Ben Carson: Race Relations Getting Worse Under President Obama
Dr. Ben Carson claims that race relations have deteriorated since Barack Obama took office as president.
The retired director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Carson rose to national prominence in the political realm after slamming Obamacare and political correctness at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast with Obama sitting two seats away. Carson revealed late last year that he was subject to a first-time IRS audit after going public with his Obamacare criticism.
After recently changing his party affiliation from independent to republican, Dr. Carson is also considering tossing his stethoscope into the ring in a campaign for the White House in 2016. He intends to make a decision by May 1.
Carson recently compared Obama to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the context of the executive action on amnesty for illegal immigrants.
In an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show earlier week, Carson also weighed in on the aftermath of the Ferguson decision in which a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown, and which prompted violent protests in the St. Louis suburb.
“I actually believe that things were better before this president was elected. And I think that things have gotten worse because of his unusual emphasis on race.”
When Hewitt asked him to explain further, Carson referenced the 2009 confrontation between a Harvard professor and a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer that culminated in the White House beer summit.
“Well, for instance, in the incident with Henry Louis Gates, Skip Gates, and him calling out the police, and you know, how they always do this kind of thing, and the Trayvon Martin case, you know, if I had a son, this is what he would look like, rather than trying to take the balanced, objective look at things, and then, you know, what’s happened here. And then the way, which really irritates me to some degree, the way he and a bunch of progressives manipulate, particularly minority communities, to make them feel that they are victims. And of course if you think you’re a victim, you are a victim.”
Carson also claimed that the president has played the race card from time to time, but is “trying very hard not to do so” in the Ferguson situation.
In terms of what happened at Ferguson in August, Carson insisted that the officer did nothing wrong, but should have been better trained to deal with dangerous encounters. Asked if Michael Brown was a victim, Carson answered that he became a victim of “not having a well-established idea of how to relate to authority.”
The transcript of the entire Ben Carson interview with Hugh Hewitt can be found here.
Do you agree or disagree with Ben Carson’s assessment of race relations in America?
[image credit: Gage Skidmore]
Added: A new poll from Bloomberg Politics seems to be consistent with Dr. Ben Carson’s assertions. In the poll of 1,001 American adults, 53 percent indicated that race relations have gotten worse under Obama, including 56 percent of white respondents and 45 percent of black respondents.
