Ben Carson is having a bad week.
First he got dragged for a surge in failed HUD inspections since his appointment as U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary in 2017, and now Detroit’s Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine is ripping the ring off its finger and throwing it back in his face.
According to Detroit Metro Times, the Detroit Board of Education met last week to vote upon renaming several schools and buildings within the district—one of which just so happens to be named after Mr. Respectability Politics himself, Ben Carson.
Carson graduated from the district in 1969 and to celebrate his accomplishments in neurosurgery, the school was named in his honor. But all that good will went out the window the moment Carson decided to sell his soul to our Commander-in-Tweet and pledge his allegiance to Trump’s cabinet. As such, Detroit school board member Lamar Lemmons had plenty to say on the matter to the Washington Post.
“It is synonymous with having Trump’s name on our school in blackface,” Detroit school board member Lamar Lemmons told The Washington Post, when asked why is he leading the charge to remove Carson’s name.
Carson “is doing Trump’s bidding, and he has adversely affected the African American community in Detroit as well as the nation with his housing policies,” Lemmons said. “And he’s allied himself with a president that says he is a white nationalist and sends dog whistles that even the deaf can hear.”
But unsurprisingly, Carson’s colleagues have absconded from the Sunken Place to come to his defense.
As USA Today reports, Project 21—a black, conservative activist group—deemed the name-changing effort a “purely political act which willfully ignores the accomplishments and charitable acts of the famous Detroit native who now serves as the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development,” according to a news release Friday.
“This is another misguided effort by liberals to erase history,” railed Project 21 member Gregory Parker in the same news release. “The Detroit school board had no problem with the name of the school before Dr. Carson became active in politics. Now that he does not conform to the ideal liberal plantation image of a black man and he plays a prominent role in the Trump Administration, he offends their hypersensitive, self-righteous and morally corrupt sensibilities.”
Unfortunately for Project 21, however, the board voted 6-1 in favor of the name change. So an upcoming series of meetings with determine the school’s fate. But according to Lemmons, a resolution isn’t expected until the next academic year.
Might I suggest the “Barack Hussein Obama High School of Black Excellence” in its place?
