Ben Carson looks like he is taking a page from the Bill Cosby playbook and telling the Black Lives Matter protesters that they just need to learn to play by the rules. Carson has accused Black Lives Matter activists of “creating strife” rather than helping to address and solve today’s problems.
“Of course black lives matter,” the Guardian reports Carson said at a closed-door event in Harlem. “But what I feel instead of people pointing fingers at each other and just creating strife, what we need to be talking about is how do we solve problems in the black community. Of murder, essentially.”
Carson argued that black communities need to get a handle on the problem of murder in the community, citing a 2011 statistic that found homicide to be the most likely cause of death for young black men. Carson argued that blacks need to get back to “faith and family,” which, according to Carson, are “the values and principles that got black people through slavery and segregation and Jim Crowism.”
How out of touch is Carson? Arguing that blacks need to get back to faith and family is telling people who are victims of oppression to find a better coping mechanism. It does absolutely nothing to address the systemic inequalities that exist in America.
Ben Carson’s suggestion is quite possibly one of the most insidious comments to date addressing the issues of racial disparity in America. It’s just stupid.
