Cain: 'Obama's never been a part of the black experience in America'

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Herman Cain, who calls himself an “American black conservative” who has never been impacted by racism in America, has some strong opinions about the nation’s first black president.

theGrio: How Herman Cain is a creature of talk radio

In an interview with his friend, Atlanta-based conservative talk radio host Neal Boortz, Cain, who has complained that his credentials as a black American have been questioned by Dr. Cornel West and actor Harry Belafonte, delved into into the subject of his versus Obama’s “blackness.”

From Mediaite:

Boortz asked Cain to define what it could possibly mean to be an “authentic black” person. Cain responded that he didn’t know, before proceeding to trace his family tree back to his ancestors’ experience as slaves in Georgia (which prompted Boortz to ask whether he had any relatives who may have been slaves on the South Carolina plantation owned by members of his family). Cain then called talks about “authentic blacks,” a “crass, desperate attempt to try and, here again, insult me. What do they mean by ‘authentic’?”

Boortz also told Cain that, in certain rural portions of Georgia, one can see people driving by in trucks that have a Conferderate flag sticker on one side of the bumper, and a Herman Cain campaign sticker on the other. For Cain, that means that Southern “rednecks” (to quote Boortz’s description) care less about the color of his skin, and are thus less bigoted, than certain liberal members of the black community.

At another point in the interview, Boortz noted that Barack Obama also had not participated in the civil rights movement (Although, in all fairness to Obama, this may be because he was born in 1961). Later on, Boortz asked Cain how he’d do in a debate with Obama, which then prompted both men to agree that Obama has “never been a part of the black experience in America.”

Read more at Mediaite.