Renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson believes that race relations in the United States have worsened during President Obama’s tenure.
"I actually believe that things were better before this president was elected. And I think that things have gotten worse because of his unusual
emphasis on race," Carson said Tuesday in an interview with syndicated talk-show host Hugh Hewitt.
Carson, who is weighing a run for president in 2016, faulted President Obama for sending Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson, Missouri to “play favorites” in the Michael Brown case, and suggested that the Obama administration has failed to be impartial in handling the situation.
Carson suggested the administration should have done more to educate the public about the workings of the grand jury system – something many people don’t understand.
“Education can solve a lot of problems, and ignorance can cause a lot of problems,” he said.
Carson pointed to several other high-profile cases as illustrations of how race relations have declined during Obama’s presidency, including the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in February 2012 and the July 2009 arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates.
Martin was shot to death after a violent altercation with a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. Gates, an African-American, was arrested by a Cambridge, Massachusetts policeman after a bizarre incident in which he returned home from a trip to China and found that the front door to his house had jammed.
A neighbor who saw Gates and his driver attempting to force open the door mistook them for burglars and called police. Gates, suspecting he had been racially profiled, got into an altercation with a police officer responding to the burglary call and was arrested.
President Obama initially called Gates’ arrest “stupid” before inviting the professor and the arresting officer to the White House. Obama subsequently called the incident a “teachable moment,”
according to The Washington Post.
In the Trayvon Martin case, Obama stirred controversy by stating in March 2012 that “when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids." He added: "My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said. "All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."
George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot the Martin youth, said he did so only after the 17-year-old knocked him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head against the sidewalk. The following year, a jury acquitted Zimmerman on murder and manslaughter charges – in essence agreeing that Zimmerman could have been justified in shooting Martin because he feared death or severe bodily harm,
according to The New York Times.
In Tuesday’s interview, Carson suggested that Obama weighed in in both cases without first trying to take a “balanced, objective look at things.” Carson said he is irritated by “the way [Obama] and a bunch of progressives manipulate, particularly minority communities, to make them feel that they are victims. And of course if you think you’re a victim, you are a victim."
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