It’s not often I agree with Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson. But he has bluntly called out the other Republicans running for President who refuse to call the murders of 9 people by a self-admitted racist who wanted to kill African-Americans “racist.” He didn’t mince words:
Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson on Monday knocked some of the 2016 contenders who have declined to say that the shooting at a historic black church in Charleston was racially motivated.
“Not everything is about race in this country. But when it is about race, then it just is,” Carson began in a USA Today op-ed published on Monday. “So when a guy who has been depicted wearing a jacket featuring an apartheid-era Rhodesian flag walks into a historic black church and guns down nine African-American worshipers at a Bible study meeting, common sense leads one to believe his motivations are based in racism.”
“If this were a medical disease, and all the doctors recognized the symptoms but refused to make the diagnosis for fear of offending the patient, we could call it madness,” he continued. “But there are people who are claiming that they can lead this country who dare not call this tragedy an act of racism, a hate crime, for fear of offending a particular segment of the electorate.”
I don’t always use the word, but:
Ditto.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.