President Donald Trump’s housing secretary provoked a firestorm Monday by saying slaves brought from Africa were “immigrants” who dreamed of success for their families in the United States.
Ben Carson, who is black, made the stunning remarks during an address to employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington.
“That’s what America is about: a land of dreams and opportunity,” said Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who grew up poor in a Detroit ghetto.
“There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,” he said.
“But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
The comments provoked an instantaneous backlash.
“Immigrants???” tweeted the NAACP, the nation’s largest civil rights organisation aimed at ending racial discrimination.
The remarks were condemned as “tragic, shocking and unacceptable” by the US office of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a social justice group named after the Jewish girl whose diary, written before she was killed in the Holocaust, became a globally respected account of discrimination and hope.
“No, Secretary Carson. Slaves didn’t immigrate to America,” the group’s executive director Steven Goldstein wrote.
“This is as offensive a remark as it gets.”
The HUD department pushed back, saying on Twitter that the flurry of US media reports on Carson was “the most cynical interpretation” of his remarks.
“No one honestly believes he equates voluntary immigration with involuntary servitude,” the department added.
It was not the first such controversy for Carson, a former Trump rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and someone who routinely blasts political correctness.
He once said Joseph, the Biblical figure, built Egypt’s pyramids in order to store grain, and not as tombs for the pharaohs.
In 2013, he blasted the health care reforms of Trump’s presidential predecessor Barack Obama as “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”
This moddafuc**ng coon him need fi go operate on him damn brain
:ngakak :ngakak :ngakak :ngakak :ngakak :ngakak :ngakak :ngakak
If Samuel Jackson call him him done fah! Lololol
Some people only good at what dem study. This nigger didn’t study anything but neuroscience.
HIM ANCESTORS FI SPIN INNA DEM TOMB! Betta dem come collect him and done!
Well my take on the whole thing is we all have a right to our opinions… but since he feels this way maybe he should get a one way trip to Sudan or Nigeria shackled in the bottom of a boat, his wife can be the captain’s “belly warmer” a term those slaveship owners called the captured female slaves when they raped them on the way to the good ole US of A. Did I mentioned separated from his children never to bless sight on them ever again? Then we can find him over there and interview him to see his thoughts on being an immigrant of Africa… oh after being starved and beaten on his voyage there… yes I would love to hear his views then. A million years and we will never forget what they did to our ancestors. They don’t want us to forget atrocities committed against their people and now this idiot wants to be so accepted and politically correct… smh.
I think this idiot has been secretly working on his own brain, hence his continued chronic idiocies, When him deh talk mi not even liff up mi head caz something has happened somewhere along di line wid him
I think this idiot has been secretly working on his own brain, hence his continued chronic idiocies, When him deh talk mi not even liff up mi head caz something has happened somewhere along di line wid him.
Bwaay I can just imagine Samuel Jackson’s face while saying that phrase, almost peed maself…dwl
Me wish me coulda bun every rass copy of “Gifted Hands” right now
MET! Oui MET!! See Rachel just outline a next whooper pon king cheetho# Foreign corrupt practices law. She touch on abezijan (spelling off) former USSR territory, project 1 degree of seperation from the Iranian guard. And more
Carson is a stinking rat! Me a tek him comment 2 ways.
1. He’s q dumb nigger and onky verse on wha him go school fah.
2. Diss to all immigrants
That slow bitch need fi go kill him self!
Tinan! A don’t Think him want SAMUEL Jackson fi buck up pon him no time ever!
He gone get a nice fat pay cheque for shifting the conversation for the next few days. Either that or his brain is watery and/or he smoking crack. This is so ridiculous that responding to it would take us back to the land before time. Damn disgraceful reject.
House slave
Damn ediot