If anyone represented what a Detroit High School student could become with the proper dedication and focus, it was Ben Carson — or so the thinking went.
He graduated from Southwest High School in 1969, two years after riots in Detroit began to paint the Motor City as an dreary symbol of urban decay. He went on to become a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, operating on fetuses inside the womb and separating twins conjoined at the head.
As Detroit was crawling out of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Carson was launching a bid for the nation’s highest office. He is a Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee and the current U.S. secretary of housing and urban development.
But it’s that last act — Carson’s foray into politics and his association with President Trump — that has Detroit school board members calling for someone to pry the letters off the high school that bears Carson’s name.
“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.”
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SOURCE: Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
The Washington Post
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