'I'm No Uncle Tom,' Says Dr. Benjamin Carson
Rising conservative star Dr. Benjamin Carson shot back at his critics in liberal media who have dismissed him as the GOP's token black friend and other names like "Uncle Tom" as the party works to improve its record on diversity.
In a video clip from The Cycle on MSNBC, show host Touré, who is black, ripped into Dr. Carson for playing the GOP's new black friend last weekend and noted that he was only being used by the party to assuage their guilt.
"When you're publicly admitting that your party doesn't care enough about black America, then it's time for a new black friend. Enter Dr. Ben Carson whose been embraced recently because he is smart and helpful in assuaging their guilt," said Touré.
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In a Fox News interview on Tuesday, Carson dismissed the discussion of his name-calling critics as third grade playground conversation.
"Well, you know, if you don't have anything useful to say then you attack people … if you feel that your house of cards has been discovered and is starting to come unraveled, you become very desperate," said Carson. "Intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don't sit around and call each other names. That's what you can find on a third grade playground."
Touré chided the famed pediatric neurosurgeon for peddling his inspiring rags to riches story as if he had no help. "Carson is a bootstraps kind of guy, speaking their (GOP's) language. Talking like he built his path from a poor kid to a pediatric neurosurgeon all by himself! He must have gotten government backed school loans which is a form of public assistance but let's not make facts derail a good 'I built it without help' story," said Touré.
He also suggested that Carson was benefiting from the GOP's version of affirmative action "where black faces that can speak the conservative game get raced to the front of the line because then people get to put a bumper sticker on their cars saying how can I be racist? I would have voted for Carson…"
Carson's ideas on the flat tax, said Touré, are "unserious" in light of America's stark income inequality. The idea that the GOP would nominate a black man for the presidency, he said, is also just a flight of fancy.
"It's all make believe, none of them (black hopefuls) will ever get the nomination for the presidency, just as the GOP will never get black votes because the only thing they care about is winning and not the economic or social needs of black folk. But in the meantime, imagine away guys," said Touré.
Carson commented to Fox, "They (critics) feel that if you look a certain way then you have to stay on the plantation. You know I've heard some people refer to me as an Uncle Tom. Well, obviously they don't know what an Uncle Tom is because they need to read Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. You'll see that he was very, very subservient, kind of go along to get along type person. Obviously, that's not what I'm doing."
He marked the name-calling as a tactic of the left and some parts of the right wing movements to make life uncomfortable for people who don't share their views.
"What the left frequently does, and some aspects of the right, too, is they try to make life so unpleasant for anybody who disagrees with them that people will keep silent," he noted.
"I'm trying to get people to speak up because, you know, this country is changing into something else, and we need to make sure that we really want it to change into something else and not just end up there and ask ourselves how did we get there."
