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Republican
presidential candidate Herman Cain professes to know why most
African Americans don’t vote for Republicans – they are
brainwashed.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>“African Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view,” Cain said on CNN’s The Situation Room. He added, “I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it’s just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.”
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>Anyone with a scintilla of a brain knows that African Americans have not always favored Democrats. Blacks voted overwhelmingly for Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, until Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, a package of programs that helped lift America out of the Great Depression. By 1936, 75 percent of African Americans had switched their support from Republicans to Democrats.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>Still, the GOP continued to receive a respectable share of the black vote for the next two decades. Even with a Democratic presidential candidate as attractive as John F. Kennedy, Republican Richard M. Nixon managed in 1960 to capture 32 percent of the black vote. However, the GOP took a sharp right turn in 1964 with the nomination of ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Black GOP support plummeted to 6 percent that year and has never risen above 15 percent since that debacle.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>African Americans knew what they were doing in the 1930s when they switched allegiance. And instead of being brainwashed today, they have wisely decided to extend solid political support to the party that supports them. When you examine how differently Democrats and Republicans vote in the House and Senate, it should not be surprising that African Americans shun the party that shuns them.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>With only a couple of exceptions, the record of GOP lawmakers shows that they don’t want to merely turn back the clock on black progress, they want to turn back the calendar.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>In 2008, I wrote that the NAACP had been issuing a civil rights report card since 1914. In the 109th Congress, 25 Democrats in the Senate received an A from the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, 15 earned a B and two got C’s. None was graded D or F.
B. One, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, earned a C, and another,
Mike DeWine of Ohio, was given a D. The other 54 Republicans who
served the full session earned F’s.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>There was a similar pattern in the House, where 133 Democrats earned A’s, 41 got B’s, 15 received C’s, and 19 brought up the rear with D’s. Among Republicans, none earned as high as a C. Three received the highest grade of D and 211 got F’s.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>At the end of this session of Congress, the Republican record will certainly be worse. Any African American supporting a party with such an anti-black record must be, in Cain’s words, brainwashed.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>The only reason Cain gets away with making such outlandish charges is because he is black.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>Pollster Cornell Belcher made that point on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. In a face-off with former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, he said: “You know, if I came on your show, Anderson, and I said all Jewish people are brainwashed, I probably wouldn’t be invited back to CNN and I assure you the condemnation would be swift and it’d be powerful and be strong. What Herman Cain said was a racist, bigoted statement and [he] should be treated like a racist and bigoted person who makes those racist and bigoted statements.”
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“font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, can be reached through “font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 125%; font-family: Verdana;”>
“color: #cb0409; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;”>www.georgecurry.com You can also follow him at
“http://www.twitter.com/currygeorge”>
“color: #cb0409; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;”>www.twitter.com/currygeorge
