From the Publisher
"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
Library Journal
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
Kirkus Reviews
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.
