Carson says slaves were ‘immigrants’ with dreams for their children

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on Monday referred to American slaves as “immigrants” who dreamed of better lives for their children.

Carson, making his first speech to the HUD staff since his confirmation last week, said America is a “land of dreams and opportunities” that has drawn millions of people from overseas throughout its history.


“There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,” he said. “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.”

The retired neurosurgeon, who will manage a budget of nearly $50 billion and some 8,000 employees and oversee most of the nation’s affordable housing programs, made the case for smaller government. He stressed that Washington should stay out of people’s lives whenever possible, allowing them to work out their own problems.

“If you can get those people to sit down and talk to each other, they will frequently be able to come up with extremely good solutions,” he said. “I believe in always giving the first pass to the people who are actually involved as opposed to imposing upon them from above.”

In an address with references to God, the capacity of the brain and the need for self-reliance, Carson said his agency will be “extremely vigilant” in enforcing the law.

But, he said, “we recognize that when we treat people fairly, the need to regulate their lives and to try to force people to do things becomes much, much smaller because people don’t feel that they’re being treated unjustly and therefore they’re not looking for a way around the situation.”

The HUD chief, who has no experience in housing policy, rarely addressed the issue directly. Instead, he focused heavily on his experience as a neurosurgeon, which he argued has prepared him to work toward accomplishing the department’s missions.

“There’s a great intersection actually between medicine and the work of this department,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about lead hazards and molds,” he said, noting that his first meeting as department head was with a lead-hazard environmental group.

He also criticized efforts to sideline the importance of God and religion.

“We live in a nation where a lot of people are trying to get rid of God,” Carson said. “I think that is a big mistake. Think about the fact that our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, talks about certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, aka God.”

“The Pledge of Allegiance to that flag says we are one nation under God,” he added. “Every coin in our pocket, every bill in our wallet says, ‘In God we trust.’ On the walls of many of the courts in our land it says, ‘In God we trust.’ So if it’s in our founding document, and our pledge, and our courts, and it’s on our money, but we’re not supposed to talk about it — what in the world is that?”

