The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump

by Clay Cane, Lavette Books (Other)

Overview

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER

Part history and part cultural analysis, The Grift chronicles the nuanced history of Black Republicans. Clay Cane lays out how Black Republicanism has been mangled by opportunists who are apologists for racism.

After the Civil War, the pillars of Black Republicanism were a balanced critique of both political parties, civil rights for all Americans, reinventing an economy based on exploitation, and, most importantly, building thriving Black communities. How did Black Republicanism devolve from revolutionaries like Frederick Douglass to the puppets in the Trump era?

Whether it's radical conservatives like South Carolina Senator Tim Scott or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, they are consistently viral news and continuously upholding egregious laws at the expense of their Black brethren. Black faces in high places providing cover for explicit bigotry is one of the greatest threats to the liberation of Black and brown people. By studying these figures and their tactics, Cane exposes the grift and lays out a plan to emancipate our future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728290225
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	01/30/2024
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	2,801
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Clay Cane is an award-winning journalist, writer, radio host, and political commentator. A graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in African-American Studies, his work on race, culture, and politics have appeared in national publications, including the Washington Post, CNN, and The Grio. He is the director of the original BET documentary Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church, which was screened at the Obama White House. In 2017, The Clay Cane Show launched on SiriusXM Urban View channel 126. Clay is a regular political commentator on MSNBC. The Grift is his second book, his first being Live Through This: Surviving the Intersections of Sexuality, God, and Race. ClayCane.net, @claycane

Editorial Reviews

11/17/2023

Award-winning journalist/documentarian/SiriusXM radio host Cane (Live Through This) provides his perspective as a political commentator on how white supremacy, Republicanism, and Trumpism have influenced some Black Republicans. His work and research—spanning from the Civil War to the present—explores and highlights the political decisions, actions, and strides of many influential Black leaders, including some he says aligned themselves with white supremacists and became sellouts and traitors to rise to high levels and roles. The author disagrees with many of the people—mostly Republicans but not all—his book examines. He calls them grifters, adding that they're "opportunists who shape-shift for personal gain" and power. The work also shines light on the freedom of individual people, regardless of race, have to make difficult decisions, whether in agreement with others or not. VERDICT A timely addition. Cane covers a lot of ground in this title about several politicians, especially Black Republicans, and makes an enormous effort to cite multiple resources, which lean toward popular versus academic sources, such as encyclopedias, websites, and newspapers. But some readers may believe he falls short of substantiating all his claims and may disagree with the labels that he applies to those with opposing views.—James Rhoades

Library Journal

2023-10-21
A take-no-prisoners attack on the small but vocal community of Black Trump supporters and their ideological forebears.

“All my skin folk ain’t my kinfolk,” writes Cane, borrowing a line from Zora Neale Hurston. Where emancipation was wrought by Republicans, real advances afterward were effected by people such as Frederick Douglass, “who disrupted the GOP to achieve important victories for Black citizens.” Ever since the Reagan years, the GOP has increasingly become a fortress of white supremacy, and those Black Americans who have supported it, from Mia Love to Tim Scott, are, in Cane’s term, “grifters.” A classic tactic among them is to claim that racism does not exist, then to accuse their political opponents of being racist. A case in point was the “shape-shifter” Republican representative Love, who “would succeed if she moved in a way that supported her white Republican voters’ racist assumptions—but once the racism turned on her and she spoke out, Love would lose her base.” True enough, and Love is now out of office, outflanked on the right. Another classic case is South Carolina senator and now presidential candidate Scott, who earned a mere 8% of the Black vote in his home state in 2016—which, Cane adds, is beside the point, given that “Scott is the mouthpiece to make white conservatives feel good about their anti-Black policies.” Cane singles out a handful of exceptions, such as former Texas representative Will Hurd, a former CIA agent and “throwback Republican” who represented a heavily Hispanic district. By the author’s account, however, most of the players in his book are a rogues’ gallery of crooks, among them Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, and Omarosa Manigault Newman.

A full-bore assault on Black politicos who buy the GOP line and are thus tolerated, “but only if they know their place.

Kirkus Reviews

"The Grift isn't just a book—it’s a revelation. Cane's meticulous research, combined with his compassionate storytelling, lays bare the complexities of identity, loyalty, and political evolution within the Black community." — BET.com

From the Publisher