Herman Cain Is Not African-American

My erstwhile friend and colleague, Goldblog, writing in the tonier precincts of Bloomberg View, went and had himself a bit of the Hermanator Experience. You don't want to miss his new column on Herman Cain. It's got alligators, Kenyan intellectuals, racial dog whistles, the whole nine yards (actually, no it doesn't--they never got to Israel!). Oh, and if you thought Cain was the African-American Tea Party candidate, you'd apparently be wrong:

Herman Cain, the beguilingly personable pizza mogul and Tea Party sweetheart who is showing well in the so-far uncompelling Republican presidential nomination campaign, threw a flag early in an interview I conducted with him last week. I had made the dire mistake of referring to him as African-American.

"I am an American. Black. Conservative," he said, punctuating each aspect of his self-identity. "I don't use African-American, because I'm American, I'm black and I'm conservative. I don't like people trying to label me. African- American is socially acceptable for some people, but I am not some people."

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/herman-cain-is-not-african-american/240324/