Politics

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Response to Whether Ben Carson Is Good for Black People

November 5th 2015

Author and former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has another message for top Republican presidential contender Ben Carson. Abdul-Jabbar wrote in a recent Time editorial that a Carson persidency would be "terrible for Black Americans" and an "unmitigated disaster."

Abdul-Jabbar explained the many ways Carson, whom he said was an inspiring figure for Black Americans as a successful medical professional, would make for a terrible president, calling out the former neurosurgeon's many controversial stances on major issues.

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"His repressive, muddled and pious policies and opinions often run against our Constitution," Abdul-Jabbar wrote, touching on Carson's approaches to issues including climate change, institutionalized racism, and sexual orientation.

"[W]hen an elected leader ignores testimony from 97 percent of the world's experts, renowned physicists and the [Centers for Disease Control]," we have to question his decision-making abilities," Abdul-Jabbar wrote of Carson's claim that he has not seen "overwhelming science" proving climate change exists, his questioning of the Big Bang theory, and the connection he made in February between a measles outbreak and incoming illegal immigrants from Central and South America.

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Because he represents a "minority struggling to achieve equality," Abdul-Jabbar notes that Carson, with his lack of political expertise and bumbling, misplaced theories, would make for an ineffectual leader, and would provide an easy target for those looking to further harmful black stereotypes. For that reason, he writes that Carson as a candidate and representative of African Americans would "definitely not be good[.]"

The editorial is not the first time Abdul-Jabbar has called Carson a bad candidate. Responding to comments the contender made in September about how Muslims were unfit to run for president, Abdul-Jabbar criticized Carson for perpetuating inaccurate representations of members of the Islamic faith, and for using religion as "a litmus test for office here in the United States of America."

RELATED: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Says Donald Trump Won't Be Our Next President

Carson was in the news this week for another curious representation of an ancient people when he defended comments made in the late 1990s proposing Egypt's pyramids were built as grain storage housing—not their widely accepted existence as ornate burial chambers for pharaohs.

Carson makes the comments in the below commencement address around the 3:45 mark:

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