An essay defending African Americans against the accusation of being brainwashed and therefore, not open-minded.
Upon browsing through the web, I had found a quote that stood out to me as if it were surrounded by alarms and screaming out, “Read me!” The reason is, it seems a bit off and I figured to myself that maybe I just may not know much about the subject to even know if this quote is true or false.
“African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view. I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it’s just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.” -Herman Cain
Is this really true? While examining the speaker and what he stood for along with recognizing his color, I can’t help but think that I may be stepping into a situation of a black person saying something negative about all blacks, which is usually viewed as acceptable since they’re the same race. The same subjective principle goes for other races as well. This is more like an unspoken rule since it is not within our laws of the land. But the quote seems so false when I read it again while reflecting from my own experiences that there would have to be more reasons from other sources as well so I just had to dig in.
Herman Cain was a businessman and politician. He opposed higher business taxes while being co-creator of Black Voice for Trump as he was successful in his ventures. With his background in these areas, it is safe to say that his quote would be heavily related to what others think and believe about increasing business taxes. Let’s look at the rest of Blacks in the United States and see how they are doing on their business ventures along with where the majority is living.
This is where parts of this quote do not make any sense to me because when it comes to money, “Over 40% of Black Americans make less than $30k per year, putting them at an income disadvantage if taxes are not filed correctly.” So if this is a problem in the beginning in which it is still difficult to file personal taxes correctly, this can relate to business taxes too. Not sure where the brainwashing would occur while they are still trying to learn how to do this while struggling to make ends meet for their own families.
Now for those fortunate enough to have their own business, “There are more than 2 million Black-owned businesses in the United States” (Perry 2020) with the greeted number in New York and the higher percentage located within Washington D.C. Out of this number, “only about 107,000 of them have actual employees.” (Editor 2019) From these numbers, it seems that most of these businesses cannot afford to pay for their employees with the majority of them have started out by cash only due to lesser chances of being approved for a loan. Since they own the smallest businesses in the country, does it seem like the Black business professional would be very concerned about higher business taxes? The minimum gross revenue required for profits to be taxed is $500,000. So Herman Cain’s claim of African Americans being brainwashed is still odd as the numbers do not add up. The tax increase would affect the majority of White-owned businesses that are much wealthier.
Moreover, according to the National Equity Atlas, the Black race has the highest percentage of people living in high poverty neighborhoods in the United States sitting at 32% from 1990 to 2017. Looking just a few years back, these numbers are still too high. If the wealthier businesses would pay their taxes, then the African Americans would ideally benefit as more money can be put into financial assistance for them to help close the gap. This idea would be open-minded to caring for others rather than the opposite.
*Note - This article is not intended to mock or harm the reputation of Herman Cain. He was an intelligent man who inspired many. May he rest in peace.
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