Every black person with good sense can see that President Donald Trump likes to surround himself with conservative black people so he can point in any random direction and exclaim, from the book of wypipo proverbs: “How can I be racist? I have a black friend!”
Why else would he appoint former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson to the position of U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban development despite Carson having no background in housing or urban development whatsoever?
According to Politico, while introducing the president at a North Carolina event on Friday, Carson went off-script, declaring that Trump “is not a racist” and pointing to how he treats employees at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
At the event, which promoted the administration’s Opportunity Zone program, apparently aimed at bringing growth to underserved areas, Carson strayed from his prepared remarks to place Trumps hand firmly up his puppet ass address the notion that Trump is racist.
“He’s a man who is deeply driven by a sense of kindness and compassion,” Carson said. “You know, talking to the people who drive the cars and park the cars at Mar-a-Lago, they love him—the people who wash the dishes, because he’s kind and compassionate.”
I’m just going to stop you right there, Sleepy-eye Ben. Let’s dispel this notion that white people can’t be polite and cordial in the presence of people of color and still be racist as hell. I worked for a white man for years who would smile and laugh with his Asian and Hispanic customers and then turn around and call them all kinds of “chinks” and “wetbacks” as soon as they left the building. (He was comfortable saying those things around me as long as he was careful not to say anti-black shit, but I can imagine all the n-words I was whenever I wasn’t around.)
Of course, Trump is nice to all the minorities as they serve his rich white resort guests. That in no way means that the man who referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” and made Mexican immigrants out to be synonymous with “rapists” isn’t, in fact, racist.
But Carson continued, saying, “When he bought Mar-a-Lago, he was the one who fought for Jews and blacks to be included in the clubs that were trying to exclude them. You know, people say he’s a racist, he is not a racist.
“It is certainly an act of compassion to help our fellow Americans who are struggling in neighborhoods,” he added.
The fact is, if Trump—the man who recently added six more Muslim majority countries to an arbitrary travel ban list and was a known “birther” when Barack Obama was in office—wasn’t racist, he wouldn’t have to consistently exhaust so much energy disproving his racism.
Instead, Trump has had accusations of racism following him around since before he was president—when he was calling for the Central Park Five’s execution even after they were exonerated—and after his election, as he has continued to make racist and xenophobic remarks including saying that Nigerians all have AIDS and that those coming to the U.S. will never “go back to their huts.”
And, frankly, Ben Carson is the last person who can credibly exonerate any white person from their racism, seeing as he has a history of claiming racism to be a thing of the past and minimizing accusations of racism as mere “political correctness.”
In short: Carson can cape for Trump all he wants, but Trump will always undermine the effort by showing his true colors.