Ben Carson’s immigrant/slave speech is remarkably similar to an address Obama gave last year

The newly appointed Housing and Urban Development Secretary addressed agency employees Monday about the department’s mission. In his speech, Carson touched on the issue of immigration.

“That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity,” the retired neurosurgeon said. “There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

“And do you know of all the nations in the world, this one, the United States of America, is the only one big enough and great enough to allow all those people to realize their dream. And this is our opportunity to enhance that dream,” he added.

Obama said something along these lines last year in Washington, D.C., when he addressed a group of permanent American residents who were scheduled to become United States citizens.

“It wasn’t always easy for new immigrants. Certainly, it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves,” Obama said.

The former president added, “There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more.”

That’s not all. In a number of speeches delivered during his two terms, Obama regularly lumped together the various groups that have come to the U.S.

“Unless you are one of the first Americans, a Native American, we are all descended from folks who came from someplace else — whether they arrived on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, whether they came through Ellis Island or crossed the Rio Grande,” the former president said in 2012.

In 2011 he said, “The idea that no matter what we look like or who we are, no matter whether our ancestors came from Ellis Island or on a slave ship, or across the Rio Grande, that we are all connected to one another, and that we rise and fall together.”

And so on.

The difference between Carson and Obama, however, is that the HUD chief’s comments inspired a swift and furious backlash from reporters, entertainers and political activists.

“This can’t be real. Slaves were not & are not immigrants. 2017,” Chelsea Clinton tweeted Monday.

Actor Samuel L. Jackson added in a tweet, “OK!! Ben Carson….I can’t! Immigrants ? In the bottom of SLAVE SHIPS??!! MUTHAFUKKA PLEASE!!!#dickheadedtom.”

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect’s executive director, Steven Goldstein, said in a statement addressed to Carson, “You do not get a pass because you’re an African-American, any more than President Trump gets a pass for his delayed and sometimes nonexistent responses to [anti-Semitism] because he has Jewish relatives.”

“Wrong is wrong, Secretary Carson. We condemn your statement and suggest you try this one instead: #BlackLivesMatter,” his statement added.

Carson, who is black, responded eventually to these and similar reactions in a note of clarification posted to his Facebook page.

“The two experiences should never be intertwined, nor forgotten, as we demand the necessary progress towards an America that’s inclusive and provides access to equal opportunity for all,” Carson’s Monday evening statement said.

“We should revel in the fact that although we got here through different routes, we have many things in common now that should unite us in our mission to have a land where there is liberty and justice for all,” he added.

Though there is some daylight between what Carson and Obama said, they’re similar enough in substance that the difference in public reactions is utterly startling.