Ben Carson on Flint Crisis: 'It Is Abominable'
Dr. Ben Carson is the latest presidential candidate to give his thoughts on the Flint water crisis.
"When they switched over from the Detroit water supply to the Flint water supply, people immediately started complaining," said Carson. "They said this water is dirty, it smells bad. It tastes bad, and yet nobody did anything about it. I think that is abominable," he continued.
Since 2014, residents in the Michigan town of 99,000 have not had access to clean water and the crisis is leading to catastrophic health issues. Thousands of bottles of water are being shipped in and President Obama declared the situation a state of emergency.
On Friday, at BET's #AllVotesMatter forum with Rapper Dee-1 and Vote America Now President Chris Prudhome, Carson was asked by a viewer, "What should be done to the government officials that allowed this to happen?"
Carson answered that there is "much blame to go around" and that it should begin with officials at the very top such as the Environmental Protection Agency on down to local officials in Flint.
"Everybody involved should be questioned and [there] should be some consequences because we have to look at what the long-term effect of lead poisoning is, and that it is devastating to the developing brain," he continued.
Carson also said the issue at hand is more so of class rather than race adding that, "If this happened in an upper-class Black neighborhood, it wouldn't be allowed either."
"There would be very influential people there who would go and make sure that it didn't happen. A lot of times what we blame on race is how much power do you really have and unfortunately in our inner cities, frequently we have a lot of people who don't have much power."
Watch Carson's comments starting at the 6:30 mark.
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(Photo: BET)