Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson believes that slavery, when framed in just the right way, is a tale of dreaming big and working hard — like a demented version of “Hamilton.”
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.”

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