Dear Dr. Ben Carson, I appreciate your excellent accomplishments as a physician. I am truly impressed by your great medical skills and leadership. I was inspired by your overcoming huge odds to become a world-renowned surgeon. I was glad to see you considering running for President as a Republican. Then you absolutely shocked me. I was shocked when you said that the Affordable Health Care Act, widely known as ObamaCare, “is the worst thing since slavery.” Your words pierced my heart and weighed on my spirit.

Dr. Carson, I resisted addressing you publicly about your terrible words. But now that you are formally a candidate for President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world, I am duty bound to address you openly and honestly. Since your terrible statement was published far and wide, I am making this an open letter for all to see.

Dr. Carson, I write out of a profound disappointment and a searing pain. But I also write out of a deep desire to help you understand that words, like symbols, have real power. Your words sent a horrible message that totally discounted the oppressive reality of African Americans over the last 150 years, commencing at the end of slavery.

Dr. Carson, how could you not know about the Compromise of 1877 where Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure the same Presidency of the United States which you now seek, agreed to withdraw the arm of protection from recently freed and newly enfranchised African Americans in the South. This act unleashed rampant terrorism that crushed the rights and oppressed the lives of African Americans for generations.

This was just 12 years after slavery officially ended. Dr. Carson, please tell me how the Affordable Health Care Act, which now provides health insurance to 16 million human beings who were without adequate health care, could be worse than the infamous Compromise of 1877? As a physician, you took an oath to do no harm. However, by your very words, you are doing great harm.

Dr. Carson, how could you not know about the 1896 United States Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson. This case declared that it was legal to separate the races as long as the separation was equal. “Separate but equal” became the judicial cover for great separation but no equality. You must know that we can never have separate and equal when one race determines all the terms of separation and equality. This was just 31 years after slavery officially ended. Dr. Carson, how can the Affordable Health Care Act, which provides better health care to millions more regardless of race or color, be worse than Plessy v. Ferguson which again enshrined white supremacy as the highest law of the land? You are, by your very words, doing great harm.

Dr. Carson, how could you not know that the Ku Klux Klan waged rampant terror on African Americans for nearly a hundred years from its birth in 1867 to the mid 1960s? How could you not know of the nearly 4,000 known lynchings of African Americans and many more undocumented murders? How could you not know that these lynchings and terroristic murders were sanctioned by federal as well as state and local governments? These lynchings/murders/acts of terror were state-sanctioned terrorism because nothing was done by the state to stop them and nothing was done by the state to punish them. Dr. Carson, these lynchings started two years after slavery ended and continued for nearly a hundred years. How can the Affordable health Care Act, which prevents thousands of deaths each year, be worse than state sanctioned terrorism that took thousands of lives? You are, by your very words, doing great harm.

Dr. Carson, how could you not know that the education of African Americans was stunted for a hundred years by separate and unequal school systems that paid African American teachers as little as half that paid to white teachers, provided substandard facilities for all black children and gave them used books and other items which white children no longer wanted? Do you not know that many African American children did not receive any education because of this terrible system and most received a less than adequate education? All this was after slavery ended and has continued into the 21st Century. Dr. Carson, how in the world can the Affordable Health Care Act, which provides health care for the left out and keeps hospitals open in rural and poor areas, be worse than the stunted education opportunities this separate and unequal system provided to tens of millions of African Americans for so many decades? You are, by your very words, doing great harm.

Dr. Carson, I could go on pointing out the great wrongs we have experienced since slavery versus the great benefits of the Affordable Health Care Act, but I pray the point is well made by now.

Please pray about your statement that the Affordable Health Care Act is the worst thing since slavery. After you make sense of all this for yourself, please withdraw your statement publicly. That way you will stop your words from continuing to do harm.

Words are powerful. Even ridiculous or foolish words are powerful. I am just glad that good words can challenge bad words and prevail over their power.