Steve Benen on Maddowblog is appalled at the remarks of Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
Carson said it’s mind over matter. “I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” said Carson. “You take somebody who has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street and I guarantee you in a little while they’ll be right back up there. And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.”
This is not an argument that anyone should take seriously. The causes of chronic, generational poverty are complex, but “the wrong mindset” isn’t among them.
Except that it does, if you accept the hypothesis that racism has been a factor in generational, chronic poverty – so that it’s not the mindset of the victims so much as the shared mindset of the victimizers, whether it be actively malicious or just the go-with-the-flow folks.
All that said, Dr. Carson should probably recognize that some mindsets are not currently changeable. Those who are brain-damaged are certainly going to have more problems than those who are not. Given the number of homeless veterans on the streets, perhaps Dr. Carson should make it his number one priority to advocate against war.
