Dr. Ben Carson – Great Work, but Please Avoid Becoming Self-Righteous.

by Staff March 11, 2013 5 Comments News Opinion Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Dear Dr. Carson,

I’d like to start off by saying that my mother loves you. The fact is that had she not met my father, I might be your son. You stand as a hero and champion to millions of people for your determined efforts to succeed in a world that is not particularly supportive to young men with objectives as lofty as your own. I respect that.

As my mother blew up my cell phone to tell me how excited she was about the speech you gave at the National Prayer Breakfast, she cited the way you injected God into the conversation in front of a Democratic Party that has removed the word “God” from its party platform. She talked about how your common sense approaches to solving America’s problems were a breath of fresh air, and how your words mimicked the lessons she and the man who raised me have recited to me since I was a child.

My life connects with your own. My mother wasn’t married when she gave birth to me as a 17-year old girl. My biological father hit the road about five minutes after I took my first breath. My sister spent the early part of her medical career at Johns Hopkins, where you are now the head of Pediatric Surgery. My entire life, I’ve heard stories about you and those stories have always inspired me.

I don’t agree with those who’ve chosen to demonize you for disagreeing with President Barack Obama. Millions of Americans sometimes forget that loving Obama is not always directly correlated with loving the black community. The president himself has stated that black unemployment is not going to be a priority of his administration and that the “rising tide will lift all boats,” meaning that broad economic policy should trickle down to the black community. That trickle has not occurred and old economic wounds have been left to fester: As others have enjoyed a recovery, black Americans continue to endure the worst economic crisis in the last 40 years, and no one seems to care.

Your views are not in the least bit traitorous, and reflect a large and unrecognized portion of the black community that proudly boasts conservative values. They go to church every Sunday. They don’t want gay marriage to be prioritized above racial inequality. They might not be big fans of abortion and they believe strongly in the merits of personal responsibility. You represent this segment of society and this is part of the reason my mother loves you (as do many of my other Southern Baptist relatives).

But here is my concern. Not only does my mother love you, but Rush Limbaugh also loves you. You say that you’re not affiliated with any major political party, but I don’t believe you. I fully expect that if you enter politics, you will enter as a Republican (that’s how political gang warfare goes – either join the Crips or the Bloods or be killed). The Republican affiliation isn’t a problem in itself, but it does align you with individuals who’ve made it clear that they believe that racial oppression is the result of an inherent inferiority among people of color and deny their own responsibility in supporting disparate policies that have maintained America’s oppressive sociological infrastructure.

One example is the link between economic despair and the breakdown of the black family in America. You cite this connection in your interviews, but you seem determined to only focus on one side of the story. You seem to think that black people believe it’s fashionable to become baby’s mamas and that fathers don’t want to take care of their kids. The easy way to describe the breakdown of the family is to believe that black people are simply ignorant and misguided fools. Maybe around 1970, we just all decided that we don’t want our fathers in the home because two parents were no longer cool. There are some who believe that black men love their children less than white men do. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As you discuss the breakdown of the black family as one of the causes of economic inequality, I sincerely hope that you’ll also mention clear, documented and undeniable racial disparities in policies that relate to mass incarceration. The 100-to-1 crack-to-powder disparity, conjoined with the ready availability of guns in urban communities were no accident and have led to many black communities being turned into absolute war zones. The simultaneous loss of economic and educational opportunities further supported an underground drug economy that led to millions of lives being tragically impacted through incarceration, homicide and addiction. Our schools are severely underfunded, our businesses can’t get financing, and corporations don’t hire us as quickly as the white guy across town. This is an empirical fact.

I hope that as a fellow scientist, you can appreciate the idea that we can’t discuss one side of an equation without considering the other. It is unconscionable and even racist to discuss the breakdown of black families without talking about the role we have as a society for correcting the mass incarceration epidemic and supporting policies that improve educational and economic opportunities at the same time. Even black business owners can’t get capital for job creation because for 400 years, whites were allowed to accumulate the vast majority of the wealth in this country. We need to stop buying into the idea that black people put themselves in this situation, when all evidence points to the contrary: The bottom line is that policies do matter, and it’s tough for some to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” when we have policies deliberately designed to rob them of their boots.

Dr. Carson, here’s the deal: You are the chosen one. Your brilliance is legendary and your achievements are phenomenal. But the fact is that if you and your single mother had been growing up in the Englewood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, most indicators predict that you would not be at Johns Hopkins right now, and you’d probably be dead or in prison.

Perhaps you would have had the discipline to avoid all of the hurdles in front of you, like inferior schools, violence on every corner, and virtually no economic opportunities. But the fact is that every single day, a young Ben Carson is shot and killed on his way to school by one of the kids in the neighborhood who found it all too easy to get his hands on an AK-47 and a pound of weed to go with it. This is not 1958 anymore, and life is not a fairytale for young black men. While phenomenal focus and determination is certainly a way to rise above the madness around them, we can’t fault poor black kids for not being as intelligent and determined as Dr. Ben Carson.

So, Dr. Carson, I encourage you not to take your blessings for granted. You are special, no doubt. But your opportunities exist for you to uplift others, not to tell them why they aren’t as smart as you are. I hope that you will keep this in mind when Rush Limbaugh (a recovering drug addict who once said drug addicts should go to prison) begs you to be a guest on his show, or when you become tempted to recite perceived black cultural abnormalities as the sole cause of racial inequality.

With that being said, you have my respect. As Laurel Thatcher-Ulrich once said, “Great women (or men) are rarely well behaved.” The fact that you were willing to break protocol to say what you believe is nothing less than a brilliant representation of American liberty. You should continue to speak your version of the truth and I would love to see you advance your political career. I just hope you are careful, thoughtful and courageous with your new found power; people are depending on you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Boyce Watkins

Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.

5 Comments

Ramses says:

March 13, 2013 at 12:49 pm

It’s been awhile since I’ve been on here because I’m working on a major business proposal but I am sitting here fuming and you’ll know how I get down and I will not hold back on this one. I must admit Watkins, you say some silly things, but this article here is representative of the evil that exists in black people collectively. My heart is about to burst through my chest I am so angry with these words because they are totally disingenuous to say the least.

You start off your argument with “I’d like to start off by saying that my mother loves you. The fact is that had she not met my father, I might be your son.” How does this fit into any discussion concerning Dr. Ben’s remarks? That’s like telling someone “I wish you were my daddy.” You are a grown man dude. Don’t lay your mother’s and father’s irresponsibility at the feet of this man. This was a childish way to open an argument but like I said, especially with black people’s view on Obama, they are looking more for a daddy n him than a President. They want him to take care of them instead of working amongst themselves to build like they once did. Funny after all these years, black people are still talking (only talking) about working together. Seemed that problem should have been solved during Jim Crow.

You go on further to say ” But here is my concern. Not only does my mother love you, but Rush Limbaugh also loves you. You say that you’re not affiliated with any major political party, but I don’t believe you. I fully expect that if you enter politics, you will enter as a Republican (that’s how political gang warfare goes – either join the Crips or the Bloods or be killed). The Republican affiliation isn’t a problem in itself, but it does align you with individuals who’ve made it clear that they believe that racial oppression is the result of an inherent inferiority among people of color and deny their own responsibility in supporting disparate policies that have maintained America’s oppressive sociological infrastructure.” LOL!!! So Republicans and Democrats are killing themselves in the streets huh? So you’re saying that when Rush Limbaugh says people should be judged on their merits, that’s wrong? Well last time I checked, Martin Luther King said man should be judged by content of character, instead of skin color. So I guess Martin Luther King is wrong huh? Little inside information Boyce: historically, black people were a conservative lot after slavery from a political perspective. We supported the party of Lincoln. Democrats believed in the inferiority of blacks too, that’s why they segregated. Hasn’t stopped black people from voting with them. The Rush Limbaugh leap was paltry because it suggested that Carson completely aligns himself with Rush Limbaugh. As if Carson had gotten approval from Rush before he said the words he spoke. Carson is accomplished as Rush so needs no approval from any man: his works speak for itself.

Then you go on further to state “One example is the link between economic despair and the breakdown of the black family in America. You cite this connection in your interviews, but you seem determined to only focus on one side of the story. You seem to think that black people believe it’s fashionable to become baby’s mamas and that fathers don’t want to take care of their kids. The easy way to describe the breakdown of the family is to believe that black people are simply ignorant and misguided fools. Maybe around 1970, we just all decided that we don’t want our fathers in the home because two parents were no longer cool. There are some who believe that black men love their children less than white men do. This couldn’t be further from the truth.” Dude I have lived in Atlanta, GA since 1988. I moved here from Alabama. Come from a “traditional” extended family who are God fearing. When they were coming up, my grandmother told me herself that black people thought they were “uppity” because they had morals and values. Let me give you just an example of this. In 1999, we had a family reunion in which my father, brought his girlfriend of 8 years mind you, to my great grandfather’s house he built for my grandmother. My aunt was making the bed up for him and the woman she thought was his wife. My grandmother told her that they were not married and my Aunt was aghast and said “why did he tell me that.” These women did not allow my father to sleep in the same room with his girlfriend in that house together based off how my grandfather had raised them and he died in 1981. They followed the rules of his house as if he was still alive. Black people in Atlanta, since I have been here, have gotten worse, and they were really bad when i came here. You have homosexual females here who sag their pants (showing their drawls) like they are dudes!!! So yes, black people, from a collective standpoint, are ignorant and misguided fools because if my great grandparents were alive, they would say the same thing and no college discipline would tell me otherwise either. Collectively, black men and women suck. Black women here entice black men to be dogs instead of lions. Dogs plant seeds and keep moving, lions plant seeds and establish kingdoms. The same females in church are the same ones who frequent the strip clubs. Black women are not at where I am at (libraries most of the time researching for my business). Anything that requires thinking, black men and women, for the most part run from it. But when it comes to shaking your “tailfeather” the women especially are all for it.

Then we get the traditional sob story here “As you discuss the breakdown of the black family as one of the causes of economic inequality, I sincerely hope that you’ll also mention clear, documented and undeniable racial disparities in policies that relate to mass incarceration. The 100-to-1 crack-to-powder disparity, conjoined with the ready availability of guns in urban communities were no accident and have led to many black communities being turned into absolute war zones. The simultaneous loss of economic and educational opportunities further supported an underground drug economy that led to millions of lives being tragically impacted through incarceration, homicide and addiction. Our schools are severely underfunded, our businesses can’t get financing, and corporations don’t hire us as quickly as the white guy across town. This is an empirical fact.”

You educated negroes kill me with your empirical facts. The truth is, black people are lazy. Always want jobs, but don’t do what it necessary to create them!!! It took for me to get to 32 to find out how economy works. How you set up business structures and work with state and federal entities to help you get funding to create jobs for the community. I read 12-14 hours a day for this business I’m working on and you think I am gonna bring in a coon minded negro who does not appreciate working diligently? Then what makes it even worse is the fact that there are programs that have allowed poor people to gain jobs (welfare to work and other initiatives) yet you’ll still complain. At some point, personal pride and ambition will have to kick in. There is no government program that can teach you ambition: either you have it or you don’t. Bringing up the fact that there are racial disparities in the sentencing in terms of drugs being sold in your society does not negate the fact that their selling drugs to their own community and breaking the law!!!!! They execute drug traffickers in certain places in the world. Yet your argument is the sentencing? Your concern is not the actual selling of the drug? I read an article where Obama set aside 8 billion for 2-year community colleges to train two million workers for trade related jobs because the guy in the article stated that in the HVAC field alone, they are having trouble finding these types of technicians. Instead of saying our schools are underfunded, you should be saying that they are being ineptly ran. Did you forget the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools? Or the lost of Accreditation for Clayton County schools a few years back in Georgia? Or did you see recently where Nathan Deal, Governor of Georgia, had to remove board members in Dekalb County (Georgia again) based on their possibility of losing their accreditation? Three separate school districts ran by black people and total abject failure in terms of leadership, yet let Negroes like you tell it, the white man is the problem. They should transplant some of you’ll Negroes back into a time where it was illegal for you to read and let you experience what it was like in those days for about a year, and then comee back and make the same claims you make now. I doubt you would make them. The NAACP got involved in the recent spat with Nathan deal and the Dekalb County School board making it a racial thing. They were more worried about keeping these inept black people’s jobs, than doing what’s best for the children (which is providing them proper leadership). Then to assume that all black people are out here selling crack and getting arrested. People who sell crack and break laws are not victims. They are impediments to decent society. They are creating the war zone, not white folks.

Then you say So, Dr. Carson, I encourage you not to take your blessings for granted. You are special, no doubt. But your opportunities exist for you to uplift others, not to tell them why they aren’t as smart as you are.”
Typical nigger mentality. Always looking for a messiah. Whether he Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, white Jesus, or Barack Obama. Stop placing the responsibility of self_reliance on these men’s shoulders. Black people have an icon fetish. They so busy worshiping people all the time, they forget the messages they present. I mean in 2013, we are still talking about the same things that were bandied about in the 60’s?

Let me be clear: you are an intellectual hater. I’ve seen your kind before. You act as if you are proud of Dr. Ben carson, but you’re really jealous of him. What you fail to realize is is that Ben Carson is not speaking from an outsider perspective at all: he lived poverty. He lived being made fun of for his speech impediment. He knows black people inside and out from a poverty perspective and is not speaking from a class perspective at all. I lived in a traditional family setting and an inner-city perspective and I agree with the Ben carson and will take it further: the black “comunity” hates successful black men. We celebrate black women (especially single women) who find success. However, we hate when a black man achieves this success and speaks from a Man’s perspective. See most of you are used to hearing your grandmother’s, or mamas perspective (when she’s not in the club) on life. But when you hear a black man speak from an authoritative perspective, your panties get in a bunch. Many of you have seen your mothers disrespect black men who attempted (sometimes your biological fathers) to establish rules and guidelines, but they rejected them and opted for the state’s control (white man savior Jesus complex). Black people hate authority and I have seen many black people in college who subscribe to the notion of there not being a such thing as “hierarchy”, a feminist way of thinking. We talk about gods like Apollo, Poseidon, Zeus but black men like Dr. Carson are gods to me. For him to come from where he came from and to be where he is now is nothing short of being a god. It does not hurt my manhood to give an other black man honor and respect. Negroes like you are never satisfied Boyce. Brother defies odds, knows what it took to get to that point, and speaks from that perspective so that he can give young black men who might be in that position insight as to a way of getting out of that cycle, yet you deride him for commenting on the negative behavior that contributes to abject failure. You “talented tenth niggers” are the worse to me. Produce people like Du Bois, and Jesse Jackson Jr., and who did absolutely nothing for their people whatsoever. What did Jackson Jr. do for Chicago in terms of the gun violence? Or any of those other black council members, or state representatives in Chicago? You call Obama out, yet you’ll stay quiet on these people who are paid to implement policy to help their constituents. Don’t use the liberal education you received (from a white university) to hide from the fact that you are jealous of Dr. Carson just like those hateful black men who come to the clubs and see successful black men get the women they want, start fights with them, and sometimes kill them too. Instead of bullets, you use sill words to bring down the stature of these people. I am not saying policy ideas should not be debated because they should. However, don’t use policy issues to criticize Dr. Carson implicitly because you disagree with him in terms of him, in your opinion, turning his back on black people. I hope Dr. Ben runs for president, and I pray he runs as a Republican because it would be very interesting to see how he would get not votes from black people and it will be proven undoubtedly that black people are finished as a group. I doubt most black people would vote for him at all because the first thing he would be accused of is identifying with rich caucasian people: in other words a sellout. LOL!!!! You are a despicable so-called “intellectual” who keep making black people feel that the reason they are unsuccessful is because of “institutional barriers.” The real reason black people don’t achieve,as a collective, is because they allow the notion of ‘white supremacy” to convince them to not compete. “White supremacy” is only a notion because the Asians are busting caucasian people’s ass in America and the truth of the matter is, whites and blacks, in America, are losing because they have gotten lazy and comfortable and are competing with hungry people from all over the world. That black/white stuff is falling by the wayside. I am loyal to those people who are about moving forward and from what I’ve seen, collectively, black people have no desire to move forward. Black people don’t let men like this skew your your views on the world. All white people are not looking for your demise. They are not out to get you. And even those who want to beat you don’t want to beat you based off of race: it’s based on survival. A black person will kill you and rob you based on what: survival. Surround yourself around people (not black) and you will begin to see what plagues black people:lack of values. As long as this continues, blacks will be poor spiritually and economically and it will only get worse. Stop letting these michael eric dysons, and al sharptons, and boyce watkins lead you astray. Bill Cosby and Ben carson have something tangible to show you so how can their views be wrong? these intellectual coons only have weak books they write that don’t improve anyone’s lives except theirs. Blind leading the blind and got you’ll all falling in a ditch. This article is filled with passive aggressive hatred. I despise niggas like this. Seen it for the past ten years and am fed up with being quiet about it. Game over

Reply
Truthbeliever says:

March 13, 2013 at 10:12 am

Boyce, did you write that? Doesn’t sound like you.

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hoodgirl says:

March 11, 2013 at 5:51 pm

Great Article. I met Dr. Carson about 18 years ago when he and my husband’s former business partner accepted a Salute to Excellence Award. I was so impressed with Dr. Carson as he told his triumphant story in a ballroom full to capacity where he received a standing ovation.

Eighteen years ago it would be safe to say that we all leaned left, Dr. Carson included. Through the years life happened as we attained astonishing levels without any Political Connections only the GRACE of GOD and our blood, sweat and tears.

Less than a day ago my husband’s former business partner and I were talking about how he was all of age 24 maxing out his credit cards to keep the business afloat when finally he landed a $300K contract on his own merit only to be confronted with the local Politician demanding that he hire some dead weight or just like that he no longer had a $300K contract which was alot of money back then not to mention the creditors were ringing his phone off the hook.

He was barely 30 years of age when he landed a multi-million dollar contract and all HELL broke loose. In the end he was able to flip the Politicians “Democrats” the Bird and continue progressing.

Fortunately, Dr. Carson’s triumphant story is not SPECIAL it’s just that mainstream media paints a mythical picture with the blessngs of the Democratic Leadership to keep our people stagnate.

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Trapperpk says:

March 11, 2013 at 4:43 pm

Thank you for a very good measured response. I agree with Carson. I am a White conservative who loves truth to power no matter the source. Dr Carson is espousing that truth. I don’t listen to the conservative talk shows. They have had their “15 years” at the micro phone and have done little to enhance our understanding of what America can be. Dr. Carson in one speech has said more with God’s leading in a half hour that the talking heads have over the last generation. Dr. Carson will go to the microphone where he can be heard. The liberals should wise up and invite him to do so! Dr. Carson is a great American and should be adhered to with his admonitions for this country.

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Darren says:

March 11, 2013 at 3:50 pm

Great piece. The conservative base seems to love Dr Ben Carson. He says alot of things they want to hear and believe. (breakdown in black family structure being our downfall, etc.)

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