DETROIT, MI - MAY 4: Republican Dr. Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, speaks as he officially announces his candidacy for President of the United States at the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts May 4, 2015 in Detroit, Michigan. Carson was scheduled to travel today to Iowa, but changed his plans when his mother became critically ill. He now will be traveling to Dallas instead to be with his mother Sonya. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
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Story highlights
Ben Carson said the Black Lives Matter movement needs to refocus
The movement should stop protesting Bernie Sanders and "march" in a new direction, he said
WashingtonCNN
—
The Black Lives Matter movement is directing its anger at “the wrong targets,” former neurosurgeon and Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson wrote Monday.
Carson, who is black, wrote Monday in USA Today that the movement, which is aimed at ending racial injustices in the criminal justice system, needs to refocus itself if it intends to bring about change.
“The idea that disrupting and protesting Bernie Sanders speeches will change what is wrong in America is lunacy. The ‘BlackLivesMatter’ movement is focused on the wrong targets, to the detriment of blacks who would like to see real change,” Carson wrote. “The notion that some lives might matter less than others is meant to enrage. That anger is distracting us from what matters most. We’re right to be angry, but we have to stay smart.”
Carson was referring to a group of Black Lives Matter activists who interrupted Sanders at event last month and took over the podium from the Vermont senator, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Activists from the movement met privately with the former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton earlier this month, after they arrived late to a rally and were barred from entering the venue. Another Democrat, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was also heckled by Black Lives Matters protesters at a recent event. The former Baltimore mayor previously apologized to members of the movement for responding to a question about Black Lives matter by saying, “All lives matter.”
Carson wrote in the op-ed that the protesters’ anger over “racial policing issues” is justified, but said he took issue with the movement’s targets.
“Unjust treatment from police did not fill our inner cities with people who face growing hopelessness,” he said.
Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics
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Ben Carson attends the National Action Network (NAN) national convention at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel on April 8, 2015, in New York City.
Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics
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Carson speaks during the 41st annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord International Hotel and Conference Center on March 8, 2014, in National Harbor, Maryland.
Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics
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Carson speaks to guests at the Iowa Freedom Summit on January 24, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.
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Carson is surrounded by supporters as he waits to be interviewed at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland, outside Washington on February 26, 2015.
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Carson speaks at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition convention on January 18, 2015, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A variety of conservative presidential hopefuls spoke at the gathering on the second day of a three-day event.
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Carson delivers the keynote address at the Wake Up America gala event on September 5, 2014, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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Carson speaks during the 41st annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord International Hotel and Conference Center on March 8, 2014, in National Harbor, Maryland.
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Carson speaks during the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton on February 7, 2013, in Washington.
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Honoree and director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University, Carson poses with actor James Pickens Jr. at the Jackie Robinson Foundation Annual Awards Dinner on March 16, 2009, in New York City.
Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics
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Before his jump into conservative politics, Carson was known for his work as a neurosurgeon. Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President George W. Bush on June 19, 2008. At that time, he was the director of pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics
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In a story that garnered international attention, Carson was ready to separate a pair of 10-year-old Indian girls, Saba and Farah Shakeel, who are joined at the head in New Delhi, India. Here, he addresses a press conference at the Indraprashtra Apollo Hospital on October 4, 2005.
Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics
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Carson and a team of 20 specialists approved the procedure after studying the girls' brains; however, their parents were worried about their daughters' lives and did not give doctors permission to operate. The surgery did not happen.
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Carson observes the start of neurosurgery proceedings at the Raffles Hospital in Singapore on July 6, 2003. Carson and Dr. Keith Goh, left, performed a complex operation that was unsuccessful to separate 29-year-old twins Ladan And Laleh Bijani, who were joined at the head.
Carson instead called on the social justice movement to take on new targets: school boards, the entertainment industry, city halls, crack houses and both the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington.
Of the Democratic Party, Carson said the activists should tell party officials “we don’t want to be clothed, fed and housed. We want honor and dignity.”
And of Republicans, Carson said, activists should demand to be invited in and listened to because, “They have ignored us for too long.”
As he often does on the stump, Carson drew on his background – his rise from poverty-ridden Detroit to becoming one of the foremost neurosurgeons of his generation – and credited his mother with saving him and his brother from “being killed on those streets with nothing but a library card.”
“There are many things to be angry about when you are consumed by hopelessness. Bernie Sanders isn’t one of them,” Carson said.
