Posted on 06/22/2015 9:58:41 AM PDT by GIdget2004
Presidential candidate Ben Carson is challenging his Republican rivals to link last week's attack on a historically black church to racism.
“Not everything is about race in this country. But when it is about race, then it just is," Carson wrote in a USA Today op-ed published Monday.
"So when a guy who has been depicted wearing a jacket featuring an apartheid-era Rhodesian flag walks into a historic black church and guns down nine African-American worshipers at a Bible study meeting, common sense leads one to believe his motivations are based in racism."
Carson, the only black candidate running for the White House in 2016, compared the reluctance by some to label the shooting that killed nine black congregants racism to doctors refusing to "make the diagnosis for fear of offending the patient." His column links to video and articles about Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hedging on the shooter's motives.
Twenty-one year old Dylann Roof has been charged in the murders and reportedly told police that he wanted to start a race war.
"There are people who are claiming that they can lead this country who dare not call this tragedy an act of racism, a hate crime, for fear of offending a particular segment of the electorate," Carson said.
"I understand the sensitivities. To some, calling the events in Charleston, S.C., a hate crime reinforces a stigma, which they have fought hard to put behind them. But refusing to call it what it is — racism — is a far more dangerous proposition."
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Common sense tells me this guy was completely and totally insane. There are a lot of insane people out their. When you are insane your motivations are irrelevant. He could have fixated on Fat People or Nuns.
He was insane. End of story. There are no broader implications other than that.
The guy wanted to go out with a bang. But he forgot to count the bullets and ran out of ammo before his attempted exit to Hell. If anything "fame" was the motivating factor for this loser. Now everyone knows his name. Everyone is talking about him. That is what he wanted and that is what he got.
Every day 9 Black people are gunned down somewhere in the United States and 90% of the time they are gunned down by black people. But there's no story there.
On Friday, Bush said of the Charleston church shooting, “I don’t know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes. - http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122092/does-jeb-bush-know-anything
Ben the shooter was a mentally ill doped up youth who had liberal parents that obviously had very poor parenting skills and didn’t possess the best judgment.. I agree that Roofmay have had racism in his own personal thoughts but he does not represent the rest of what white America feels about this incident. Don’t pin this on the rest of us. If you had some of our white members attending that church on that day and heard him open his mouth and say that they would have shot the guy dead and protected the other people who just happened to have black skin in the church. We look at them as fellow brothers and sisters in the same family under God. Please don’t politcize this like The One who has tried his best to create racial division. Believe it or not white people don’t hate black people just for the sake of their skins. They don’t like people who engage in evil as a lifestyle including those of their own color.
“Using this”? Since when it is an unfair “using” to call an actual race-motivated crime racist? And to wonder why some shy back from that judgment?
Exactly. The bar is apparently set low, for white conservatives who are looking for the great black conservative hope. A “conservative” who doesn’t even express unequivocal support of the Second Amendment? He made one speech at a prayer breakfast which didn’t praise Obozo to the skies, and that is as high as the bar need be set for a black conservative contender? He doesn’t need to at least pay lip service to any of the traditional planks of the GOP platform? (setting aside the question-pretty much answered by this latest crew in Congress-as to whether any of them do).
Bear with me here, I seem to have missed something. Where did Ben Carson say it was “all white people’s fault”?
[Lindsey] Graham, who is on his way to Charleston, said his niece did not recall Roof making any statements that were related to race.
“I just think he was one of these whacked out kids. I don’t think it’s anything broader than that,” Graham said.
- http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/politics/lindsey-graham-charleston-shooting/index.html
How I long for the day when, here in America, we were individuals and were responsible for our own actions, and we were not all lumped into some class or group and judged collectively.
I remember when many on the right were all on the Colin Powell for President bandwagon too, and look at how that turned out when he revealed his true political colors!
I am not saying he is wrong to talk about it or to call it racism. I think he is horribly wrong to accuse others of not calling it racism. That is the way he is using it for his own political advantage. He taints his own character, imo.
Everyone is calling it racism. He is either not listening or he say a chance to gain advantage over his competition is a very very Obama sort of way.
What it was not is a characterization of a 'racist America'. It was the act of a lunatic.
Assertions of collective guilt is un-American.
Yes: "The epidemic of black-on-black violent crime indicates that there has been a significant deterioration of values in the black community. Not only are the lives of their fellow blacks and others being devalued by street thugs, but the lives of unborn babies are being destroyed in disproportionate numbers in the black community." - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/28/i-have-a-dream-50-years-later
“No one I know about is not calling it racism. They are just saying it isn’t an indictment on white people in general like the libs want to claim.”
Post of the day.
By taking the bait and slamming rivals who “dare not call this tragedy an act of racism”, Carson is intimating that all republicans ARE racist. Idiot.
Given the latter spurts of news from the guy, I would hope that Graham and Bush would come out and say that “If he said it was racism, it was racism. But he will be tried for multiple counts of murder and attempted murder - because that’s what he appears to have committed.”
The esteemed Dr. Carson is pretty far down on my list of preferred candidates but he is right about this, particularly in light of recents comments by other Republican candidates who referred to this massacre as an “attack on Christianity” or, my personal favorite, an “accident.”
Well Ben Carson just proved he can be played.
I wonder what Ben Carson thinks about the 11 black people that were shot in Detroit this past Weekend?
However, it’s not getting the same coverage as Charleston.
More black people die in shootings in Chicago, Detroit and Washington DC EVERY WEEKEND...., but all we hear is crickets from the media.
See the above incidents don’t play into the media narrative, and it’s why it’s barely to never covered.
Ben Carson just proved he falls for this divide and conqueror the people hook, line and sinker.
Only when they’re directed against blacks are they considered illegitimate. Such as making note of crime statistics, and other negative statistics which disproportionately affect blacks. It’s perfectly fine in America to ascribe “group guilt” to whites, even if the actually guilty whites were a small cohort which has been dead for over a hundred years, and a significant number of whites of those days paid with their lives on behalf of blacks and the abolition of slavery (putting aside the question of what the war may have actually begun over).
And don’t forget “white privilege” in which whites are guilty for being born white, even if to a member of a dirt-poor family in deepest Appalachia.
Dear Ben,
The problem is, individual racism is not institutional or societal racism. It is the act of a deranged individual
at least that’s what they keep telling us when muslims attack
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