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 ...
Oh. Clever. Thanks for the info.
Which GOP candidate has said this wasn’t racism? I have heard no one make that claim.
This raises MAJOR red flags in my mind about Ben Carson. We don’t need another race-baiter.
Has anyone denied that Roof is a racist?
It was more implied that this act was racism incarnate...
It wasn’t. This KID was a racist. Not some ‘systemic’ racism we are all part of.
And the opposite side is ALSO going overboard saying racism had nothing to do with it. He was clearly spouting racist nonsense.
There seems to be an outpouring of goodwill in that community, though- and no riots! I worked there one summer- nice place, very mixed racially- everyone got along nicely EXCEPT the people who flew in from NY and other places
i Have been impressed by the goodness of the Christian people, black and white, who are accustomed to living in pace and do not want group hatreds injected into this situation. I agree with your main point that this kid (the murderer) was impelled by some kind of race-hating ideas. This is NOT, I think, an outcropping of an underlying bedrock of racism in the whole community, still less of the whole country.
This was a drifting, badly-raised, druggie boy-turned-murderer, not the vanguard of a racist army.
I was right about Holmes and called that when the first report came out.
I was right about Jared Loughner and called that about two days after the shooting.
I was right about Lanza and called that immediately.
I was right about the Virginia Tech. shooter.
If the thinking of totally delusional people can define
the concepts rational people use then words have no meaning
at all. That’s absurd.
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