In a CNN appearance, Princeton professor Cornel West and broadcaster Tavis Smiley blasted GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain for his recent claim that racism is not a big factor in African-American unemployment. West urged him "to get off the symbolic crack pipe."
On CNN over the weekend, Cain said that racism is not a factor in poverty in America and that "people sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as an excuse for not being able to achieve."
West disputed his claim, saying evidence is to the contrary. "Well, one, black people have been working hard for decades," he said. "I think he needs to get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge that the evidence is overwhelming. I think he also knows that if brother [Troy] Anthony Davis, a brother who was just put to death, were a white Wall Street banker brother, that the response in the nation would have been very different, as opposed to being a poor black brother. And that's just one small example, one very small example of that, of racism still at work holding people back."
The political rhetoric is getting nasty, and the presidential election is a little over a year away. How much worse can it get? We'll see after a Republican candidate is chosen.
Read more at Real Clear Politics.
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