Ben Carson’s terrible “Hamilton” sequel idea: The enslaved were immigrants who “worked even harder for less”?

Speaking for the first time in front of HUD employees, Carson called enslaved African people — that is, humans who were forcibly taken from their homelands, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in inhumane conditions, and then purchased and sold as property — as an example of America being “a land of dreams and opportunity.”

Carson, who once mused that the Egyptian pyramids may have stored grain, started his controversial statements by saying, “You can’t overload the human brain.” But then he tried.

“That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity,” Carson said. “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.”

Carson’s message seems to be that, no matter how hard you have worked, someone had once worked harder for less — because they were enslaved. At least we think that was the message?

Perhaps Ben Carson was dreaming big himself — did he have a flash of inspiration for “the next ‘Hamilton’” when he wrote these remarks? The opening could go a little something like this:

How does an immigrant, enslaved, locked in the bottom of a slave ship

dropped in a godforsaken spot on a plantation

owned by a governor, in squalor

work for less than the free others even longer, even harder?

America, land of dreams and opportunity! It’s no “Gifted Hands II,” but what is?

Jeremy Binckes is the cover editor at Salon.com.

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Source: Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture > Politics

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