Last night I was watching Lawrence O'Donnell's "The Last Word" and happened to catch this interesting commentary on Herman Cain and Republican racial politics from Toure, a black American author, journalist and culture critic who is also a contributor on Dylan Ratigan's Show on MSNBC. Transcript below the pretty, curly thing for those who can't view the video...
Lawrence: Racial politics Republican-style. What have we learned about the Republican Party's take on race relations in America from this year's presidential campaign? From Herman Cain's denunciation of brain-washed African American voters who vote for Democrats to the name of Rick Perry's ranch to Rick Perry's confession that it's just fun to question the president's birth certificate and today's sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain. Some right wingers saw today's revelations about Herman Cain as some kind of left wing conspiracy;
(Cut to Ann Coulter on Hannity)
Hannity:...high tech lynching...is it high tech...? Is that accurate?
Coulter: Yup. It absolutely is. It absolutely is and it's coming from the exact same people that used to do the lynching with ropes. Now they do it with a word processor.
Hannity:...the Democratic Party?
Coulter: Yes! Yes! We had to have national civil rights laws to protect blacks from Democrats...
(Cut to Limbaugh)
Limbaugh: What's next folks? A cartoon on MSNBC showing Herman Cain with huge lips eating a watermelon? What are they gonna do next?
Limbaugh: The racial stereotypes that these people are using to go after Herman Cain, what is the one thing that it tells us? Well, it tells us who the real racists are but it tells us that Herman Cain is somebody! Dontcha see? We can't have, no we cannot have a black Republican running for the office of president. We can't have one elected. We can't have a Hispanic. The left always...those two groups. Anything good that happens to a black or Hispanic in American politics can only happen vis the Democrat Party. If it happens elsewhere, we're gonna destroy those people ala Clarence Thomas...
(Cut back to Lawrence)
Lawrence: Joining me now is Toure, Time Dot Com contributor and author of "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness. "What it means to be black now. A work of unsparing honesty..." according to Harvard professor, Orlando Patterson's New York Times review of the book. Toure, thank you very much for joining me tonight.
Toure: Thanks for having me.
Lawrence: I wanna refresh the memories of some of our younger viewers or actually introduce it to them for the first time, where this phrase "High Tech Lynching" entered Republican politics. Let's listen to Clarence Thomas at his Senate Confirmation Hearing:
(Cut to Clarence Thomas)
Thomas: This is high tech lynching. I cannot shake off these accusations because they play to the worst stereotypes we have about black men in this country.
(Cut back to Lawrence and Toure)
Lawrence: Toure...(slightly stuttering in disbelief) there's just this blender of Republican racial politics that's gotten mixed up today. I can't make any sense of it. Uh, guide us through this.
Toure: Well, one thing I see and saw Rush Limbaugh talking about, "We see who the real racists are..." and Clarence Thomas is using that same sort of bazooka to fire back, is that when we point out moments of racism, or moments of minstrelsy in Herman Cain's example, they just fire back and they use the word "racism". "That's racist!" "You're racist!" So, it becomes this sort of negating tool that; "We'll just say 'racism' wherever we see any racial politics taking place. We'll say the race card is being played anytime somebody points out a moment of racism" and that just sort of muddles the conversation to where a lot of people are like; "I don't wanna be involved in this at all. It seems that two people are fighting and I don't understand what's going on."
But, I think that Cain interestingly, does not exist without Obama proceeding him. He sort of rights the ship in a lot of people's minds or rights the scales. Because Obama is Alpha. He's brilliant. He's a man that you had to take seriously. He's a Constitutional Law Professor that you had to take seriously when he spoke. Cain sort of reasserts the scales that the way people want it to be in a lot of ways. He's charismatic but he's a lightweight. His ideas are not serious, they're not well thought out and there's this constant minstrelsy aspect that he keeps bringing up. This is not something that we're just making up out of whole cloth. He's the one who says he wants the Secret Service to call him "Cornbread". He's the one who says things like, "Aw Shucky Ducky!" when he starts. This is deep black slang that he's using that we have not seen on a public stage before. And even in the Yellow Flower Ad that you brought out on your show a few days ago, isn't he the one who gets punched in his own ad? Is that right? Do I remember that correctly?
Lawrence: Yeah.
Toure: I mean, what sort of man who presents himself as Alpha, is wanting to be the leader of the free world, would get punched in his own campaign ad? That doesn't make any sense. And yet, Cain allows the GOP to have this sort of force where it's like, "Well, we're not racist, we're supporting this black man." Even at the same time that he's sort of reasserts this myth of black docility and just sort of self abnegation, the "You don't have to take us seriously" sort of thing that Obama threw completely out of whack because you had to take him dead seriously.
Lawrence: Yeah, he seems to present himself more as an entertainer. Today he actually, at the end of his speech to National Press Club, he sang...
Toure: Yeah.
Lawrence:...he turned to song. Uh, he is more of an entertainer in many ways than he is a candidate, isn't he?
Toure: Yeah, and I mean this way that Colin Powell, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, the blacks that are running for president that have presented themselves as serious intellectuals..."We're not entertainers. We might have a little fun every now and then but we're not here to entertain you. We're here to lead you."
And here comes Herman Cain, reasserting the scale of "Yes! I am an entertainer. I'm here to entertain you".
Lawrence: Toure, the author of "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness". Thank you very much for joining me tonight.
Toure: Thank you.
I wanted to share this because I enjoyed this interview. Most of it would go over the heads of Republicans and people not well versed in racial politics on either side of the aisle but for those who understand, you might even LOL because Toure doesn't mince words here except to maybe dumb it down for people who might not understand or recognize the purposeful minstrelsy in Herman Cain's aura. Herman Cain knows what he's doing and he knows we know.