The Grift

Journalist and radio host Clay Cane traces the evolution of Black Republicans from the Civil War to the present day, arguing that a pernicious strain of opportunists has seized influence within the Republican Party by disregarding the interests of Black voters for personal advancement. Cane defines grifters as people who shape-shift for personal gain to achieve proximity to power, distinguishing them from Black voters who simply hold conservative views or have grown frustrated with Democrats. He stresses that not all Black Republicans are grifters and rejects slurs like "Uncle Tom," since being Republican does not erase Black identity. The book draws on historical research, interviews, and Cane's own experiences as a SiriusXM radio host to chart what he sees as a downward spiral from principled Black Republicanism to the cult of Trump.

Cane begins by reframing the standard narrative of Abraham Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator." He cites Lincoln's support for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a law empowering federal officials to capture escaped enslaved people even in free states, and Lincoln's explicit 1858 declaration that he favored "the superior position assigned to the white race" (20). Cane argues that Frederick Douglass and Black Republicans, not Lincoln, were the true driving force behind emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, he contends, freed only a tiny fraction of the approximately four million people in bondage and functioned primarily as a war document allowing Black men to enlist. He credits the sacrifice of 180,000 Black soldiers as decisive in the Union's victory. Throughout, Douglass held Lincoln accountable, protesting the abuse of Black soldiers and demanding retaliatory action after the Fort Pillow Massacre of 1864, in which over two hundred Black soldiers were slaughtered by Confederates. Cane establishes Douglass as the blueprint for principled Black political engagement: bold, race-conscious, and unwilling to trade his convictions for proximity to power.

The book chronicles the rise and fall of Black elected officials during Reconstruction. Constitutional amendments guaranteed citizenship, equal protection, and voting rights regardless of race, and Black leaders won office at every level of government. Cane profiles several of these figures, whom he calls Douglass Republicans, including Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi, the first Black U.S. senator, and Robert B. Elliott of South Carolina, who created legislation to weaken the Ku Klux Klan. Yet white terror campaigns systematically destroyed Black political power through massacres, assassinations, and voter suppression. The chapter culminates in the Compromise of 1877, which ended Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the South in exchange for Republican Rutherford Hayes winning the contested presidency, returning control to former Confederates.

Cane then introduces what he considers the earliest prototypes of the Black Republican grifter. Isaiah Montgomery, the sole Black delegate at Mississippi's 1890 constitutional convention, voted in favor of measures designed to disenfranchise Black voters, delivering a speech characterizing Black people as having "inferior development in the line of civilization" (71). Douglass warned that others would be "dazzled by the fame" and "probably imitate his bad example" (73). Booker T. Washington drew similar scrutiny for his 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, in which he told a predominantly white audience that Black people should accept second-class citizenship and limit themselves to industrial skills. Washington grew wealthy from white donors while sending his own children to elite schools, a hypocrisy Cane identifies as the hallmark of a grifter. Ida B. Wells criticized Washington for "telling chicken-stealing stories on his own people in order to amuse his audiences and get money for Tuskegee" (79).

Cane traces the shift of Black voters to the Democratic Party, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. He profiles Jackie Robinson's political journey from supporting Richard Nixon in 1960 to departing the GOP in 1968, warning that "the election of Nixon would be death to the Blacks" (97). He also profiles Edward Brooke, who in 1967 became the first Black senator elected by voters. Brooke won his Massachusetts seat through "non-Negro politics" but once in office governed as a progressive, cowrote the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and called out the GOP's racism. Under Nixon, Cane examines how "Black capitalism" was used to court Black voters while pairing it with coded "law and order" rhetoric targeting Black communities. He argues the Nixon era killed the Douglass Republican tradition, giving rise to a new kind of Black Republican focused on rigid individualism and proximity to power.

The Reagan era produced what Cane considers a more dangerous class of grifters. He devotes extensive attention to Clarence Thomas, whom he calls the watershed figure in the Black Republican grift. Thomas rose from poverty in Pin Point, Georgia, benefited from affirmative action, and then worked to dismantle the very policies that enabled his rise. Despite weak American Bar Association ratings, George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. After Anita Hill testified about alleged sexual harassment, Thomas called the proceedings a "high-tech lynching," casting himself as a victim. Confirmed by a 52-48 vote, Thomas went on to argue for eliminating sections of the Voting Rights Act. Cane calls Thomas the ideological and tactical blueprint for today's grifters.

The book profiles later Black Republican figures, including Gary Franks of Connecticut, described by a colleague as giving "white Americans cover by virtue of the color of his skin" (150-151), and J. C. Watts of Oklahoma, who initially attacked Black leaders as "race-hustling poverty pimps" (153) but evolved to defend affirmative action and ultimately acknowledged that Republicans "do not allow an African American to be Republican, conservative, and Black" (158). Cane contrasts Colin Powell, who endorsed Barack Obama, criticized Republican voter suppression, and left the party after the January 6 insurrection, with Condoleezza Rice, who continued to provide racial cover for the GOP by opposing the removal of Confederate monuments and dismissing critical race theory. Cane also examines Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who declared in his 2021 rebuttal to President Biden's address that "America is not a racist country" (218) while simultaneously complaining about being called racial slurs. Cane highlights Scott's opposition to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and questions Scott's "cotton to Congress" narrative, citing Washington Post reporting that census records showed Scott's ancestors were significant landowners rather than the bootstraps story Scott presents.

Michael Steele, who in 2009 became the first Black chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), represents Cane's last example of a sincere Black Republican leader. Steele refused to push birtherism, the conspiracy theory that Obama was not an American citizen, and acknowledged that race shaped his treatment within the party. Despite presiding over historic 2010 midterm wins, Steele was ousted by January 2011. He told Cane the party "love[s] the idea of Blacks in the party, as long as they sound and act white" (212).

Cane devotes his final chapters to the Trump era, which he argues brought grifters into the open while destroying the work of sincere Black Republicans. Daniel Cameron, Kentucky's first Black attorney general and a protégé of Mitch McConnell, spoke Breonna Taylor's name at the 2020 Republican National Convention while condemning activists fighting for Taylor's justice, then declined to charge the officers who killed Taylor with homicide. Grand jurors later claimed Cameron had not allowed them to consider homicide charges. Ben Carson, Trump's secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), proposed cutting HUD's budget while calling low-income people "too comfortable." Candace Owens reinvented herself from anti-Trump blogger to conservative provocateur, making comments that appeared to normalize Hitler. Herschel Walker ran for a Georgia Senate seat despite proven lies about his personal life, receiving 88 percent support from white evangelicals. Former Republican Shermichael Singleton told Cane: "I've never needed the grift and insulting my people to elevate me for financial means" (274).

In his conclusion, Cane argues the Republican Party is irredeemable in its current state but insists the answers lie in the tradition of principled Black Republicanism, applied now through the Democratic Party. He calls for consistent high voter turnout, advocates for economic justice modeled on the 1967 Freedom Budget proposed by labor leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, and urges the Democratic Party to invest in qualified Black candidates. He closes with a message to Black Republican grifters: "May history be ruthless to the legacy of betrayal you left behind" (294).