Business

Thomas Sowell on Cain’s ethnicity: ‘He is certainly one of us, far more so than Barack Obama’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On Thursday’s broadcast of “Cavuto” on the Fox Business Network, Hoover Institution senior fellow Thomas Sowell said former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who grew up in Atlanta in the 1960s, had origins more closely associated with civil rights struggles than President Barack Obama’s.

“My gosh, [Cain] is certainly one of us, far more so than Barack Obama,” Sowell said, “raised in Hawaii and going to a private school — an expensive private school”

Discussing his own upbringing, Sowell said that despite not having “a lot of frills” like electricity, central heating or running water, he was fortunate to have a family. Sowell pegged his success to his parents’ habit of pushing him to get a good education.

“I was born into a family where people did not have any education beyond elementary school,” Sowell said, “but they were people who wanted me to have education … When I was eight years old we moved to New York in Harlem. And they were tremendously concerned that I should get a good education.”

His move to New York City, Sowell said, happened to come at a time when New York City schools were among the country’s best.

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