Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Wednesday said voters in the African American community have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view.

Cain, who is a former CEO of Godfather's Pizza was speaking in an interview on CNN's The Situation Room.

I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative, he said, adding So it's just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.

But Cain believes that believes that one-third to 50 percent of black Americans are open-minded.

I meet them every day, he said. They stop me in the airport. And so this whole notion that all black Americans are necessarily going to stay and vote Democrat and vote for Obama, that's simply not true. More and more black Americans are thinking for themselves. And that's a good thing.

Cain recently had a surprising victory in the Florida straw poll.

He defeated second-place Rick Perry.

Cain came in first with 37.1 percent of the 2,657 votes cast by GOP delegates at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

Perry, on the other hand, landed second with 15.4 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney came third place with 14 percent.

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