Jordan Hastings, Northport, Alabama asks:
Dr. Carson, most Americans would agree that the black and white races have been pitted against each other, largely due to media bias and rhetoric, but also because the Democrats benefit from it. How high on your list is repairing the racial divide among Americans, and how will you do it?
Dr. Ben Carson:
That’s very high on my list. You know, there’re a lot of divides that need to be repaired. You know, there’s a war on women, there’s racial wars, there’s income wars, there’s age wars, there’s religious wars, it seems like they’re trying to drive wedges into every single aspect of our society. And, you know, we need to start concentrating on those things that we have in common, not those things that divide us. That’s why we’re called the United States of America, and I think the bully pulpit is an excellent place from which to make sure that people understand that and encourage us to work together, you know, encourage in our inner cities police departments to introduce the police officers early on so that little Johnny’s first experience with a policeman is somebody playing catch with him, not somebody chasing him down the alley with a gun.
Those are the kinds of things that will make a huge difference in our society and also, you know, getting business, industry, academia, Wall Street, churches, community groups to understand the importance of investing in people around them, investing particularly in the downtrodden among them. It’s those relationships that bring people out of dismal situations and the more people that we bring out, the fewer people we have to support.