Ben Carson blasts 'vicious,' white liberal critics as ‘the most racist out there’

Dr. Ben Carson on Tuesday blasted his critics for heat he’s taken recently over controversial remarks on gay marriage, calling his white liberal detractors “the most racist out there.”

“They want to shut us up completely, and that’s why the attacks against me have been so vicious,” Carson said on the Mark Levin radio show. “I represent an existential threat to them. They need to shut me up, they need to get rid of me, they can’t find anything else to delegitimize me, so they take my words, misinterpret them, and try to make it seem that I’m a bigot.”

Levin said Carson was being targeted for his race.

“You’re attacked also in many respects because of your race,” Levin said. “You’re not supposed to talk like this, and a lot of white liberals just don’t like it, do they?”

“They’re the most racist people there are because they put you in a little category, a box,” Carson responded. “How could you dare come off the plantation?”

The comments come after the rising GOP star apologized for remarks he made last week linking homosexuality to bestiality.

Carson said that marriage is “a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality — it doesn't matter what they are, they don't get to change the definition.”

NAMBLA is the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

Carson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, initially defended the comments as taken “out of context and completely misunderstood,” but the furor provoked students at his university to petition to have him removed as this year’s commencement speaker. Carson has said he would step aside if that’s what the students wanted.

Carson became an overnight sensation on the right after criticizing President Obama, who was seated directly to his right, at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year.

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Mexican Restaurant Defends Racist Shirts As ‘Witty And Comical’

On Monday, ThinkProgress reported about a Mexican restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina whose employees wear T-shirts (pictured below) showing a wooden trap with tacos as bait and the caption “HOW TO CATCH AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”.

Now, Taco Cid issued an equally offensive response on its website, flagged by the Palmetto Public Record. The eatery defended the shirts as “witty and comical,” arguing that “Taco Cid and it’s [sic] employees are not racist.” The restaurant insists that the shirts, which show a pair of tacos under a trap and singles out “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS,” contain “NO racial nor hate remarks towards any specific ethnic group.”

But it also goes on to articulate a false political argument, claiming that undocumented workers cause everyone to “pay more in taxes in support of their illegal activities.” In 2010 alone, unauthorized immigrants paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes and pump billions in purchasing power into the economy. This output and spending generates jobs and opportunity.

Taco Cid finished the rambling statement with a plea for those who are offended by its views not to come enjoy their tacos: “If you do not agree with our views on ILLEGAL immigrants, please do not visit our establishment.”

See the full statement below:

Judging by the Taco Cid’s reviews on Yelp, many people are taking the restaurant up on their plea to stay away if they don’t agree with the racist shirts. Nine of the ten reviews gave Taco Cid one star, in large part due to the shirts. “Racist shirts and the food sucks, too,” wrote Corvus S. User K.G. followed up with, “The racism’s world class! Awareness of tax policy, immigration law, and social justice is disappointing, along with an embarrassing level of self-awareness.”

The restaurant posted on its website that it will no longer advertise in the Columbia Free Times after its reporter, Corey Hutchins, first tweeted a picture of an employee wearing the racist shirt. They write that Hutchins “has acted in a reckless and slanderous way towards Taco Cid.”

Taco Cid is now selling the racist shirts to the public on their website.

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Derbyshire in 2003: I Am a Racist

Yesterday, the entire Internet was ablaze with well-deserved condemnation for National Review contributor John Derbyshire’s racist rant. If you haven’t yet read it, I suggest you take a moment to do so; it is truly breathtaking. However, to those of us who have followed Derbyshire’s career prior to this point, the only surprise is that it took him so long to say something so contemptible that people have finally noticed. After all, in a 2003 interview with RedState contributor Kevin Holtsberry about his book, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Rieman and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics, Derbyshire flatly declared that he was a racist.

I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going. Of course, people will still be that way in their hearts, but they will be afraid to admit it, and will be punished if they do admit it.

Absolutely nothing that has happened in Derbyshire’s career since then has indicated that he didn’t mean exactly what he said to Kevin way back in 2003. This is the same man who once described welfare thusly:

Following the black riots of the 1960s, these concessions have also been seen by nonblacks as an implicit contract or treaty — that is, as nonblack America saying to black America: “We’ll give you this stuff if you promise not to break our windows.”

And also couldn’t understand all the fuss about the racist comments in the Ron Paul newsletters.

Derbyshire likes to pepper his racist rants with “facts” that generally consist of social studies that are subject to numerous interpretational biases. To me, the question as to whether these studies are accurate or correct is uninteresting and irrelevant – a central tenet of decency demands that every human being is entitled to be evaluated on his or her own merits regardless of what social science may say about any group (racial, cultural, religious or otherwise) to which he or she might belong. It is this very basis which Derbyshire rejects, and that is what makes him (and has always made him) a racist. He is not, as his defenders at the execrable Taki mag say, confronting the world with uncomfortable truths, he is proudly declaring himself to be a racist and arguing that it is correct to be racist. This, I submit, is something that all decent people should reject.

I like and respect the few people I know who are regular contributors to National Review.  I have on numerous occasions spoken to and emailed these people about the danger Derbyshire’s association presents to the magazine, and nothing has ever been done about it, presumably because the decision rests with editor Rich Lowry and others. I don’t know and haven’t ever met Rich Lowry, so I can’t speak to his personal qualities. But I can say that his response to this fracas last night, which sought to distance National Review from the controversy but didn’t declare that National Review was ending its relationship with Derbyshire, showed an absolute lack of leadership and conviction, as does the fact that Derbyshire has been continually allowed to write there for the last several years despite ample evidence of his racism. Derbyshire’s screed was so contemptible, especially in light of his lengthy history, that I cannot imagine a reason that Derbyshire should not have been summarily dismissed within the hour.

The longer this drags on without a definitive severing of the relationship, the more damage will be done to National Review. I cannot imagine what sort of deliberation is required to make this decision, but I hope, for National Review’s sake, that it can be completed before the weekend is over.

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