Ben Carson's Comment on Slaves = Immigrants: Really So Bad?

[eschereal]

@aldiboronti

As someone who campaigned for the best part of a year he should have learnt by now to take great care what he says. But was it that bad? No. Yes, they were involuntary immigrants but immigrants nonetheless…

Sorry, you are entirely mistaken. “Immigrants” means “people”. They were not people, they were freight. If a boatload of cattle arrives at the port to be unloaded, they are not called immigrants.

[tomndebb]

@aldiboronti

Yes, they were involuntary immigrants but immigrants nonetheless.

@Fotheringay-Phipps

I just don’t think what he said is particularly objectionable. Unless you take it out of context, and pretend he was saying something other than what he said.

Actually, every definition of immigrant includes the implicit or explicit understanding that the person immigrating has made a choice to move or to re-settle.

I agree that Carson has said even dumber things and is more of a threat to good governance than this slip indicates and that the hoopla is an overreaction, but it is also true that his usage is not supported by the meaning of the word in English.

[Lemur866]

@eschereal

Sorry, you are entirely mistaken. “Immigrants” means “people”. They were not people, they were freight. If a boatload of cattle arrives at the port to be unloaded, they are not called immigrants.

Sorry, but I can’t let this stand. It is simply, utterly, completely, and in all other ways incorrect that 18th and 19th Century slavemasters and slavetraders believed black Africans were not people.

Seriously, on what source do you base the above assertion? Who taught you that? Because it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@tomndebb

Actually, every definition of immigrant includes the implicit or explicit understanding that the person immigrating has made a choice to move or to re-settle.

Mmm…not really. We talk about people immigrating as young children, without believing the children made a choice. We talk about patriarchs deciding to immigrate and commanding their families to come along, and we call their wives “immigrants.”

There’s definitely a connotation there. More than choice, there’s the connotation that the move is in the best interests of the person moving.

The most offensive part of what he said was the implication that the American Dream served slaves well. He’s since walked that way back, and I credit him for doing so.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Acsenray

If that’s what he was saying, then he was saying something of such an utterly trivial nature when taken literally that it invites this very kind of scrutiny into his motives for saying it, given the context of the history of black people in this country.

That’s just being a politician. Or making speeches generally.

[ElvisL1ves]

Leonard Pitts puts it in larger perspective:

It’s hard not to see this as part of an ongoing campaign by the political right to arrogate or neuter entirely the language of politics and social grievance. Consider how, in the last 25 years, “liberal” and “feminist” became curse words and “racism” was redefined as “speaking about race.” Now it’s becoming sadly common to hear enslaved Africans described as “workers,” “settlers” and, yes, “immigrants.”

Words, you must understand, have weight and effect. So this campaign is neither incidental nor accidental. No, like Holocaust denial, it is an attempt to minimize and trivialize a crucible of agony, to rob it of pathos, to render it unworthy of reverence. It’s heartbreaking to have to explain to anyone why this is wrong.

It’s pathetic to have to explain it to a 65-year-old African-American man.

[Weisshund]

@Little_Nemo

I think you could say the slaves were deported.

I think you could say they were Kidnapped and sold in illegal human trafficking, regardless of what color someone in the trafficking process may be, and leave it at that, because there is no other valid argument.

If i capture your daughter, and force her into a vehicle against her will and have her delivered to my private island to be used as breeding stock, and allow her no human rights.

Will you then say that she was Deported? Is that what you will tell people when they ask what has become of your daughter?

[BigT]

@Gyrate

If she’s preparing to take a picture on her phone, it’s almost certainly for the purpose of posting it immediately onto Twitter and other social media.

Seriously, I’m not feeling the outrage here. Compared to things she’s actually said, a snap of her looking at her phone is nothing to fuss about.

What you are doing is normalization. Things are bad on their own–you don’t need to compare them to other bad actions. Doing that allows people like Trump to do awfulk things and then do something not awful and be praised (like that one speech).

Two steps forward and one step back–moving the Overton window.