President Donald Trump is considering going on a listening tour of black communities and establishing a task force to come up with solutions to underlying racial problems, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
Carson, the only African American member of Trump’s Cabinet, said “The president is very interested in the forgotten men and women of this country. He has been talking about this since day one.”
Carson added that it is vitally important to comprehend the source of the rage expressed in the demonstrations following the death of the unarmed and handcuffed George Floyd while in police custody
“I think we really need to try to understand the anger, the rancor,” he told the Examiner.“I probably understand it better than most people do.”
Carson said he talked with the president about various ideas to deal with the problem, including embarking on a listening tour so that black communities could express their grievances and a task force to officially examine what can be done to alleviate the problem.
"I’ve offered my services,” Carson said. “Whatever I can do to help facilitate this."
He also said it would also be helpful to continue the criminal justice reform legislation passed two years ago, focusing on aiding ex-prisoners find work after they leave jail.
“Those are the kinds of things... that we really need to be thinking about, because each one of our citizens is a valuable resource,” Carson said. “We need to be thinking about how we develop them, not how we control them.”
The White House did not comment on the proposals.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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