Posted on March 26, 2013

Dr. Ben Carson Responds To Toure, Critics: I Am Not An "Uncle Tom"

MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS: Dr. Ben Carson joins us live now from Baltimore, Maryland. Again, he is the pediatric neurosurgery division director at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Carson, great to have you on, thanks so much for being here.



These are just some of the problems that we're facing in this country that you've spoken out many times. You believe in some extent in some of our towns, a culture of victimization which I want to get to with you. But because of your message on that, and other others some of which you've been critical of the president on and some not so much. Boy, have you been attacked. A 'token' you've been called, an Oreo, please pardon me for repeating this to you, and most recently a commentator on a rival network said you'd been embraced because you're smart and helpful in assuaging white people's guilt and went on to say you are enjoying the GOP's version of affirmative action and people get to put on a bumper sticker, 'How could I be racist? I would have voted for Dr. Carson. Your thoughts on the attacks on you.



DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: If you don't have anything useful to say you attack people. If you feel 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, and this is something 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 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 he 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 oken,' have a prejudice of their own?



DR. CARSON: Oh, well, there's no question. They feel if you look a certain way then you have to stay on the plantation. You know I've heard that some people refer to me as an Uncle Tom. Obviously, they don't know what an Uncle Tom is because they need to read the Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin to 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, 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 and in the same way I feel. but most people won't speak up. I'm trying to get people to speak up because 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.