When characterizing American blacks as immigrants. Now, I'm well aware of the official narrative and the virtue-signaling outrage I'm supposed to express on social media. According to this narrative Carson's assertion is contemptible because blacks were dragged to these shores in chains as part of the evil, terrible, oppressive institution of slavery.
But here's the thing. Merriam Webster defines "immigrant" as "a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence." Blacks certainly fit this bill. If that's too amoral to countenance because it ignores the involuntary nature of what happened, consider that blacks routinely subjected each other to slavery, and when the opportunity presented itself they sold each other to slave traders. The slaves could have been slaves either in Africa or in America. The fact that some of them were lucky enough to make it over here is not something to condemn, unless of course one is so callous as to believe that everyone would have been better off if they had stayed in Africa. And I don't notice any mass exodus of blacks back to Africa; they seem quite happy to remain here, at least when they're not complaining about how "oppressed" they are.
Carson's real sin has nothing to do with linguistic or historical accuracy and everything to do with politics. He dared to deviate from one of the commandments of modern, mainstream discourse, which is that blacks are always and forever victims. While this self-pitying stance guarantees that blacks will never achieve equality, that's not the objective here. The objective is at is always was: power.
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