When Herman Cain threw the “race card” bomb into the midst of the sexual harassment scandal story I literally felt the air leave the room. Sexual Harassment is a serious charge in itself but when you throw an accusation of race into the mix who knows where it will all go from there. We had our answer in short order when the right wing of the Republican Party took the bait and went at it like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Soon we were hearing that Republicans had ‘better Blacks’ than Democrats.
Years ago I had my own sexual harassment ‘situation’ to deal with. I was an International Student and one of the only Black West Indians. My major was Art and I worked as an artist Model to help pay my bills. The unwanted advances came from an artist who sketched and sculpted from my nude poses on a daily basis. I lived with my White boyfriend off-campus. He was one of the artists who worked alongside the harasser, who was also White. When I told my boyfriend about his advances he blew it off. He didn’t want it to affect his job. I was left to handle the situation: a lone Black West Indian woman standing day after day, no longer nude but naked, in the midst of a class of White, tobacco chewing, cigar smoking college professors and their acolytes.
The abuser was in his element. He found excuses to touch me under the ruse of adjusting the pose without anyone in that room noticing. Who would believe me? It finally all came to ahead when I punched him in the face. By this time he had taken his groping off-campus and into my living room: invited by my clueless and gullible boyfriend. He apparently thought that this black woman was for hire because I was living with a White man. He was wrong.
I took my complaint to the school and to the Dean of Students who took me seriously. I was kicked out of the Art Department and lost my job. At arbitration my boyfriend stood on the side of the abuser and his professors. I stood alone. I won the case but lost my relationship. No one spoke a word about race but it was insidiously yet explicitly present at all times. Therein lays the contradiction.
Herman Cain knew throwing the” race card” bomb would complicate things. He is not a dumb man. Yet, he threw it. What does that say about him and his character? Just something to think about…
Related article: Freeing Racial Harassment…