Author and former head of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships Joshua Dubois argued Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson is “providing a simple answer” on race and “would take our country down a really problematic path” on Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry.”
Dubois said, “there are simple answers to our challenges on race in this country and complicated ones. And Evangelicals are responding to Dr. Carson, and Republicans more broadly are responding to him because he’s providing a simple answer. He’s basically saying, look, I was a troubled young man, just like you see a lot of troubled young people today, and all I did was I went in my prayer closet, I prayed, and God turned me around. He’s basically saying that the issues on race in our country, as they were embodied in his life, can be solved by personal responsibility alone. So, he’s absolving the country of having to have a serious conversation about these issues. And that has great appeal because it means no one else is to blame except African-Americans, but I think in the long run, it’s a real challenge for the conversation on race that we need to be having.”
He added, “we have had a really tough couple years as a country. And I think some of these same voters are looking at the challenges that we are seeing in Baltimore, in Ferguson, even the deaths of nine African-Americans in Charleston, and they don’t know what to do with that. And here, Ben Carson presents a solution. if you can just, like he did, go into his prayer closet, and if you just, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, then the challenges with race, and the challenges that we’re facing as a country will be solved. Now, we know it’s not as simple as that, and that we’ve been grappling with these issues for a couple centuries, but they don’t want to hear that. What they get to do is support this nice soft-spoken doctor, and be absolved of all of these issues. And I think that’s why you’re seeing the outpouring of emotion. He’s an easy candidate to support, but unfortunately, a candidate that I think would take our country down a really problematic path.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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