Dr. Ben Carson: ‘Race Is Being Manipulated to Create Chaos’ and ‘Divide’ Americans

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson said Thursday evening that forces creating civil unrest in this country are manipulating race in order to create chaos and divide Americans.

During an interview with Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins at the virtual Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC, Carson said that, as a black child growing up in Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s, he saw issues with race “that would curl your hair.”

“You don’t see that kind of stuff anymore,” the retired pediatric neurosurgeon said. “We’ve made so much progress, it’s absolutely astonishing.”

Carson explained:

And yet, in this election season, everything is race. And, obviously, it’s being manipulated along those lines. Things have changed so incredibly dramatically in this country, but in order to create the kind of chaos that’s necessary to make people want a change, you divide them, you divide them in every way you possibly can: by race, by gender, by age, by income.

He said the American people “are not each other’s enemies,” and that most Americans, when they sit down and talk to each other, agree on about 90 percent of issues. Those who are attempting to manipulate people “take the ten percent that you don’t agree on, and they just try to format that into the biggest thing in the world, and keep throwing it in front of your face. Night after night, day after day.”

Carson detailed how those causing the civil unrest are manipulating Americans:

And you combine that with the fact that, because of our history, which is imperfect – you know slavery and Jim Crow and all of these things that have happened – it’s relatively easy to convince some people, no matter how good their life is, that they’re victims. And that somebody else has created that problem. And, at the same time, you take another segment of society – white people – and you convince them that they’re guilty. They may be the nicest people in the world … but, because of the color of your skin, you are guilty and you owe. And it’s a bad combination – guilt and victimhood – and it creates incredibly bad policies.

“What’s the way forward, especially for people of faith?” Perkins asked the secretary.

Carson replied:

Well, people of faith, I think, really need to ask themselves, what do they believe? Do you believe, for instance, in killing babies? Is that consistent with your faith? Do you believe in destroying someone else’s livelihood because you disagree with them? Is that something that’s consistent with your faith? Do you believe in calling people nasty names and making their lives difficult? Is that the kind of love that the Bible tells us about?

And, you know, when you begin to really go down the list and ask these questions of yourself, I think it may, in many cases, begin to change the way that you think about things, and also relationships. One of the things that many people come to understand very quickly is that when you know someone on a personal level, a lot of things become irrelevant to you.  Certainly, the color of their skin becomes irrelevant to you. But there are many factors that completely disappear when you know someone.  And it’s very important to get to know people.

Perkins asked Carson, as a member of the Trump administration, about the narrative the president’s critics have generated that he has created the intense opposition because of his style.

“You know, what I observe about this administration and their policies, and their resolve to stand up to those who want to make America something other than it was intended to be, that the resistance is this because someone’s saying ‘no,’” Perkins observed.

“Well, you know, the president does not submit to the media,” Carson responded, explaining:

And I think that irritates them somewhat. They’re used to people trying to get along with them so that they’ll say nice things about them. He already kind of realized they’re not going to say nice things about him anyway. So why not go ahead and – you know, you never have to wonder what he’s thinking. He’s probably the most transparent person we’ve ever had in that office.

Carson reflected on the media further, saying, “I don’t think that they have really thought this thing through, because right now we’re looking at, you know, people clashing.”

He explained what the “clashing” involves:

We’re talking about people who believe in a system that is of, for and by the people and people who believe in a system that is of, for and by the government.

And those are two very different things and have – you know, when you look at the principles on which this country was founded, a lot of the things that are going on today are antithetical to those things. And I think that’s why there’s so much clashing going on.

The secretary urged Americans to take a stand for what they believe in and their values.

“And if you believe in the freedoms that are guaranteed to us in our Constitution, including the First Amendment – freedom of religion, freedom of speech – but you don’t stand up for what you believe in, you cower in the corner and hope no one calls you a racist or whatever other name,” he warned, “you’re going to end up losing those freedoms.”