The Daily Signal - Ben Carson's Vision for 'Hopeful Future of Race in America'

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

What does someone’s skin color have to do with who he or she is? “Not a whole lot,” Dr. Ben Carson says. Carson, a renowned brain surgeon, experienced racism as a child and even early on in his celebrated medical career. But Carson says he never has considered the color of someone’s skin to be a defining factor of who they are. “As a brain surgeon, obviously, when I open somebody's head, I'm operating on a thing that makes them who they are,” Carson says. “It's not their hair or their skin that makes them who they are. It's their brain that makes them who they are. ... So obviously, I'm not going to sit around and blame somebody for something that their forefathers did to my forefather.”  Carson, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration, is the author of the new book “Created Equal: The Painful Past, Confusing Present, and Hopeful Future of Race in America.” Carson joins this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share a bit of his own story, as well as how America can embrace a future full of hope.  Also on today’s show, we cover these stories: Police answer questions about their response time in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. Senate Democrats call for a vote on gun control legislation in the wake of the shooting in Texas. Democrats' domestic terrorism bill fails in the Senate. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, May 27th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Virginia Allen. How can America become a nation that rejects hatred and division and that embraces a vision of unity? Today, I talk with Dr. Ben Carson about his new book, Created Equal, The Painful Past, Confusing Present, and Hopeful Future of Race in America. We discuss how his own personal story has influenced his view of America and racial tensions. Plus, we discuss how Americans can address some of the greatest challenges facing our country today, including challenges to create a culture of life. But before we get to Virginia's conversation with Dr. Carson, let's hit our top stories of the day.

Did security act appropriately during the tragic school shooting in Evaldi, Texas? The Associated Press reports that there were 40 minutes to an hour that passed between when the shooter, who the Daily Signal does not name, shot at a school security officer, and between when the shooter was finally shot. That's according to Steve McCraugh, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Javier Carzarees, whose daughter Jacqueline, was killed in the shooting,

told the Associated Press he arrived at the scene with police outside. He suggested that he and others enter the school. Khazares told the Associated Press, let's just rush in because the cops aren't doing anything like they are supposed to, and more could have been done. McCraugh, the Texas safety director, also said the bottom line is law enforcement was there. They did engage immediately.

They did contain the shooter in the classroom. Much of the timeline remains unclear and is still under investigation. Senate Democrats are calling for a vote on gun control legislation in the wake of the Uvali, Texas shooting. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will hold a vote on gun legislation after the Memorial Day weekend, promising the vote will take place even if Republicans don't get on board. Democrats are trying to negotiate gun control legislation with Republicans, but Schumer says that even if negotiations don't go well, there's still going to be a vote. It's unlikely any legislation would move forward if those negotiations don't go well, however,

because the Senate is evenly divided. At least 10 Republicans would have to back legislation to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to get a bill to President Joe Biden's desk. Meanwhile, Republicans are firing criticism at Schumer on Thursday after he blocked a school safety bill. The bill Schumer blocked is called the Luke and Alex School Safety Act. It's named after two victims of the Parkland school shooting. The bill would help to create a set of best practices for school safety in hopes of preventing

future school shootings. Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson asked that the bill be passed by U.S. unanimous consent. Schumer said no. Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson asked that the bill be passed by unanimous consent. Writing on Twitter, GOP Senator Johnson just tried for a bill that could see more guns in schools. I blocked it. The truth? There were officers at the school in Texas. The shooter got past them. We need real solutions. Johnson responded to Schumer writing, not surprising that the Democrat leader would lie about the bill he blocked that parents of Parkland victims have been trying to pass for years. Dems aren't looking for solutions. They want wedge issues that they

hope will keep them in power. Sick. And Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott responded to Schumer on Twitter, calling him a liar and a hack. In a press conference Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, pointed out that gun control hadn't halted violence. and other regions of the U.S. via ABC 7 Chicago. Let's talk about some real facts. And that is, there are, quote, real gun laws in Chicago.

There are, quote, real gun laws in New York. There are real gun laws in California. I hate to say this, but there are more people who were shot every weekend. in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas. And we need to realize that people who think that, well, maybe we just implement tougher gun laws, it's going to solve it.

Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis. And so if you're looking for a real solution, Chicago teaches that what you're talking about, it's not a real solution. our job is to come up with real solutions that we can implement. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, tweeted in response, shame on you, Governor Abbott, you are lying about Chicago and what actually perpetuates gun violence. The majority of guns used in Chicago shootings come from states with lax gun laws.

Democrats' domestic terrorism bill failed in the Senate on Thursday, as was expected. The bill would have created task. forces within the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate white supremacy. Heritage Foundation's Laura Reese joined the podcast earlier this week and said the bill is a danger to Americans. Really, this is just a tool to go after political opponents, and that's just un-American. The Senate vote was 47 to 47, with not a single Republican supporting it. You might think of San Diego as a sunny California town by the B. beach, but the city wants you to also start seeing it as a great place to have an abortion.

On Thursday, in an 8-0 vote, San Diego City Council voted to affirm that the city is a safe city for reproductive freedom and access to abortion. San Diego City Council member Stephen Whitber said in a statement, no matter what happens with the Supreme Court ruling, no matter who you are or where you come from, no matter the color of your skin or your socioeconomic status, I want everyone to know that you are welcome in the city of San Diego to exercise your reproductive rights. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Dr. Ben Carson as we discuss his new book Created Equal, The Painful Past, Confusing Present, and Hopeful Future of Race in America. We're all guilty of it, spending too much time on the internet watching silly videos.

But it's the 21st century, and maybe it's time for a change. At the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel, you'll find videos that both entertain and educate, including virtual events featuring the biggest names in American politics, original explainers and documentaries, and heritage experts diving deep on topics like election integrity, China, and other threats to our democracy, all brought to you by the nation's most broadly supported Public Policy Research Institute. Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube, and don't forget to subscribe and share. It is my honor today to welcome to the show Distinguished Neurosurgeon, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the founder of the American Cornerstone Institute, Dr. Ben Carson.

Dr. Carson, welcome to the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you. Thanks for having me. Well, and congratulations to you on your brand new book, Created Equal, The Painful Past, Confusing Present, and the hopeful future of race in America. already made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. Dr. Carson, talk a little bit about what your motivation was and your mission in writing this book. Well, I was noticing that for some strange reason over the last few years, we seem to circle everything back to race appropriately and inappropriately.

And we also are using race as a cudgel to sort of beat people into submission, make some people feel guilty, make some people feel like victims. And, you know, I wanted to shine a light on what's really happening. For instance, just in my lifetime, you know, the racial atmosphere in this country has changed dramatically. When I was a little kid, a black person came on television in a non-survile role. It was a big deal. You called everybody into the living room and said, hey, look at that. This is great. And now you have black people. admirals and generals and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and heads of foundations. We've elected a black president twice. We have a black vice president. I mean, give me a break

to say that things haven't changed. It's ridiculous. They've changed dramatically. We haven't reached Nirvana, but we've made enormous progress. And I think that's very good. And we need to start thinking about the good things that we've achieved. And let's build on those. And then the bad things, let's learn from them. Don't hide them. Don't destroy them because your history is what gives you your identity and your identity is what gives you your beliefs. That's why whenever ISIS goes into a place, they destroy the history. They destroy the museums and the libraries and all these things. They don't want people to know who they are. And, you know, we have a proud history as a nation. We've done very good things and we've helped to stabilize the world.

So we don't need to be ashamed of that, but we've had some bad things too because we're inhabited by people and people and perfect. How did your own story and growing up in America largely being raised by a single mom, how did that influence how you wrote this book and your decision to write it? Well, it influenced it greatly. You know, my mother, if anybody was a victim, it was her. I mean, she came from a huge rural family in Tennessee, had less than a third grade education, got married at age 13. They moved to Detroit years later. She discovered her husband.

My father was a bigamist. Left her trying to raise two young sons by herself with less than a third grade education. But she never accepted excuses. She never pointed the finger at somebody else. And she wouldn't let us do it. And if we made an excuse, the next thing out of her mouth was a poem called yourself to blame. And right after that came to question, do you have a brain? If the answer was yes, then you could have thought your way out of it.

It doesn't matter what somebody else did or said. And, you know, growing up like that, both for me and my brother made a huge difference. And she used to get a lot of criticism. My mother did. Her friends would say, you can't make boys stay in the house and read books. They'll grow up and they'll hate you. And I would overhear them and I say, you know they're right, mother. But it didn't matter.

We still had to do it. And I think she had the last laugh because one son became a brain surgeon, the other became a rocket scientist. Absolutely. Well, you know, I love that in this new book created equal, you really don't sugarcoat things. You're very straightforward. And chapter four of the book is titled, Guilt and Victimhood Surrounding Racism.

Why did you specifically want to speak so directly to the issues of guilt and victimhood? Well, because they have an incredible impact on what happens to us going forward as a nation. You know, the left and those who want to fundamentally change our nation have tried to impose a sense of guilt upon the white population in our country. Why would they want to do that? Because if you feel guilty, then you're not going to say anything. So when you start talking about defund the police, let dangerous criminals roam free, don't guard the borders, a whole host of things. And you got these people who are like standing in the corner with their head down,

hoping no one calls them a nasty night. It allows you much more freedom to do that. And then, you know, as far as the victimhood is concerned, If you think you're a victim, you are one. And now you start acting resentful. And instead of spending your time taking advantage of the enormous opportunities that exist, you get involved and griping,

you become an easy person to manipulate. Sort of what Vladimir Lenin called useful idiots. You take people and you make them believe them believe that you're their savior and you get them to do all kinds of things for you. Yeah. So it's such a critical conversation to have. And for you personally, I know, you know, for you as as a young person, even early on in your career, you did experience some racism. And yet you have really come out through that, walk through that. It still is a very patriotic individual. What was kind of that process for you that, that wrestle?

Well, I think a lot of that involves my faith. And, you know, I look at the big picture. And I realize that people are people. They're good white people, bad white people, good black people and bad white, black people. I mean, what does your skin color have to do with who you are? Not a whole lot. And as a brain surgeon, obviously, one of the I open somebody's head, I'm operating on the thing that makes them who they are. It's not their hair or their skin that makes them who they are. It's their brain that makes them who they are. And we have to be smart enough to look through all that.

So, you know, obviously, I'm not going to sit around and blame somebody for something that their forefathers did to my forefather. I mean, what the heck does that have to do with anything? Let's just recognize that we're here now. We have our shares of influence, so let's use them appropriately. Use them appropriately. I love that. Thank you, Dr. Carson.

I want to take a few minutes to talk a little bit about your experience in the Trump administration. You served as the Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under former President Donald Trump. What do you think the African-American community thought of Trump? Trump's policies, not so much President Trump himself, but his policies, especially now that we've experienced policies under the Biden administration. And what do you think that the conservative community can learn from this? Well, you know, one of the interesting things is there were a number of White House rallies with primarily black individuals and their level of enthusiasm for the president.

and his policies were through the route. And that's why you didn't see it on most of the mainstream media. They just didn't want people to see that kind of reaction. Yeah. But I think that's the reason that you see so many black people running for public office right now on the Republican ticket, recognizing that, you know, we really want opportunity. We want a hand-up, not a hand-up. out and we want fairness. We don't want special treatment. We want fair treatment. And that's what the

Trump administration emphasized that a rising tide lifts all boats. And it did. You know, we weren't looking specifically for this group or this group, but created policies by getting rid of so many onerous regulations, by creating a tax platform that created an atmosphere. that encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. Those are the kinds of things that work. They work extraordinarily well. And people can see now, as you juxtapose that administration to this administration, that it really does make a difference who you put in office.

Absolutely. I want to take a minute to talk about some of the news that we're experiencing, some of the most recent events and issues that are facing our country right now. of course the whole country is grieving right now with the people of Texas as well as still with the folks in New York. Just in the last two weeks, we've experienced such tragedy as a nation. Multiple mass shootings. Ten people were killed in the Buffalo shooting in New York by a gunman who appeared to be motivated by racially to carry out this cowardice attack. And then just this week, 21 people, including 19 children, were killed in Yuvaldi, Texas in the school shooting.

Are there policy solutions to address this kind of hate and senseless violence? I'm not sure that it's a policy issue. That's a heart issue. And, you know, we need to, you know, turn the temperature now on some of the hatred and division that's going on. If a young child grows up in an atmosphere where there's a lot of resentment and emphasis of difference

of different people and a denigrating of the value of life, then we can expect more of this to happen. We need to be concerned about life from the womb to the tomb. And when we push those things aside, we become much more coarse in our relationships. with each other.

So we need to bring back values again. Now that's basically what American Cornerstone Institute is about, those cornerstone values that made America into a great nation, our faith, which teaches us how to react with our fellow man, it says, love your neighbor, not cancel your neighbor, just the opposite. That's full of hatred and evil.

And then a cornerstone of liberty. This is the place. that represents liberty for people from all over the world. That's why people form caravans trying to get in here. If it was a systemically racist country, why would they do that? And when they got here, wouldn't they call all their friends and relatives and say, don't come here. This is an horrible place.

That's not what's happening at all. We need to maintain that liberty. And then community, working together, people from different backgrounds, different races. It doesn't matter. working together to create an outcome. That's how we went from nowhere to the pinnacle of the world so quickly. And then life, our respect for life. And it makes all the difference in the world in terms of what kind of people we become.

We get to determine our future as a nation. Do we want a nation that is built on hatred, division, injustice, or do we want a nation that is built on amazing triumphs? And then let's learn from the bad things that happen. That's critical. And I want to talk a little bit more about that conversation of life and furthering a culture of life in just a moment. But I wanted to get your reaction to President Joe Biden's speech on Tuesday night.

The president addressed the nation after the shooting in Texas. What did you think of the president's remarks? Well, that's what I would kind of expect of someone who's been a lifetime politician. Rather than emphasizing the terrible tragedy, what's happened to those families, what's happened to that whole community, how this is going to impact the lives of those children for the rest of their lives, you turn it into a political thing. And this is not the time. There's time to talk about the politics of it.

I don't want to ever suppress that argument, but you don't do that right after an event like this. The bodies haven't even been properly buried yet. I mean, that's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and Dr. Carson, you bring up that issue of life, and we want to be about in America empowering lives

and creating a culture of life. and as you say, protecting the unborn as well. I was recently kind of in the wake of all of the conversation about Roe v. Wade and Dobbs. There was a large gathering in Washington, D.C. recently that was a pro-abortion gathering a large march from the National Mall to the Supreme Court. There's thousands of individuals. And I went to cover it as a journalist and take pictures. And one of the arguments that I heard being made from the stage during the rally was that if you're against abortion, if you don't support abortion, then you're a white supremacist.

What's your response to these kinds of arguments that we're hearing from pro-abortionists right now? Well, I wish people would just take a step back from all this emotional rhetoric and just use their brain and look and see what is. in that mother's womb. You'll see a human being with a head and a face with eyes and nose and mouth and arms and legs and fingers and a heart beating and it can move and it can react to the environment. I mean, are you kidding me? It's much more sophisticated than the snail dart which a lot of these same people are trying to say. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. And if you've ever seen in a abortion. You know, in the first trimester, you know, the tube is introduced and you see it on the ultrasound. Frequently the baby's trying to move away from it before it tears off an arm or leg and you see all the blood and stuff going down the tube.

It is barbaric. But in the second trimester, it's worse than that. You reach in with foreseps and you just grab and twist and pull. Next thing you know, a shoulder comes out and the arm and it. and testing. I mean, and you just rip the baby apart. Are you kidding me? How can anybody continents that? And I don't know how doctors can do it. And yet we want to talk about ancient civilizations and how barbaric they are. How are we not worse than that? And I think, you know, in the future, people will look back on this time and they will shake their heads and say, how could those people be like that? Yeah. But we just have to deal with it. I think we also have to deal with it with some degree of compassion.

Recognize a lot of these young women get themselves in situations. But let's help them get out of them without killing a baby. There are ways to do that. And isn't it strange that if you kill a woman who's pregnant, you get two counts of murder, but you can kill the baby with no counts of murder? How does that work? Yeah, it's a great question. How do you think we go about creating a culture of life so that not only our laws protect life,

but literally culturally abortion becomes something that really is unthinkable? Well, already you can see in the young people in our country, you know, they're becoming much more pro-life because they're growing up in a culture where we have sophisticated technology, which shows us what's in the room. When you can actually see it, it makes a big difference. That's why at the abortion clinics, they try to make sure that women can't see the ultrasound. They don't want them to be able to identify with that individual. But I think we also need to explain to people that how's the baby for them?

You have the mother's gamut and the father's gamut, each of it has 23 chromosomes, And then they meet together, they form a Zygote, which has 46 chromosomes, not 46 of the mothers, not 46 of the fathers. You have a completely new and different individual, which begins to develop at an extraordinary rate from that point forward. Amazing. Dr. Ben Carson, the author of the new book, already on the New York Times bestseller, created equal, the painful past, confusing present, and hopeful future of race in America. Dr. Ben Carson, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you for having me and thanks to being a patron. And that'll do it for today's episode. Now, we don't have a show on Monday in observance of Memorial Day.

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