Source: Bloomberg / Getty
Dr. Ben Carson has long been a champion of politically and socially conservative values which only increased during his time as a member of former President Donald Trump’s administration. Speaking recently at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, Carson made the utterance that welfare and government assistance has undermined Black families far more than slavery.
Carson, the former HUD secretary, spoke to the CPAC attendees and made his explosive statement regarding welfare and Black lives. Carson has expressed similar sentiment before, and it checks out with the usual refrain spoken by conservative pundits and other figures who offer opinions from the right.
“When you look at what the Black community has been through,” Carson began, adding, “go all the way back to slavery. It was the family, the strong family units and the faith in God that got people through that, that got people through Jim Crow, through severe segregation, through all the difficulties.”
“But what really had a negative impact was when the government came along said, ‘There, there, you poor little thing, I’m going to take care of all your needs and started implementing policies that were destructive to the family formation. Those are the things that have hurt the Black communities the most,” Carson insisted.
Trump was also a speaker at the CPAC event, using the moment to slam critical race theory and launch another offensive towards the so-called “radical left” and other of his tried and true talking points to a crowd-friendly to that manner of talk.
Of course, the best-known critiques of welfare and assistance programs is that it comes at the cost of taxpayers and gives the government too large of an influence on the landscape as it were. What Carson and other opponents of welfare never fail to consider is that many white Americans who voted Republican Have benefited from assistance, nor is there ever a feasible solution offered. Add the disparity of wages and services among white and Black Americans and there are even greater divides that are enacted without consideration to those suffering the most.
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Photo: Getty
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