MSNBC’s Toure Neblett last weekend mocked Dr. Benjamin Carson as a token “black friend” to Republicans admired only to “assuage their guilt” for past racial indiscretions.
On Fox News’s America Live Tuesday, Carson struck back at his liberal media critics saying that he’s no “Uncle Tom” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):
MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Boy, have you been attacked. A token you've been called, an Oreo, please pardon me for repeating these to you. Most recently a commentator on a rival network said you’ve been embraced because you're smart and helpful in assuaging white people's guilt and went to on to say that you’re enjoying the GOP’s version of affirmative action because then people will get to put on a bumper sticker on their car saying “How can I be racist, I would have voted for Dr. Ben Carson?” Your thoughts on the attacks on you?
DOCTOR BENJAMIN CARSON: Well, you know, if you don't have anything useful to say then you attack people. And you know, if you feel that your house of cards has been discovered and is starting to come unraveled, you become very desperate. You know, intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don't sit around and call each other names. That's what you can find on a third grade playground. This is something that we need to move beyond in this country, and let's have a real discussion about the real facts. If somebody disagrees, let's talk about why they disagree, let's talk about the pros and cons, let's see if we can find some accommodation. But to sit around and act like third graders is nonproductive.
KELLY: So quick to dismiss some of your ideas because they're coming from a man who happens to be a black man. And Condoleezza Rice actually was on the Fox News Channel a couple of years ago speaking to our own Sean Hannity, and she said, because she was subjected to some of this, “If you look at a black person and you say that person has to think in a particular way, I don't care if you're white or black, if you say that, then you've got a prejudice, then you are the one with the prejudice.” Do you think that the people who just dismiss you as a token have a prejudice of their own?
CARSON: Oh, well, there's no question. They feel if that you look a certain way then you have to stay on the plantation. You know I've heard some people refer to me as an Uncle Tom. Well, obviously they don't know what an Uncle Tom is because they need to read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” You’ll see that he was very, very subservient, kind of go along to get along type person. Obviously, that's not what I'm doing.
And what the left frequently does, and some aspects of the right, too, is they try to make life so unpleasant for anybody who disagrees with them that people will keep silent. And I know that it's working because so many people come up to me and say, “Thank you, thank you for having the courage to express this. This is the same way I feel.” But most people won't speak up. I'm trying to get people to speak up because, you know, this country is changing into something else, and we need to make sure that we really want it to change into something else and not just end up there and ask ourselves how did we get there.
(HT Mediaite)
