In the past few weeks, Republican candidate Herman Cain has been accused for sexual harassment. In 1990, Cain was the chief executive of The National Restaurant Association. Since that time, two women have stated that he had made them feel very uncomfortable during their work. Those women’s friends and colleagues have stated their friends had talked about their feelings dealing with Mr. Cain. The mood of the situation seems to be very suspicious. The National Restaurant Association gave $35,000 in severance pay to a female staff member in the late 1990’s after an encounter with Herman Cain. As Cain goes through his day being interviewed, the media has stated that many of his answers have changed from time to time and sometimes seems to be hiding something.

Herman Cain’s political rise was based on the fact that race did not matter in the Republican Party, but that is all he is concerned about as the accusations keep arising. Cain is trying to navigate around allegations that he sexually harassed at least three women, implying that the accusations surfaced because he is black. Hours after the claims were reported, Cain’s supporters branded his trouble as a “high-tech lynching.” Cain’s supporters have put blame on a white GOP presidential rival, on liberals afraid of a “strong black conservative”, and on the mainstream media who is more interested in “guilty until proven innocent.” However, Cain’s success in the Republican polls shows that the United States was finally ready to consider candidates according to ideas, not race. In 2008, Obama was elected as the nation’s first black president with a strong support from votes from minorities, liberals, and independents. This clearly indicates that the accusations on Cain are based more so behind the moral of the action and not the color of his skin.
About 20 years ago, a similar story occurred in the United States. The nation drew its attention to the 1991 hearings on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Anita Faye Hill, a professor at the University of Oklahoma Law Center, accused Thomas of sexually harassing her when she worked for him at the U.S. Department of Education. The hearings drew a large national viewing audience, raised questions about Thomas’s behavior, Hill’s credibility, and the nature of sexual harassment in the workplace, similar to Cain’s situation. Thomas was confirmed two days after the hearings, on a vote of 52–48, the narrowest margin for a Supreme Court justice since 1888. Thomas’s confirmation did not end the controversy. Some criticized Hill as a pawn of liberal and feminist interest groups that sought to wreck Thomas’s nomination by any means, while Hill’s defenders were outraged by the committee’s treatment of her. They described her dilemma as typical of women who bring sexual harassment claims. Unless the woman has third-party testimony backing up her charges, the “he said, she said” scenario always favors the man.
As the Herman Cain continues, the Thomas-Hill hearings provide good historical evidence in how this should be handled. Personally, I believe Herman Cain is guilty. He keeps using other things to put the excuse on and never confronts his accusations face to face. Thomas was a black man, who was proven innocent, so if Cain really is innocent, race should not have anything to do with this. As Herman Cain struggles to gain back positive popularity among the voters with this burden on his back, America can only ask one question: what will happen next?

UPDATE: After months of trying to clear his name from the sex scandal accusations, Herman Cain finally suspended his presidential campaign on Saturday. A main cause for his actions were due to the Iowa Register polls showing that a lot of his supporters were now leaning towards Newt Gingrich. It is almost impossible to survive this sex scandal, but Herman Cain, still confident, stated that the accusations of sexual harassment and of a 13-year affair were untrue. With Herman’s campaign now suspended, the other Republican candidates are still fighting to win the polls.