When asked if he agreed with Bernie Sanders’ comment that Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in a Texas jail in July, would have been treated differently had she been white, Dr. Ben Carson on Sunday lamented that Americans tend to focus too much on race.
Carson said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he thinks the U.S. should look at whether blacks are treated differently by the police, but added, “There is no question that we need to be looking at those sorts of things, but we also have a tendency to inject race into everything anytime that there are people of different races involved in a conflict.”
“Are there rotten police officers? Of course there are,” he continued. “Just like there are rotten lawyers and rotten doctors and rotten teachers and rotten journalists. But we don’t condemn the whole class for that.”
He said that the justice system needs to be more “sensitive” to class and economic status, rather than race, while admitting that many class and economic situations are “ascribed to race.”
Carson has made similar comments before. In September, the retired neurosurgeon said that when it comes to policing and race, “We need to deemphasize race and we need to emphasize respect.”
Watch the clip via CBS:
