Herman Cain and Talking Race in America

As the topic of 'race' emerges in the GOP leadership campaign, discussions of racism remain disturbingly absent.

The topic of race has emerged full throttle in media discussions about Republican efforts to unseat President Barack Obama. Despite the obsessive coverage for months of every Republican debate, campaign-strategy shift, bus route, stump speech, and poll result, the topic of race had not come up until African-American Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s history of sexual harassment – sexual, not racial, harassment – finally brought the topic to the table. This, despite the fact that it's not clear Cain’s race was relevant to the multiple incidents being reported.

Yet now there are daily accusations that those responsible for the charges against Cain are simply afraid of a "strong conservative black candidate." There have also been references to lynching and comparisons to Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. American columnist Ann Coulter notoriously referenced Cain’s racial identity when she stated, "Our blacks are better than their blacks." Suddenly, Republicans are discussing racism and the politics of race. Somehow, when sex comes up, race comes up.

What has been remarkable in this early campaign season – where Republicans are trying to outmaneuver each other as more hostile, more oppositional, and more confrontational against Obama, the first African-American president in U.S. history – has been the resounding absence of race talk. Race has not come up in the discussion over the jobs bill, despite the fact that there continues to be six to 10 per cent more unemployed blacks and Latinos than whites. Race has not come up in the debate over public sector unions and benefits, despite the well-known fact that African-Americans are disproportionately aggregated in public sector employment. Race has not been part of the debate over how to address the foreclosure crisis, despite the fact that a larger percentage of black and Latino homeowners were affected. The immigration debates have been careful to obscure the anti-Mexican racism behind the demand for electrified fences and attack dogs by referring only to unspecified "illegals." Canadians and Europeans, generally, are not hopping fences.

Nor has there been any discussion of racism's influence on the justice system, on prison-sentencing structures, or on "stop-and-frisk" policies. There has not been a single question throughout the debates about the recently reported crisis of Latino poverty rates. The Republicans have largely let liberals fight amongst themselves over whether racism plays a role in the decline (by 30 points) of white support for Obama. When Tulane University political science professor Melissa Harris-Perry accused white liberals of holding Obama to a race-based double standard, she was attacked from the political left for even raising the issue. It seems that the topic of race is unmentionable on either side of the political divide.

Yet the truth is, race-based defences of Cain are hardly the first time race has been relevant to this season’s Republican campaign. At a debate in early September, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry garnered applause, whistles, and shouts of approval from a largely white crowd when it was announced that he had executed 234 inmates in Texas, a state with a long track record of racial bias in its justice system. Courting the Tea Party voters, several GOP candidates have used the rhetoric of "taking our country back," a phrase that implicitly invokes a race-based constituency that believes it has become disenfranchised. Race is a constant consideration for campaign staffers debating how hard a line to take on immigration given the likely result from Latino voters, and how to rhetorically frame the attack on Obama without alienating African-Americans or anti-racist whites. So, if race is all over the campaign, why can’t we talk about it in public?

Defending Cain against charges of sexual harassment with counter-charges of racism is a sign of Republican hypocrisy. Racism must be downplayed if not ignored, and the racial identity of candidates must go unmentioned, unless there is a way to use the topic to deflect criticism. The topic can be opportunistically used for other agendas, but never for the issue of racism itself.

Until the sexual harassment charges came out, the most open reference to Cain’s racial identity was, of course, his own. Cain regularly referred to himself as the "black walnut" candidate in early interviews, in an embarrassing attempt to make light of his differing features within all-white debate lineups. This seemed to be an attempt to put whites at ease, as if to say, "You don’t have to pretend colour-blindness around me, it's okay." While the white candidates could ignore the issue of race, or act self-righteously colour-blind if it was brought up, Cain rather obsequiously referred to himself by an ice cream flavour.

But racism is not going to wither away on its own accord if we stop mentioning it. And it definitely will not wither away if non-whites continue to be the only ones ever allowed to bring it up, and then only in the form of self-deprecating humour. We need to stop policing those who bring it up as a serious topic and charging them with "playing the race card." Race is not a card game, but the stakes are high.

Photo courtesy of Reuters