After the school board voted in favor of the removal last month, Dr. Ben Carson’s name will be scrubbed from a Detroit public high school.
WSET noted that the move came after 1,500 people were surveyed, and 80% of them said they supported the change.
Carson said that he is not surprised: “Cancel culture is alive and well. It’s infiltrating. Political correctness, wokeness, cancel culture, this is going to destroy us as a nation if we don’t get a grip on it.”
Although Carson never considers himself a victim, he said that the cancel culture had targeted him already.
Before becoming one of the most influential neurosurgeons of a generation, Carson’s education started in the Detroit Public School system. Born into poverty and raised in a single-mother household, Carson went from inner-city Detroit to Yale University.
An op-ed criticizing the move by Detroit Public Schools was penned by his former staff from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
55 signatures were included in the letter, including Alex Coffey who worked as an advisor to Dr. Carson for four years.
“He has impeccable morals, impeccable character,” Coffey said.
“The students who are at that school, certainly he is somebody they can look up to, that they can try to emulate. He’s a great example of our country,” he added.
A racial reckoning led to many schools, buildings, and roads being renamed in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
In Springfield, Virginia, the Robert E. Lee High School was renamed after prominent African American Democratic Congressman and Civil Rights hero John Lewis.
But for the namesake change for Dr. Ben Carson High School, the righting of historical wrongs is not behind. His time working for the Trump administration is the main reason for calls for this change, which showed the heated political landscape of left vs. right now plays a role in the dedication of public schools.
Carson’s team does not have plans to challenge the name change, as they have already confirmed.
A statement on Facebook was released by Carson, where he says that while the move saddens him, he wants the focus to be on the students.