"Brain washed?" Count Me In!
Posted: Saturday, October 01, 2011
by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo
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- Alabama Share Cropping Family, 1936. Walker Evans photo. LOC
I am one of those brain washed blacks that Herman Cain says can't think for themselves. He's not the first who has tried to describe how and why black Americans should think and act. Nor is he the first who describes blacks who disagree with his positions or hold differing views as "brain washed."
Throughout American history it has been an easy response to the conditions and culture of African-Americans to describe the group as acting in concert, influenced by outsiders who had an agenda that in the long run didn't represent their best interests. This response is at the heart of Herman Cain's claim that blacks can't think for themselves. His view, widely shared, is that blacks adopt the views given to them by their leadership or by others; that they don't appreciate or understand what is really best for them.
This is an old saw. Beginning with slavery, blacks who ran away were said to have been inflicted with a disease that caused them to flee. Drapetomania was a "Negro disease" (white people couldn't be infected; they were free!) that made slaves mad and crazy. Uncertain as to how it was transmitted, the symptoms were always the same: it was found exclusively in Negroes, who first showed symptoms of being "panic-struck, frightened, sullen, or dissatisfied." Whipping was the best prevention according to Dr. Samuel Cartwright, who frequently wrote on Negro diseases unique to southern slaves.
The treatment of Negro thought as group think persisted throughout American history. During the 1920s and 30s, after the Soviet Union came onto the world stage, communists were thought to propel Negro protests against US domestic tranquility, a tranquility that required the races to be separated socially, publicly, economically, and residentially. Northern cities and neighborhoods had racial covenants that prevented houses from being sold to Negro families. When Negro families did buy houses in white neighborhoods, violence often ensued. These blacks were considered not to "know their place." Charleston, SC and many other southern cities had a rope down the center of entertainment halls, separating whites on one side and Negroes on the other. Street cars and buses, water foundations, medical waiting rooms, and the US armed forces all had separate spaces designated by race. But the idea that communists opposed segregation and organized otherwise agreeable Negroes to resist lasted all the way to North Carolina senator Jesse Helms Senate floor speeches against establishing a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.--who Helms claimed disrupted the social order and caused massive unrest as proof of Dr. King's communist affiliations.
The platform of the Republican party's first presidential nominee, John C. Fremont (who grew up in South Carolina), "free soil, free labor, free speech, free men," a greater share of freedom and equality for workers and racially oppressed, disenfranchised minorities is not mentioned by the leading Republican elected officials or candidates for local, state, or national office, including Cain. Instead, presidential candidates from the party of Lincoln use their free speech torefer to the first African-American President's agenda and policies as "dog food, "a "dark cloud."
What Herman Cain misses is that many African-Americans embrace conservative views; minority set asides were established under Richard Nixon by black Republican official, Arthur Fletcher. A Republican-controlled senate led by Bob Dole passed the King Holiday Bill when Reagan was in the White House. Massachusetts elected the first black Republican senator, Edward Brooke. George Bush appointed two black Secretaries of State. Florida in 2010, and Cain knows this, elected Jennifer Carroll, a former Air Force jet mechanic born in Trinidad, its Lt. Governor.
The problem is not the conservative philosophy, it's the current practice. Independent thinking blacks can view the actual track records of candidates and see who has opened the doors to the American dream through removing barriers and creating wider opportunities for all. When Republicans hold disaster aid hostage to spending cuts, that's not conservative, that's draconian. When Cain criticizes Muslims, the black community wonders if he knows the track record of Muslims cleaning up housing projects and keeping drugs out. When Cain can't show that black franchise ownership increased under his stewardship of Godfather's Pizza, that he added no minorities to the company's bottom line, his claim seems to disingenuously cover his opportunity shortfall. That's what counts. Blacks are open to conservatives, Even staunch segregationist Strom Thurmond received a sizable number of African-American votes.
Cain's remarks are another attempt to marginalize blacks as incompetent and uncritical--it ignores the historic case and examples that he would use if he were not brainwashed about black political thought. He and other conservatives would have plenty of support if the American dream that worked so well for him had been paid forward on behalf of others.
Instead, Cain is a shrill, marginalizing blacks by ignoring their history and repeating old saws. Blacks have not been "brainwashed" to ignore that it is commonsense not to split their vote because of an empty appeal that insults their intelligence and weakens its effectiveness and strength.
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