Dr. Benjamin Carson Wears the Mask

[DonViejo]

He Wears the Mask
By TA-NEHISI COATES

The present darling of the right wing, Dr. Benjamin Carson, is a distinguished neurosurgeon who went from the depths of Detroit poverty to the heights of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. But his current status among conservatives isn’t so much rooted in Carson’s redemptive rise from rags to respectability, as it is in the belief that he is, in the long winter of Obama, the one they’ve been waiting for.

Last week, Carson came under attack for comparing advocates of same-sex marriage with advocates of bestiality and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. He then cast himself as a victim of political correctness, besieged by white liberals — “the most racist people there are” — who could not countenance his heterodoxy and wanted to keep him on the “plantation.”

The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest.

Benjamin Carson is that Conservative Black Hope of the moment. His rise began with a meandering speech that mixed policy, humor and victimization in February at the National Prayer Breakfast, mere feet from the president of the United States, who was forced to take his medicine in a way that Clint Eastwood could only dream of. When Sean Hannity interviewed Carson about his speech he dispensed with the policy and simply dubbed the segment “Lecturing Obama.”

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No pay wall:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/opinion/coates-he-wears-the-mask.html?_r=2&

[graham4anything]

1. he wants to be Jeb's VP. Don't they ever learn?

[Buffalo Bull]

2. Herman Cain again

Well written piece.
White conservatives talk about Carson all the time. No black person that I have spoken to has broken out into filibusters of rapture at the mention of the Doctors name

[geek tragedy]

3. The show that tools like Carson put on for the Neo-Confederates

is hard to describe without using offensive language, primarily because it is so deeply offensive.

[politicaljunkie41910]

4. My personal opinion is that Dr. Ben Carson got caught up in his own hype.

Many of us in the black community have known about Ben Carson for some time and I think he is a decent person, and a role model that many in the black community can learn from. It's the white community to whom he is a johnny come lately. As he said at the Prayer Breakfast, he has been giving this type of speech for years. He has also been a man of faith and I don't doubt his sincerity regarding his faith because for many years, that's all us black folks had. Because blacks have such deep roots in the church, they have long had issues with things like homosexuality which conflicted with their faith.

Carson came to the Prayer Breakfast, and left a tool to be used by the Right. I think he got caught up in the hype from all the new love being showered upon him from the Right that he got caught up into it. He went from the Prayer Breakfast to CPAC and a 4% vote for the Presidency in 2016, to Meet the Press the following Sunday. After he made his gaff comparing same sex couples to beastiality and child molestation, he saw how that as quickly as a car can go from 0-60 it can also go from 60-0; and being a politician isn't as easy as it looks. Being a black politician in the GOP party is even harder.

I think this has been a reality check for Dr. Carson and I'm guessing he'll pull a Sarah Palin. He'll use his new found 'friends' to sell a few more books, get paid to make a few more speeches, and retire back to the world he knew before the Prayer Breakfast that made him famous.

[Blue Idaho]

5. +1

Well said!