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Obama, Cain: Race or ideological pride for 2012?
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
November 1, 2011
The possibility for a 2012 faceoff between two Black
presidential candidates, Obama and Cain, is
of historical significance; perhaps, more so than when
Obama ran against whites.
Sadly, to date, that perception of inter-race
competition is being or has been deliberately erased.
Made manifest in its place is the ideological
difference.
Herman Cain, is thereby, denied the potent tool of the
racial anguish that benefited Obama in his contest with
Hillary Clinton.
But Cain will have to learn to live with the denial the
hard way; just as Clarence Thomas did on his way to the
Supreme Court.
Switching this contest to one based on ideology puts Cain at
disadvantage among Blacks.
It is known that Blacks are defined as Blacks
only when they run as liberals or are card carrying
members of the Democrat party.
Sadly, the same view sees Republican Blacks as outcasts
of the larger Black community.
Just wait for Cain to survive the ongoing Republican
presidential primaries.
Even so, the assault on Cain has already started, timed
to happen within the Republican primaries for Cain to be
knocked off before he becomes a threat to Obama and the
liberals.
Hence, the interest of liberals and their ideological
allies to bring Herman Cain down.
The first salvo is this idea that Cain is the
choice of racist Republicans.
But does it matter whether in Herman Cain, Republicans
have found a true conservative?
Ot that, the interest of
winning the presidency, by nullifying Obama’s appeal
among Blacks, Republicans may settle for Cain?
A week or so ago, the liberal on-line journal, Politico,
ran a story about two women who were said to have
accused Cain of sexual harassment when he was the
President of the National Restaurant Association of
America.
The
accusation, though made some 15 years ago, has now
gained currency as news of interest.
Cain has denied the story.
He admitted that the accusation happened, and was
investigated.
Found to have no merit, the women were dismissed
from their respective offices after the proper severance
payments were made to them.
Oddly, it seems very significant that only when sexual
harassment charges are made against Black men that the
allegations gain civil and criminal potencies.
In the past such charges led to instant lynching.
For white liberals, when made against them, the accusation of sexual harassment
usually turns to be a wash.
Men like Clinton,
Gore, and Edwards, all prominent white liberals, go
through it unscathed or less damaged than their
accusers.
Sadly, this historical fact is always lost on many
within the Black community, as it was in the case against
Justice Clarence Thomas, when it became a national spectacle at the hearings at the
Senate on his nomination as a justice for
the US Supreme Court in 1991.
Thomas was subjected to what he described rightfully as
“electronic lynching” by liberal senators as Joe Biden,
with the media in full throtle support.
The sad part was also that the charge was led by a Black woman,
Anita Hill, who for years Thomas had helped on a carrier
path to a law professorship at a prestigious university
at the time of the hearing.
Happily, the Black community stood by, idle as onlookers
while the vicious crime against Black manhood unfolded
and white liberals cheered the act on; as was done in
the old days, when innocent Black men were
lynched, during and before the Jim Crow years.
One would have thought that Blacks would have acquired
by now an emotional distress and disgust when a charge
of “sexual harassment” was alleged against a Black man.
And on hearing the charge, a distressed upshot that will drive
them to respond collectively and instinctively, with
alacrity and rage, to protest against the charge for its
racist import.
There was a case in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920 when two
white teenage women accused six Black circus workers of
rape. They
were rushed to jail on the unproven charges.
Subsequently, three of the six were sprung from jail. Elias
Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, all suspects
and were “lynched by a white mob of
thousands,” according to Wikipedia.
It turned out after medical examination on one of the
girls that no such
rape had occurred.
The emotional wounds from such many injustices led to the
Civil Rights marches.
But years after the marches, this typical tool
for silencing Black men is still lodged in the present
system; Black men can be rendered victims and
made politically impotent at the whimsical cry of sexual
harassment.
Herman Cain has been accused. The tragedy is a
large segment of the Black community will remain silent.
And his potential presidential candidacy will be
damaged.
But the tragedy will be lodged in the fact that,
historically, we have forgotten what happened to us.
It happened when we refused to stand for Clarence Thomas
against his accusers; not to forget that his accuser was
also a Black woman.
Ironically, when Clinton faced his impeachment and other
host of sexual harassment charges, it was the Black
Congressional Caucus itself that came to his rescue.
And now one Black candidate is running for the American
presidency, against another Black.
And one of them is being brought down by a sexual
harassment charge while the Black Congressional Caucus
hides its head behind ideology, forgetting that race
matters.
A contest between Obama and Cain, all Black, will be a
monumental racial achievement and a pride of historical
proportion; the first ever between two Blacks from
different sides of the ideological divide.
Blacks ought to see this as a win-win situation
for the race.
But, just as with Clarence Thomas, we are likely to see
one Black man degraded and described as undeserving; an
Uncle Tom and many will join white liberals in a hurry
in the attempt to bring him down. And the
whimsical excuse will be because he is a
conservative!
So now, is our civil plight about race or ideology?
If ideology, then where is the historical scar,
the racism, that we cry so much about?
Heaven help us.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher
www.ghanadot.com,
Washington, DC, November 1, 2011
Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish
or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at
a website, email a copy of the web page to
publisher@ghanadot.com
. Or don't publish at all.
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