"Why I Stopped Talking Like Ben Carson"

[DemocratSinceBirth]

I used to tell my life story as a feel-good fairy tale. Now, I realize, I was doing it all wrong.
By Issac J. Bailey
December 13, 2015



If Ben Carson’s political career is built on anything, it’s his inspirational story. For two decades he’s been selling books and drawing crowds with his “you control your own destiny” message, convincing millions that hard work and determination can lead a black child out of poverty and on to professional notoriety and success.
For years, that was me, too.

Whenever I spoke in public I would talk about how I was born into destitution in rural South Carolina to a woman who married at 13 and to a man who beat her like clockwork every weekend for most of my young life. I would talk about how my oldest brother went to prison for murder when I was nine years old (and a few other brothers eventually followed him there) and how the ill-equipped high school my 10 siblings and I attended wasn’t desegregated for more than four decades after Brown v. Board of Education.
Despite the overwhelming odds stacked against me, I would tell my audience, through my hard work and perseverance, I graduated from one of the top liberal arts schools in the country, Davidson College, and went on to become a successful columnist and published author and was eventually invited to spend a year studying at Harvard. I’ve rubbed shoulders with governors and multi-millionaires, interviewed Barack Obama.
And then I stopped telling that story.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/ben-carson-life-story-213433

[Gormy Cuss]

1. Hit the nail squarely on the head. n/t