Written by Herman Cain is about to find out what Bill Cosby found out when he spoke the truth about how blacks in this country are not held down by racism but because they use that for an excuse for not succeeding.
“(CNN) - Presidential candidate Herman Cain said Sunday that he didn’t believe racism was a major factor holding minorities back in America, asserting instead that African Americans had a level playing field on which to advance economically.
“I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,” Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Are there some elements of racism? Yes. It gets back to if we don’t grow this economy, that is a ripple effect for every economic level, and because blacks are more disproportionately unemployed, they get hit the worst when economic policies don’t work. That’s where it starts.”
Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, said educational disparity and geographical separation were to blame for high unemployment rates among African Americans. Jobs numbers released Friday showed the unemployment rate among African Americans standing at 16.0%, while the total national unemployment rate remained at 9.1%.
“The gap is due to a number of factors,” Cain said. “One is a differential in education. Two is a concentration of a lot of blacks in certain areas like the city of Detroit, where the unemployment rate there is 14% versus the 9.1% we have nationally. So you have a city like Detroit where they lost 25% of their population, economically they’ve done nothing but go down, down, down.”
When asked by CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley if he thought African Americans had a level playing field, Cain said he thought most of them did, using his own experience in corporations as an example.
“Many of them do have a level playing field,” Cain said. “I absolutely believe that. Not only because of the businesses that I have run, which has had the combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics - you know, we had a total diversity. But also because of the corporations whose board I’ve served on for the last 20 years. I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America.”
As for African Americans who remain economically disadvantaged, Cain said they often only had themselves to blame.
“They weren’t held back because of racism,” Cain said. “People sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as an excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve.”
Of course the left will tee off on Cain for not being “black enough”, even though in the very best of leftwing definitions Cain is as black as they come. But let’s look at some numbers. The U.S. has 8.9 million households worth at least 1 million dollars. Of this approximately 4.2 million are black, according to Census Bureau statistics from 2007 through 2011.
Herman Cain and Bill Cosby are both in this group and both say emphatically that using racism as an excuse was never an option. I’ve long told the story of how I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood, attended predominately black schools, and without exception every one I know who is black and is successful did it because they worked hard, studied hard and applied themselves.
If you want to know point-blank, the leftwing ideology that has taught blacks that they cannot succeed unless someone helps them with money, or school or even by giving them the job over more qualified candidates. In fact if you want a definition of racism it’s exactly how liberals define it. In other words if you’re black you’re sub-human unless you are helped by them. You’re not smart enough, or have enough drive on your own to be a success on your own.
I don’t believe that and many black friends I have don’t believe it either. I believe that no matter what your color of skin, ethnicity, creed or religion, you have what it takes to succeed. The only thing you need is the desire to achieve. There are thousands of stories of this taking place in this country and around the world, because it’s the truth blacks need to hear.
