Dying in Pharaoh's Land: On the Death of Herman Cain

So the pressure for success can put a good strain/ On a friend you call best, and yes it could bring/ Out the worst in every person, even the good and sane/ Although we rehearsed it, it just ain’t the same/

— Jay-Z, “Black Republicans”

The novel coronavirus killed Herman Cain — Morehouse Man, Navy veteran, Black conservative, accused sexual harasser, business executive, former Republican presidential candidate, and MAGA shrill — after a month of ravaging his body following his attendance at a Trump rally in Tulsa where media photographed him cavorting around without a mask.

While COVID was the murderer, conservativism acted in concert. With over 150,000 deaths attributed to the plague, all the sounding boards of the right downplayed the inconveniences of shutting down public life and wearing masks to protect your fellow citizen. The portion of the political spectrum that put Trump in office, and which Cain proudly proclaimed allegiance, brayed about living free as the virus spread across their numbers like water drowning a wet paper towel.

Every Black person knows a Black conservative, a contrarian who stands athwart all our traditions. We feel obligated to own them because they are, somehow, our children. Cain’s conservatism caused him to betray all the forces that nurtured his success. He was a survivor of Jim Crow who broke bread with a party that housed the apartheid regime’s supporters. He was a Morehouse Man who betrayed his alma mater’s student creed by espousing bigotry. He was a military veteran who supported a president who sees the Constitution as kindling. He was a successful business executive who felt his fortune gave him access to the bodies of women. How could he have strayed so far from the traditions that created him?

The myth of anti-Blackness is that only non-Black people can perpetuate it. Sometimes Black folk believe the myths of anti-Blackness and white supremacy so fiercely that we fall into the intellectual feats white people tell themselves to make themselves feel this nation is just and fair. The individualism, the patriarchy, and the focus on wealth could not save Cain from spending the last month of his life dying on a hospital bed.

Individualism is a lie. It is a lie white people tell themselves to believe they built this nation through their calloused hands alone— ignoring slavery, the failure of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the racial disparities of the New Deal and the GI Bill, redlining, and mass incarceration. Cain owed his success to the many teachers and mentors who helped him succeed despite these powerful historical forces.

Patriarchy is a falsehood. Our nation’s leader is an admitted sexual predator who oversees an increasingly rising tally of the dead and dying; centuries of male presidents have failed to create a most just and equal nation for its melaninated citizens. Cain’s belief in patriarchy was simply the belief in naked, unaccountable power, which he used to try to dominate the bodies of women.

Wealth is a mirage. The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the known universe. Our money, our economy, our stock market refused to save us; like dueling magnets, death and profits seem to have parted ways. Cain’s money could not lift him from his deathbed.

Black folk are an Old Testament people. In the cotton fields and under the shadow of the whip, our ancestors sang:

Go down, Moses/ Way down in Egypt’s land/ Tell old Pharaoh/ Let my people go/

Our ancestors moaned this hymn to remind them that we sought to flee Pharaoh — and not become him. Something possessed Cain to forget the message of our ancestors and to harden his heart in his chase for gold and power.

Herman Cain died an utterly Black death. Because of his forgetfulness, because of his drive to be in the company of Pharaoh, he forgot that being the only Black person in the room means you will be the first to go. He died of an illness that disproportionately stalks Black people, an irony worthy of folklore, religion, and literature.

May God rest his soul.

Hal H. Harris is the founder of Established in 1865. He is active on Twitter and hopes you give him a follow at @Established1865.