Trump administration has a lot to learn about African American history. Here’s a reading list.
Trump administration has a lot to learn about African American history. Here’s a reading list.
There’s no denying that prominent members of the Trump administration are challenged when it comes to African American history. Consider these examples, with the most recent first:
* Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon turned secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said on Monday that Africans who were captured and transported to America and sold as slaves had the same aspirations as other immigrants:
“That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
Before he became HUD secretary, Carson said at a Values Voter Summit in October 2013:
“Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control.”
And in October 2015, Carson told a conservative radio host that while he agrees there is racism in the United States, it isn’t what many think it to be:
“There is, but it’s not where you would expect it to be. It is mostly with the progressive movement who will look at someone like me, and because of the color of my pigment, they decide that there’s a certain way that I’m supposed to think. And if I don’t think that way, I’m an Uncle Tom and they heap all kinds of hatred on you. That, to me, is racism.”
* Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Feb. 26 called historically black colleges and universities — which were founded because blacks weren’t permitted to attend white institutions — “pioneers” of school choice. Here’s what she said in a statement about HBCUs after meeting with presidents from many of the institutions:
They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn’tTrump administration has a lot to learn about African American history. Here’s a reading list. - The Washington Post:
