Bishop E.W. Jackson, the Religious Right activist and one-time GOP nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, was in Washington yesterday for a “racial reconciliation” rally he organized last night, and took the opportunity to hold a press conference at the National Press Club attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center for briefly listing Ben Carson in its “extremist files.”

SPLC had posted a profile of Carson in its “extremist files,” but quickly took it down, noting that it did not meet the group’s standards, but standing by its reporting on Carson’s long history of promoting anti-government conspiracy theories and smears about LGBT people.

But Jackson told the National Press Club audience that SPLC had criticized Carson simply for opposing marriage equality, which Jackson said “is a violation of his and potentially all of our religious liberty.”

He went on to declare that SPLC’s criticism of Carson was “no different than what maybe slave masters or segregationists would have said.”

“When an organization like the Southern Poverty Law Center decides that a black man that doesn’t agree with them can be slandered the way they’ve slandered him, what it tells me is that there’s a certain level of racism that they are operating under while they are trying to point the finger at others,” he said. “And I say that for this reason: To me, this is no different than what maybe slave masters or segregationists would have said. You know, ‘Some black people are okay as long as they do what we expect them to do and they think the way we expect them to think.’ In other words, they’re the ‘good ones.’ So apparently, if you’re not one of the ‘good ones,’ then we’re going to try to destroy you. And to me, that is racism at its worst.”