CBS | (Video News Clip) | – –
“Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson is facing backlash after referring to slaves as immigrants. CBSN’s Vlad Duthiers has the story on what exactly Carson said.”
“13:26: BEN CARSON: “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity . . .”
CBS News: “Ben Carson in hot water after saying slaves were “immigrants”
i think we are making too much of this. by immigrants he seems to mean people who came here–by compulsion or choice, i suppose, since he appends the term w “on the bottom of slave ships.” what follows is simply america land of dreams stuff, which we’d expect from anyone on the right. as far as earning less, he is relatively right since slaves did acquire some wealth, through various kinds of labor, and were able to purchase their own freedom, at least in some cases. a good example is equiano, who not only did this but became a slave dealer himself before become an abolitionist. in fact, the american dream stuff is the most pernicious part of it.
I think it shows something about far-right African-American ideologues living in complete denial of their history. It hurts their pride too much to mention the slaves and whips and the fact that generation after generation of their ancestors had to just put up with that with zero improvement… besides the fact that they aspire themselves to be property owners with unlimited rights, which they refuse to accept eventually gets us back to whips and chains.
No. We are not making too much of it. This is human trafficking, not immigration.
Ben Carson merely craves attention. Blatant attempts to re-write history is his method to spur the media into reporting his total BULLs••t. And they (the media) fell for it.
Nothing to know here, folks, move along.