Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Carson encounters prejudice periodically through his youth and his career. There are situations in which the prejudice is clearly racial, such as when Carson and his brother are warned away from the football league, when Carson is warned about going to the white school, and when the teacher who bestows the academic award to Carson berates his white classmates for allowing a Black student to win it. Other situations, however show different types of prejudice. The taunting of his classmates over his low grades are prejudice against the differently abled (although Carson proves himself, ultimately, not to fit this category). The in-crowd’s refusal to accept anyone who does not dress as they do reflects prejudice against the “other” and against the poor; this sense of being a target leads Carson to wish not to be seen using food stamps. As a neurosurgeon, he is protected from the prejudice of some patients, but he hears about it after the fact. And it may be that some of the opposition he faces to complex and risky surgeries stemmed from professional jealousy. In addition, Sonya Carson faced “stigma” both for her divorce and for seeking mental health treatment (21).

On the whole, however, Carson does not focus on race; perhaps that can be considered a gift from his mother, who said, “Bennie, it doesn’t really matter what color you are.