Ben Carson wrote about his personal experience with violence as a youth in an op-ed targeted at millennials.
“I know violence all too well. As a child I saw it out my front window in the inner city. Two of my cousins were killed on the streets in our neighborhood. As a doctor, I spent way too many nights taking bullets out of patients,” the former neurosurgeon wrote for the Independent Journal, an online publication focused on millennials.
CNN reported this month on rising murder rates in major cities.
Carson, who grew up in Detroit, said the prevalence of violence has continued since his childhood.
“Far too often in today’s America, human life is devalued and violence is glorified,” he said. “How did we allow this to happen? More importantly, how do we stop it?”
Carson criticizes Black Lives Matter protestors in the piece for chanting death threats at cops and he also called out a college student for not being more empathetic about the death of a Darren Goforth, a cop killed while pumping gas.
“Our culture has failed us as well,” he wrote. “Violence is worshiped and profiteered by entertainment industry. Drug use is growing across the country.”
Politicians are partly to blame, Carson said.
“Instead of guiding such at-risk Americans to kindness and personal responsibility, politicians who are irresponsible, sycophantic and opportunistic feed the masses’ basest instincts and worst grievances, be they racial or political,” he said. “Irrational decisions and violence often ensue, with few legal consequences for the individuals involved.”
Carson, who first prominently criticized President Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, said the president has failed to fix the problem.
“Seven years ago, the country was promised change that it could believe in. The emptiness of that promise notwithstanding, real change ultimately resides in each of us,” he said.
But Carson, who is polling a close second behind Trump, said that Americans can change this.
“Together with open minds and linked hearts and hands, we can do better. We must strive to replace hatred and indifference with compassion,” he said. “It is time for a bold new way of empowerment and responsibility.”