It’s amazing how quickly right wingers can switch from “there’s no such thing as racism” to “you’re a racist because you’re criticizing our token minority candidate.”

Leonard Pitts Jr. has a good piece on the right’s sudden pious racial indignation over Herman Cain’s offenses.

Do you think it gives Clarence Thomas a warm, fuzzy feeling to know he is one of Ann Coulter’s blacks?

That is how Coulter put it on Fox “News” while defending Herman Cain against sexual harassment charges that threatened to engulf his campaign last week. Liberals, she said, detest black conservatives, but the truth is, “our blacks are so much better than their blacks.”

“Our” blacks? Really?

Social conservative pundits tend to be astonishingly obtuse when discussing race (See Exhibit A above), so it is good they rarely do so. Last week was an unfortunate exception, as one of “their” blacks struggled to frame a coherent response to allegations that he harassed female colleagues in the 1990s when he headed the National Restaurant Association. Though accusations of sexual impropriety have beset a bipartisan Who’s Who of black and white politicians, the right wing came out in force to argue that people are only questioning Cain because he is a black conservative.

This would be the same Cain who not so long ago said racism was no longer a significant obstacle for African Americans. This would be the same right wing that is conspicuous by its silence, its hostility or its complicity when the injustice system imposes mass incarceration on young black men, when the number of hate groups in this country spikes to over a thousand, when the black unemployment rate stands at twice the national average, when the president is called “uppity” and “boy.”

But they scream in pious racial indignation when Cain is asked questions he doesn’t want to answer.

And for good measure, the answer to the question, “Why don’t blacks vote Republican?”

The answer is simple. Black people are not crazy. Being not crazy, they understand a simple truth about conservatives: They have never stood with, or up for, black people. Never.

Forget modern controversies like mass incarceration. Social conservatives, then based largely in the Democratic Party of the early to mid 20th century, opposed the Voting Rights Act. They opposed the Civil Rights Act. They opposed school integration. They opposed the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They opposed a law to crack down on lynching.

These are the people for whom African Americans are now supposed to vote? To make the argument is to betray a stunning contempt for the intelligence — and memory — of black voters.

In talking about race, conservatives have all the moral authority of a pimp talking about women’s rights. Granted, “their” blacks might disagree.