Cain on racial overtones: ‘There’s nothing there’

On the set of Now with Alex Wagner on msnbc Tuesday, Herman Cain tangled with author Wes Moore, who questioned Cain on whether comments by Newt Gingrich — who Cain has endorsed for president — have been offensive to minorities.

Wagner asked Cain to respond to past Gingrich statements — saying poor people lack work ethic, challenging Fox News commenter Juan Williams personally during a recent GOP debate and later saying work seems to be a “strange, distant concept” to Williams, along with calling Spanish “the language of the ghetto,” could be offensive to minorities.

She asked if, as a minority himself, the African-American former GOP presidential candidate found anything offensive in the comments. Cain said he found nothing divisive in the Gingrich comments, and noted that he’d known Gingrich since the 1990s, when the former House speaker named him to an economic and tax reform commission chaired by the late Congressman Jack Kemp.

“People who are looking for racial overtones in that kind of rhetoric, there’s nothing there,” Cain said, adding that Gingrich’s comments could only be interpreted as divisive to those who are looking for some sort of implied racial statement. it doesn’t exist.”

Read more at TheGrio.com.