"I believe underdog status is not determined any longer by race. Rather, it is the circumstances of one's life that should be considered." -Dr. Ben Carson
As he made clear, Dr. Ben Carson does not see color.
When I take someone to the operating room, and I shave their head and I open the scalp and take off the bone flap and open the dura, the neurosurgeon detailed. I am then operating on the thing that makes that person who they are. The skin has very little (to do) with who that person is and it's something that we have allowed to define us.
Of course, considering his fame and fortune, Dr. Carson now has the luxury of taking such a stance, but by doing so he minimizes the systemic racism that still permeates society. As pundit Chris Hayes insightfully pointed out in an interview with Dr. Carson about his recent book: "Part of the point that you're making in this book is that essentially these identities ... are actually contrived by liberals to divide people."
Oddly, though Dr. Carson does not dismiss his own early encounters with racism, such as being confronted as a child by a group of older whites boys in the Roxbury section of Boston. Dr. Carson poignantly writes:
'Hey, boy, we don't allow your kind over here,' one of them said. He looked at the others. 'Let's drown him in the lake.' I could tell they weren't just taunting me, trying to scare me. They were serious, and I turned and ran from there faster than I had ever run before in my life. It was a shocking introduction for a little boy to the racism that ran through America at the time.
Of course, as has been widely reported, Dr. Carson's mother received public assistance when raising Ben and his brother. As noted in Gifted Hands, Dr. Carson's autobiographical work: "By the time I reached ninth grade, mother had made such strides that she received nothing but food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy."
It is not clear if Ben Carson feels any cognitive dissonance when describing his early encounters with racism given the fact that he largely dismisses it as a factor limiting people's choices and opportunities today. Despite the irony of being raised in poverty himself by a single mother who received welfare benefits, the adult Dr. Carson thinks of such programs only as a crutch:
When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing. ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out.
Of course, he rationalizes his present beliefs given his impoverished upbringing by saying: "The culture was different then. I think there was a time when people were not proud of taking handouts. There were more people who did have that drive and determination. You do what you have to do."
So the difference between then and now must be that people were ashamed then to take such handouts and now do so with their heads held high. Of course, exactly when this change came about he does not say. Therefore, Dr. Carson must think it a priority if elected president to somehow re-introduce shame as a qualification for public assistance.
Of course, with something of a messiah complex , Dr. Carson states: ""I'm not interested in getting rid of a safety net, I'm interested in getting rid of dependency," Again, how he plans on doing so he does not say. However, half of the "subset of recipients on food stamps who are expected to work -- that excludes children, the elderly and the disabled -- are working," so perhaps the beneficiaries of these programs are not as idle as Dr. Carson seems to believe.
According to an article in the Guardian by Sidney Fussell:
While touting 'self-reliance' as a form of individual empowerment, Carson is de-emphasizing race and ignoring racism as a powerful social force that constrains people and limits their choices, instead redirecting the conversation America could -- and is starting to -- have on race to one of morality.
Conservatives then free themselves to believe in the idealized version of America they cherish, instead of the reality where the gritty complexities of race are still a determining factor. Alas, with Carson's candidacy, conservatives can look past their own racial animus and the party's history of stoking racial fears with it's Southern strategy that has been in use since the days of Nixon.
Paradoxically, we live in a society where some men, such as Dr. Carson, can reach their immeasurable potential, while others, such as Eric Garner are killed by police in an illegal chokehold while standing on a street corner. The determining factor is often race.
The "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality seldom passes the test when confronted with reality and is a philosophy which leads only to political passivity. It is the dismissal of the problem of racism, which Dr. Carson so casually does, rather than the poor themselves which is the real height of irresponsibility!