Dr. Ben Carson has been celebrated in a variety of arenas. He is the former secretary of housing and urban development, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, and the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. He is also a bestselling author having penned several books before this one. In 2008, under President George W. Bush, he was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the land. He holds more than 70 honorary doctorate degrees. He’s also black, a Christian, and a conservative. He’s been married to his wife, Candy, for nearly 50 years. They have three grown sons.
Tackling the Tough Topics
In “Created Equal: The Painful Past, Confusing Present, and Hopeful Future of Race in America,” Carson doesn’t pull any punches. He tackles today’s seemingly omnipresent topics: the history of slavery, racism in America, white guilt, victimhood, critical race theory, media and big tech and their powerful narratives, Judeo-Christian values, education, the 1619 Project, and classism. These are a few of the hot subjects about which he expresses his views. And he does it with what I’d call critical caring. He went to Yale University. His professional career was as a neurosurgeon. He’s very well educated, but on top of his academic prowess, he is foremost a Christian and takes his guidance and comfort from God. It’s his faith that allows him to speak out against what he sees as destructive forces in America being pushed by the progressives under the cloak of social justice when, in his view, it’s a push to socialism.Celebrate Rather Than Criticize
Because humans have no control over the color of their skin, Carson celebrates the gift of our racial and ethnic diversity and abhors groups that seek to use diversity as a wedge to divide us.
Slavery in America officially ended in the 1860s. Certainly, vestiges of that institution remain in our country today, causing victimhood for some and guilt for others. Carson uses his own life experiences as a black man to provide an example of what is possible to achieve in America. He would rather applaud all the progress that blacks have made over the last decades than use race as an excuse to remake America into something far from what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Carson errs on the side of faith and forgiveness when dealing with many forms of racial discrimination. He believes that much of the discrimination of the past was due to ignorance rather than maliciousness. He writes: “Once that ignorance was erased, the discriminatory behavior disappeared. When people behave unfairly out of ignorance, the faith-based principles of forgiveness should be on display.” While not dismissing past sins or the imperfect nature of America’s past, Carson would prefer that we influence our environments in a positive rather than negative way. “We can be a victim or a victor. We can be guilt-ridden or happily guilt-free. We should never let others determine our state of being.” Engaged and outspoken, Carson warns against an apathetic populace. He encourages readers to be on their guard against the “slippery slopes of Marxist tendencies.” Precious freedoms that we take for granted can be lost. “Many people think that the United States of America is impregnable with respect to the overthrow of its capitalistic society and the imposition of socialism or communism. People would do well to remember how quickly the Soviet Union dissolved and how quickly Venezuela went from the most prosperous to the poorest nation in South America in a very short period of time. Once the erosion of freedom begins, its progression is frequently like a blitz-krieg.” Media and big tech do not escape his scrutiny. They can be a force for good or bad depending on the narrative they are advocating. These institutions can shape the definitions of morality or appropriate behavior. They wield huge power and, in many cases, are contrary to the freedom of speech, thought, and expression. His book is not long. It’s a fairly fast read, but it’s packed with thoughtful, passionate, and insightful opinions about where we are in America and shows the potential of where we could be. It’s an uplifting and hopeful analysis. Carson chooses to celebrate America’s strengths rather than its historical weaknesses.
