It Continues to Be a Real Mystery Why Republicans Aren't Connecting with a Majority of Female Voters

[Content Note: Misogyny; police brutality; racism; gender essentialism.]


"Think big."
Dr. Ben Carson, who is currently polling second among Republicans in presidential polls, has a terrific theory about why police are killing black people:

During an appearance Tuesday on American Family Radio's "Today's Issues," Carson speculated about the behavior that led to the fatal shooting of black unarmed teenager Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

"Certainly in a lot of our inner cities, particularly in the black inner cities, where 73 percent of the young people are born out of wedlock, the majority of them have no father figure in their life," Carson said. "Usually the father figure is where you learn how to respond to authority."

He also addressed comments made by host Lauren Kitchens Steward about respecting authority and the entitlement, which she claimed, "dominates" this generation.

"I think a lot of it really got started in the '60s with the 'Me' generation. 'What's in it for me?'" Carson said. "I hate to say it, but a lot of it had to do with the women's lib movement. You know, 'I've been taking care of my family, I've been doing that, what about me?' You know, it really should be about us."

So much wrong in so few words.

The assertion that children born to unmarried parents necessarily do not have active relationships with their fathers is flatly wrong.

The failure to acknowledge the roles of the criminalization of need, addiction, and mental illness; institutional racism in our legal system; and for-profit prisons in tearing apart poor black families in the US is flatly wrong.

The gender essentialist claptrap about learning "how to respond to authority" from fathers is flatly wrong.

The embedded implication that black people are killed by police because they are insufficiently deferential to authority is flatly wrong.

The contention that empowerment of women underwrites state violence is flatly wrong.

Basically, Carson is arguing that state violence against black people wouldn't exist if only more children were born "in wedlock" and women didn't have so many opportunities. Like the 1950s.

If only there were books about history that could tell us whether state violence against black people happened back then. Oh well. I guess it's a mystery lost to the sands of time.