{"id":20191,"date":"2017-03-06T21:58:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T21:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20191"},"modified":"2017-03-06T21:58:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T21:58:30","slug":"um-dr-secretary-slaves-were-not-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20191","title":{"rendered":"Um, Dr. Secretary, slaves were not ‘immigrants’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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U.S.\u00a0Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson got off to a rollicking start as head of a major federal agency by comparing slaves to your run-of-the-mill immigrants.<\/p>\n

They came here, Dr. Carson told HUD employees, with “dreams for their sons, daughters … ” and others who would come along.<\/p>\n

Really, he said that.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how to react <\/a>fully to what Dr. Carson said at his HUD meeting.<\/p>\n

I have read over many years, however, about how human beings were “sold” as\u00a0cargo by slave owners in Africa; they were put on ships and transported across the Atlantic Ocean, where they would be used like, oh, farm animals. They were denied every human right imaginable; indeed, they weren’t even considered to be fully “human.”<\/p>\n

They had dreams about a better future? Is that what the new HUD secretary said?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity,\u201d Carson said. \u201cThere were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish my grandparents were alive at this moment to hear these remarks. They, too, had “dreams” about forging a better life in this land of opportunity.<\/p>\n

However, all four of them — the parents of my mother and father — came here willingly<\/em>, of their own volition<\/em>. They sought a new life and a safe place to rear their children.<\/p>\n

I cannot believe that Dr. Carson would suggest — even in the remotest of terms — any kind of equivalence between those who came here as slaves and those who arrived as immigrants.<\/p>\n\n

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U.S.\u00a0Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson got off to a rollicking start as head of a major federal agency by comparing slaves to your run-of-the-mill immigrants. They came here, Dr. Carson told HUD employees, with “dreams for their sons, daughters … ” and others who would come along. Really, he said that. I don’t … Continue reading Um, Dr. Secretary, slaves were not ‘immigrants’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[588,2207,2244,4286],"class_list":["post-20191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-ben-carson","tag-hud","tag-immigrants","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20192,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20191\/revisions\/20192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}