Washington Post, worked as a chauffeur for the former head of Coca-Cola and used the stocks that his boss tipped him with to send his son to Morehouse College. Morehouse, as most of us know, is a historically-black college that was created during the segregated times that some Tea Party favorites, such as U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, would like to return to. CONTINUE....

Forecasting A Nasty 2012 Presidential Campaign

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By: Jack White

As many a would-be prophet can attest, predicting the future is one surefire way of making yourself look ridiculous. When your prognostication goes wrong, the only ones who look sillier than you are those who believed in the forecast.

Take, for example, radio Bible thumper Harold Camping, who whipped legions of evangelical Christians into a frenzy by claiming that the rapture, in which the faithful would be literally spirited up into heaven, was going to take place last Saturday. Lo and behold, we -- and he -- are still here. But instead of curing Camping of being a seer, that seemingly incontrovertible piece of evidence only forced him to revise his schedule. He now says the end of the world will take place on Oct. 21, and I hope he is right.

That's because the coming of doomsday this fall would spare us what I boldly predict will be the nastiest, most racially charged presidential campaign in decades, perhaps even since the Civil War. That's not because the developing field of Republican candidates is a pack of rabid race-baiters. Indeed, so far only one of them, the inimitable Newton Leroy Gingrich, has descended into that gutter with his charge that Barack Obama is "the most successful food stamp president in American history." CONTINUE....

Why President Obama And Herman Cain Are Praying For A Palin Run

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By David A. Love

Sarah Palin has made some moves lately that signal she could enter the Republican presidential field. With the recent purchase of a $1.7 million home in Scottsdale, Arizona, a beefing up of her staff and the release of a feature film? about her stint as governor of Alaska -- with a debut set for next month in Iowa, of all places -- it sounds like Palin might be preparing to take the plunge into 2012 presidential politics.

If this is true, then there are two people who stand to benefit the most from the news -- President Barack Obama and Herman Cain.

A recent Gallup poll has an surprisingly strong showing for Cain, the former pizza magnate and Tea Party affiliate who has no experience holding political office. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads in the poll with 17 percent, followed by Palin with 15 percent; Texas Congressman Ron Paul with 10 percent; Newt Gingrich with 9 percent; Cain with 8 percent; former Wisconsin Gov. Tim Pawlenty at 6 percent, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann with 5 percent, with John Huntsman, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum with 2 percent apiece. Twenty-two percent remain undecided. CONTINUE....

Say What? Michele Bachmann's Revisionist Musings

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By: Nsenga Burton

While others have dismissed Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn), The Washington Post's Jonathan Capeheart is paying close attention to Bachmann (R-Minn) who gave the Tea Party response to President Obama's State of the Union Address. Bachmann, who has presidential aspirations and wants to cut NASA, public school funding and a host of other things, has an "absolutely amazing" view of history. Her penchant for revising history is quite interesting. Capeheart points out that Bachmann spoke at an Iowans for Tax Relief event over the weekend and "blipped" his radar with this musing on the early settlers, who "had different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions": CONTINUE....

NAACP Releases Report On Troubling Tea Party Ties

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By: Cord Jefferson

The NAACP and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) today fired the second official salvo in the battle between civil rights groups and the Tea Party movement. In a report released this morning, "Tea Party Nationalism," IREHR researchers Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind detail the origins of the Tea Party and its connections to militias, anti-immigrant organizations and white-power groups.

NAACP President Ben Jealous writes in a foreword to the report, "We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will," but, he adds, "links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States … should give all patriotic Americans pause."

"Tea Party Nationalism" comes several months after the NAACP passed a resolution condemning what it regards as troubling racism within the ranks of the Tea Party movement.

CONTINUE....

Tea Party Just Rich Whites Exploiting Poor Ones

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By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

For a brief moment in 2008, we caught a glimpse of the madness that some white folks would be driven to if a black man managed to make it into the White House.

In October of that year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms uncovered plans by two neo-Nazis to assassinate then-candidate Barack Obama and gun down hundreds of black students in Tennessee.

Those plans, of course, were foiled – and as criminals, the neo-Nazi nuts who planned it would have flunked out of pre-school.

Still, that discovery accelerated fears among black people that a President Obama might meet the same fate as President Kennedy.

CONTINUE....

NAACP Stands by Charges of Tea Party Racism

NAACP President Ben Jealous says tea party supporters like Sarah Palin need to publicly condemn racist behavior among some of the group's members. The civil rights organization accused tea party activists Tuesday of tolerating bigotry.

Obama One Year Later: Tinkering We Can Believe In

By: Kai Wright-TheRoot.com

Before there were tea partiers, there were nurses. Angry nurses disrupting Sen. Max Baucus’ health care reform meetings back in the politically halcyon days of spring. Their complaint was simple: Democrats refused to even discuss proposals for single-payer, universal coverage. But unlike the deference that anti-reform zealots won this summer, all the nurses got for their trouble was jail time.

That’s because as far back as the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama began defining “reform” as something far more modest. The Obama campaign, Washington’s Democratic leadership and the progressive advocates who backed them agreed that Obama’s public plan—a competitive option inside the private insurance market—would be the face of reform. Everything more ambitious than that—like a single-payer plan—quickly became too radical to be taken seriously, while laughably cautious industry proposals defined the opposing boundary of compromise.

Obama One Year Later: Tinkering We Can Believe In....

Where is All the Tea Partiers' Patriotism Now?

By: Tonyaa Weathersbee

Back in 2007, when I interviewed Barack Obama as he was vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, questions abounded as to whether he, being the son of a Kenyan and a white Kansas woman, was authentically black enough for African-Americans to support.

I wrote that any lessons he might have missed about being a black man in his 40-plus years on this Earth, he’d pick up on the campaign trail.

Turns out I was wrong.

 

Where is All the Tea Partiers' Patriotism Now?....