As Michael the Black Man knows all too well, when you’re a black person on Team Trump, terms like “sellout” become crosses you learn to bear.
Recently, Michigan Chronicle senior editor Keith A. Owens penned a piece critical of U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson entitled, “Shame of Detroit Ben Carson Competes for House Negro of the Year Award.”
Herman Cain (who you may remember from the 2012 presidential campaign) came to Carson’s defense with his own essay, “House Negros Stand Up!”
Owens went ham on Carson, especially for not condemning President Trump’s response to the Charlottesville rally. “So Carson, the only African American member of Trump’s cabinet (Omarosa, the other resident House Negro, is a White House advisor), believes that having a President of the United States who can’t make up his mind whether or not to endorse or condemn Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists on the march in the streets of Charlottesville, is a minor incident,” wrote Owens.
Cain clearly wasn’t pleased about the article and clapped back with an op-ed on his own website. He began the article with a major sentiment: “Since the Michigan Chronicle, a historically black Detroit-based newspaper, thinks Dr. Ben Carson is a "house Negro," then I must be one also.”
Cain tells Carson not to worry, that Owen is just a name-calling hater. House Negro is "one of the names you get called by other black people when you are a success at something," Cain said.
Cain wrote that he felt he had to appoint himself Carson's white knight, because "Gentle Dr. Ben Carson is too nice to respond to that garbage article and name-calling by the Michigan Chronicle, but I'm not!"
And also, because he understands Carson like few others.
“Being called a 'house Negro' is just one of the insulting names I have been called as an ABC (American Black Conservative), simply because I do not subscribe to the black liberal backward-looking narrative of black identity politics,” Cain said. “Maybe that's why I have had multiple successful careers over the last 50 years, and name-calling has not stopped or slowed me down yet!”
Ending on a high note, Cain, like Taylor Swift and her snakes, calls for people to reclaim the term "house Negro," and to wear it as a badge of honor.
"If being called a 'house Negro' is what some of us must endure for succeeding in this nation and thinking for ourselves, then let all of the 'house Negroes' stand up and be counted."
