{"id":1906,"date":"2015-08-25T11:57:31","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T18:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/?p=1906"},"modified":"2024-05-12T13:19:26","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T20:19:26","slug":"dr-ben-carson-on-black-lives-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/?p=1906","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Ben Carson on Black Lives Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0qtZSZ43FGU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The idea that disrupting and protesting Bernie Sanders speeches will change what is wrong in America is lunacy. The &#8220;BlackLivesMatter&#8221; movement\u00a0is focused on the wrong targets, to the detriment of blacks who would like to see real change and to the benefit of its powerful white liberal funders using the attacks on Sanders for political\u00a0purposes that mean nothing for the problems that face our community.<\/p>\n<p>The notion that some lives might matter less than others is meant to enrage. That anger is distracting us from what matters most. We&#8217;re right to be angry, but we have to stay smart.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the protesters are right that\u00a0racial policing issues exist and some rotten policemen took actions that killed innocent people. Those actions were inexcusable and they should be prosecuted to deter such acts in the future.<\/p>\n<p>But unjust treatment from\u00a0police did not fill\u00a0our inner cities with people who face\u00a0growing hopelessness. Young men and women can&#8217;t find jobs. Parents don&#8217;t have the skills to compete in a\u00a0modern job market. Far too many families are\u00a0torn and tattered by self-inflicted wounds.\u00a0Violence often\u00a0walks alongside people who have given up hope.<\/p>\n<p>grew up in neighborhoods most Americans were told to never drive through. I saw bullets, drugs and death in the same places I played tag and ball with my friends. Both of my older cousins died on the streets where I lived. I\u00a0thought that was my destiny.<\/p>\n<p>But my mother didn&#8217;t. She\u00a0changed all of that. She saved my brother and me from being killed on those streets with nothing but a library card.<\/p>\n<p>My mother knew what the problems were and she shielded me and my brother from them. I can tell you she wasn&#8217;t worried about Socialist\u00a0senators from tiny rural states. &#8220;BlackLivesmatter&#8221; could learn from her to focus on the real sources of our hopelessness.<\/p>\n<p>This is where we should march:<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s head down to the board of education. Teaching\u00a0is a tough job and thank God there was a teacher who convinced me that I was not dumb, but our schools are failing\u00a0and we have no power to abandon them. The actions of rogue police officers take black lives one at a time. Our public school system has destroyed black lives not in the ones and twos, but in whole generations.<\/p>\n<p>The schools\u00a0don\u2019t teach\u00a0and our children don\u2019t learn. Too\u00a0many public schools are controlled by teachers unions\u00a0focused more on the convenience and compensation of\u00a0adults rather than the education of children who\u00a0started out far behind. Their failures don&#8217;t kill\u00a0as quickly, but they do kill\u00a0as surely as a bullet.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s confront the entertainment\u00a0industry that lines its pockets by glamorizing a life where black men are thugs and our women are\u00a0trash. Let\u2019s tell them we plan to start talking with our wallets.<\/p>\n<p>It is time for them to pick on someone else because we have had enough. Demeaning women is not art, and it shouldn\u2019t be profitable. Neither is glorifying violence and equating prison time with authenticity.\u00a0Straight Outta\u00a0Compton, #1 in movie theaters, is just the latest example. You only have to watch the trailers.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s go down to city hall.\u00a0Living behind a door with three deadbolts is not living in freedom. Being too scared to walk around your block at night is not the pursuit of happiness we were all promised.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s go over to the crack house. We need to tear it down. Profiting from selling poison to our children and destroying lives must not be the ambition\u00a0of our children. These monuments to our destruction deserve our active scorn not our silent acceptance.<\/p>\n<p>We should go to Washington.\u00a0For decades they have fought the &#8220;War on Poverty.&#8221; Poverty won. We lost.<\/p>\n<p>Over 19 trillion dollars has been wasted, but can anyone identify a single battle won as a result? We certainly have not helped the poor \u201clift themselves out of the ruts of poverty\u201d as Lyndon Johnson promised \u2014 far from it.\u00a0These programs have been a great American failure.<\/p>\n<p>We should have a talk with the Democratic Party.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s\u00a0tell them, we don\u2019t want to be clothed, fed and housed. We want honor and dignity.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t want a plan to give us public housing in nice neighborhoods. We want an end to excuses for schools that leave us without the means to buy our own houses where we choose to live.\u00a0We want the skills needed to compete, not a consolation prize of Section 8, Food Stamps and a lifetime of government paperwork.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we need to go over to the Republican Party.\u00a0We need to tell them\u00a0they have ignored us for too long. They need\u00a0to\u00a0invite us in and\u00a0listen to us. We need to communicate and find a different way.<\/p>\n<p>There are many things\u00a0to be angry about when you are consumed by hopelessness. Bernie Sanders isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n<p>Ben S. Carson\u00a0is a Republican candidate for president in 2016. He\u00a0is the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children&#8217;s Center in Baltimore.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The idea that disrupting and protesting Bernie Sanders speeches will change what is wrong&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,14,13,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civil-protest","category-equal-opportunity","category-first-amendment-rights","category-music","category-social-change","wpcat-4-id","wpcat-8-id","wpcat-14-id","wpcat-13-id","wpcat-17-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historeplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}