Letter to Editor: "Dear Brother Cain"

Dear Brother Cain:

While I understand the point that you are attempting to make in your pronouncement that the “Black community (has been) 'brainwashed' into voting for Dems”, it so unfortunate that you would stoop to the level of so many politicians and suggest that the black community or African-Americans do not have the political, economic or intellectual capacities to know whom they should vote for.

This is especially paradoxical considering that that every few years candidates such as you continue to make empty, seditious and counterfeit promises to this constituent voting block about the benefits of their respective candidacies.  

I would suggest to you—and any other Republican, Democrat or Independent candidate—that you learn very quickly that we are not circus animals or attendees of hypnotism shows that cannot make the reasonable and right decisions about who our greatest political enemies are at any point in time in the history of this country.

It is a sad reality that this is the choice that we oftentimes have to make!

My great grandfather, one of the first freed sharecropper-turned-farmer in Sumter County, Ga., once said to me, “Everything that falls from the sky is not rain and don’t let anyone convince you of that! Regardless of how good their sales pitch might be or how much glitter was on that gold!”

History has evidenced that many of the policies and programs that have been advocated and placed into law by all of the parties have been fraught with aspects that have been subversive; possessed and produced strategically harmful and hurtful impacts to the long term growth and viability of the black community; and disavowed the inherent and systemic racism that exists in our political, corporate and economic community that continue to shackle, injure and impair people of color in this land daily.

“We clearly understand that black America and the black community are in a state of emergency and disrepair, and our plight grows worse and worse each day. Whatever happens in America, blacks suffer a double dose of it. If America has a cold, blacks have pneumonia. If America is in a recession, blacks suffer in a depression!”

So should our position be that we trust the “Straw Boss” or decide what our viable and genuine options are? In the words of a great theologian, “Should the black community be the opium of the people assisting in the disempowerment and social underdevelopment of the oppressed and our communities?”

I would advocate that many in the black community have chosen another direction—we have made the decision that we refuse to ride in any of pharaohs’ chariots.

Why should people of color vote with a party that, at present, has as one of its goals a repeal of the Voting Rights Act?

Why should we vote with a party whose leadership continuously denies that systemic destructive racism exists in America and believes that the free market system is humanitarianly going to address the needs of the poor, elderly and disenfranchised?

Why should we vote with a party that always seems to have ongoing “illicit mongering affairs” with the very fringe groups that are continuously practicing and funding acts of racial injustice, intolerance and violence against our people?

I shed a tear for you and all politicians as you missed an opportunity in this proclamation that the “Black community (has been) 'brainwashed' into voting for Dems”, you could have been more than another candidate.

In my heart I was hoping that you would represent a politician that did more than appeal to the worst in the electorate. The black community is much more astute than you and others in politics give us credit for. Our values and beliefs are just as conservative, economically based, morality focused and generationally directed as any other community!  

Politicians come and go, but God remains the same! The day will come when every single person, especially those that claim Christ as their savior, will have to stand before the throne and answer the question, “Did I serve my interests or God’s interests? Did my avocations only serve a few or did they really lift the tide of everyone?”

These are the questions that the black community is asking! Our schools are failing our children, we have more young men of color in jail than are in college, and we are struggling in this new economy. But at the end of the day, we still care about those that have been left behind!  

No, my friend, the black community has not been “brainwashed!” We have just taken strong ethical and practical positions to decide which devil we HATE least and moreover which enemy is more likely to use the intellectual “N-word” to our face that we are not capable of deciding who serves our best individual and collective interests!

While I cannot speak for any other person that is of color, I, for one, would vote for any candidate as long as their words are true, their heart is right, their policies and agenda are not solely focused on being electable, or don’t propose that our predicament are the result of sole self inflicted “Pavlov’s dog” type conditioning!  

The black community can, will and must demand that all of their candidates and politicians are held accountable! However, prior to getting our vote, please do not suggest that we do not have the intellectual capacity to determine that the “rain that we feel failing on our heads is not peculiarly odorous or the pain that our communities feel is not to a large extent because of the pain and policies of those that forget about the least, the less and the loss!

In Christian love, 
Cascade Patch Reader Rev. Artis Johnson

Editor's Note: According to a story on the Elections 2012 page of HuffintonPost.com, in an interview that aired on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Wednesday night, Cain brought up the topic again, suggesting that members of the African American community "have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view." For more on Herman Cain and his recent Florida straw poll win, see the Huffington Post Elections 2012 section.