Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson questioned President Barack Obama’s right to empathize with the American black experience Tuesday on Politico’s “Off Message” podcast. Carson told host Glenn Thrush, “[President Obama is] an ‘African’ American. He was, you know, raised white. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.” Carson also compared his and Obama’s experiences growing up as “night and day.”
Carson said in his life, he “had a chance to see what real racism is.”
As Thrush pointed out, Carson has “downplayed” his race in the presidential race and has only started commenting on it now that he’s losing popularity. Carson went on CNN Tuesday to clarify that he was referring not to race, but to the differences in their socioeconomic upbringing.
Ben Carson grew up in a low-income family in Detroit and later spent some time in Boston as a child. Obama lived for 10 years in Indonesia with his white, middle-class mother, then moved to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents during his teenage years. Obama has, however, described the difficulty of coming to terms with his multiracial heritage.
It’s not totally clear why Carson, known for his sleepy demeanor and soft-spoken persona, is stirring up controversy this late in the presidential race. Documenting his struggle may be Carson’s way of relating to black voters. If it is, it won’t work, especially because he criticized Obama in the process.
There is no reason for Carson to instigate an argument on race with Obama. He’s not running against Obama, Obama is only in office for 10 more months and the president won’t lose the adoration of the American people from Carson’s petty remarks.
Ben Carson has insulted his own community. He’s stereotyping himself. If he did mean to talk about class, then he should have left race completely out of it. And everyone’s black experience is different, just as everyone’s racial identity is different.
There is no single universal black experience. Poverty is not synonymous with blackness or racism, even though those categories may often intersect. Just because Obama grew up in a middle-class family doesn’t mean he didn’t experience racism in his own life. And Obama’s own journey in accepting his multiracial identity might have been a struggle in and of itself.
Carson’s comments speak to the broader issue of how candidates in this presidential race are willing to throw insults around in the hopes of ruining anybody’s reputation. Attacking the president’s racial identity has nothing to do with Carson’s qualifications for being president. He has no reason to pick a fight with Obama unless he’s indirectly trying to knock down the Democratic Party.
If Carson was trying to appeal to Obama’s target demographic by saying something along the lines of, “If you liked Obama, then you’ll love me,” he failed. The two politicians have two very different political ideologies. At this point, Carson is grasping at any demographic he can. It’s only inevitable that he’ll soon drop out of the race entirely.
Furthermore, racial background plays a minor role when it comes to being qualified for the presidency. Carson is playing his last hand in the presidential race, and all he has is a stale race card. As a candidate, the only thing Carson has left to say is, “I’m blacker than Obama.” That’s not a solid presidential platform.
To a certain extent, race does play a role in the presidency, but not in the way Carson brought it up. Having certain experiences based on race doesn’t necessarily make anyone more qualified to lead a country — it just allows a politician to see issues from a different perspective. Race does shape behavior. That’s probably what Carson was trying to say, but miserably failed at.
If Carson can’t represent himself well in this race, then how is he supposed to represent the United States as a whole?
Ben Carson is an extremely brilliant neurosurgeon, but his inexperience in the political sphere has not worked to his advantage. Carson may have won the 2008 Presidential Medal of Freedom in medicine, but he also wins the award for how not to talk about race in the presidential race.
The funny thing is that the same people ‘outraged’ by this incident are perfectly happy to ignore it when Ted Cruz becomes the first Latino to win a presidential primary (because he doesn’t “act Latino”).