Viewpoint: Leave Ben Carson Alone

[Valin]

Time:

John McWhorter

April 02, 2013

 

Ben Carson criticized Obamacare, sharply, with Obama listening, at the National Prayer Breakfast in February. And Carson is black.

 

Yes, Carson is the black – gasp – conservative of the moment, this weekend also speaking out against gay marriage, for which he has been forced to apologize.

 

Unsurprisingly, Carson, an accomplished neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, has been celebrated by the right, and is considering politics. Enter the usual dogpile from black commenters: Carson as a traitor, a sellout, airing his views not from sincerity but because he wants to please the white establishment and make a buck.

 

(Snip)

 

By the early 2000s, the CEOs of AOL Time Warner, American Express and Merrill Lynch were all black, as were the presidents of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Bar Association. The black middle class had continued to grow. The Mayor of Atlanta was a black woman – imagine how likely that would ever have seemed to the grand old Civil Rights leaders just a generation before.

 

(MORE: The Identity Card by Shelby Steele)

 

Then I might note that I myself got a reputation as a dreaded black “conservative” in the wake of my own Losing the Race in 2000. Never mind that I am a contrarian Democrat rather than a right-winger; the impression sticks among many that I am a man of the right. All I know is that since I started writing on race, America has elected a black man President not once but twice, while residential segregation for blacks is the lowest it has been since the Warren Harding administration.

 

 

 

H/T Allahpundit Hot Air

 

From The Comments

Feel The LOVE!

tacedaniels

2 hours ago

 

Carson is now part of a party (Republicans) that is working full time to reduce the number of African American voters.

 

Ben Carson hates Obamacare which would help the working poor get medical coverage. Of course Carson does not offer any alternatives.

 

As stooges for the Republican Party, African American conservatives would never say anything against all the hateful and threatening actions of their party towards the first African American President.

 

As an African American, we hate black republicans just as their party's base hates us.

 

 

 

Leftcoastrocky

7 hours ago

 

Ben Carson? You mean "Mr. Bestiality"?

Edited April 2, 2013 by Valin
From the Commenta

[Valin]

Just in case you were wondering Dr. Ben Carson is a fake, and Republicans/Conservatives are still racists. It's in the NY Times so it must be true.

 

 

He Wears the Mask

TA-NEHISI COATES

April 3, 2013

 

 

The present darling of the right wing, Dr. Benjamin Carson, is a distinguished neurosurgeon who went from the depths of Detroit poverty to the heights of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. But his current status among conservatives isn’t so much rooted in Carson’s redemptive rise from rags to respectability, as it is in the belief that he is, in the long winter of Obama, the one they’ve been waiting for.

 

(Snip)

 

The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest.

 

Benjamin Carson is that Conservative Black Hope of the moment. His rise began with

that mixed policy, humor and victimization in February at the National Prayer Breakfast, mere feet from the president of the United States, who was forced to take his medicine in a way that Clint Eastwood could only dream of. When Sean Hannity interviewed Carson about his speech he dispensed with the policy and simply dubbed the segment “Lecturing Obama.”

 

(Snip)

[Casino67]

Being from Baltimore, I have heard of Dr. Carson for longer than the rest of the country. He has always had, and earned, the respect of Baltimore and the medical community in general for a long time.

 

But.......

 

Suggesting he run for President is just silly, IMO. To paraphrase It Takes A Village, running for President means it Takes a Politician. A politician Dr Carson ain't. He may make a fine Surgeon General in someone's administration though. As a president, he would be just as unprepared as our current mistake in the WH. Cracking open skulls in surgery is not comparable to cracking skulls in Congress.

[Valin]

Being from Baltimore, I have heard of Dr. Carson for longer than the rest of the country. He has always had, and earned, the respect of Baltimore and the medical community in general for a long time.

 

But.......

 

Suggesting he run for President is just silly, IMO. To paraphrase It Takes A Village, running for President means it Takes a Politician. A politician Dr Carson ain't. He may make a fine Surgeon General in someone's administration though. As a president, he would be just as unprepared as our current mistake in the WH. Cracking open skulls in surgery is not comparable to cracking skulls in Congress.

 

I agree. That said that he is not a politician is what makes him appealing to some.

An old joke.

Q: How can you tell if a politician is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

 

Most people have a real (and often justified) distrust of politicians.