Ben Carson's Fake Life Story Ruined My Real Childhood

For a generation of young black men born into chaotic poverty, Ben Carson has been an inspirationally boring father figure. My mother loves the guy, which means I've had to memorize more of his accomplishments than my own: A poor black boy from Detroit who became a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, the youngest-ever division director at John Hopkins Hospital and the first surgeon to take twins conjoined at the head and separate their goddamn brains. He's even a cancer survivor. It sounds so exciting for a guy who talks like he freebases elevator music.

As Carson continues to rise in the Republican presidential polls, rational thinkers become more and more alarmed by his popularity. With every comment about pyramids and space aliens, every question about that "full scholarship" to West Point, every piece of evidence suggesting he may not have been the violent, misbegotten youth he claims to have been, those rational thinkers assume Carson will see himself out of the race, that wounds will close, no harm done. But my mom still admires him, and maybe the rest of America will too. And really, that's the thing about myths: they don't have to be true for people to believe them.

Carson nods agreeably as his followers call him kind, modest, soft-spoken—those adjectives are his manna. These are the adjectives you unlock when Johnson & Johnson turns your memoir into "a heartwarming true story" told in a TV movie starring Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Heartwarming True Stories are modern myths, and Carson's is specifically targeted to single mothers. My own single mother was one of Carson's early disciples after buying Gifted Hands, his 1992 memoir (the one Johnson & Johnson adapted for the small screen). With its emphasis on the passionate discipline of Carson's mother, the book was basically The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom for black families.

Carson describes himself an unmotivated, angry young man who attacked people with "rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers." Carson's single mother took away the family television and took a regimented interest in Carson's education. He became a surgical genius. My mother used this Heartwarming True Story as an excuse to stop paying the cable bill for seven years. I didn't end up becoming a surgical genius, but I did recently write a VICE article about my masturbation habits.

In the first chapters of Gifted Hands, Ben Carson was but a mortal black boy. In ninth grade, he claims, he stabbed his friend Bob for tuning the radio from his beloved classical music. "If he had not had that belt buckle on, he could've been killed or seriously injured and instead of realizing my dream of becoming a physician, I could've been on my way to jail." After that, Carson locked himself in a bathroom for hours like Muhammad in the Hira Cave. God spoke to him through the Book of Proverbs, and Carson emerged "a model to all the youth today" as Jesse Jackson blurbs on the back cover of Gifted Hands.

Jackson's sentiment is echoed in the fourth season of The Wire, when a black kid tells the class that, "I wanna be a pediatric neurosurgeon like that one nigga." While many black kids had hoop dreams by the time they could spell H-O-R-S-E, Carson's odyssey from poverty suggested education could similarly equal the playing field.

My substitute teachers were always supplied a VHS of the Gifted Hands documentary. Footage from Carson's famous surgeries glowed in our dark Orlando classrooms, classical muzak played from a boombox beside him. A patient's mother marvels at the successful operation: "He really took his whole skull apart, put it back together." In a later scene, a frail boy in a hospital bed has a jungle gym drilled into his head and copy of the Gifted Hands book lying in his lap. He can lift a Sharpie about two inches; Carson signs his book "Think BIG!"

Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential For Success, was published a few years later. The back cover summary is rousing: "This book is for you if you have no dreams at all." Prescribing self-help for the free world has become The Ben Carson Cottage Industry. His campaign raised $10 million in October alone. Compared to Donald Trump is a 1-800-number-yelling, get-rich-quick-schemer offering the American Dream from a yacht with his face on it, Carson's calm, collected crazy comes off like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven's Gate.

If Jesus died for sins of mankind, Ben Carson is a martyr for white guilt. When he accepted the NAACP's highest honor for achievement, Carson chastised its leaders, saying, "You're not doing enough. We need to help ourselves."

My mother is a good person—her wicked flurries of rage towards general groups of people don't come close to blemishing that truth. She is so filled with sincerity, love and compassion towards the world. So much of my childhood was spent picking up foster kids after school, driving them to every corner of Florida. She still picks up homeless people and helps them get wherever it is they're going. She still calls me just to read inspirational Chipotle cups over the phone. But she also left "Do I have HIV?" pamphlets in our bathroom for my gay brother to find, and would call the cops to step in as emergency father figures when she caught me watching violent or sexual TV programs.

This gets at the heart of Carson's appeal—when I look into his tiny, sleepy, drooling eyes, I still see compassion towards individuals, marred by fearful spite towards whole swaths of society he fails to understand.

"Alex my dear son," my mother tells me, "YOU are such a kind and modest person. YOU speak so eloquently. I'm proud of you." I nod along. I love these adjectives. At some point, while I wasn't looking, I became Carson's prodigal son. If I succeed in life it will just validate all the motivational Post-It notes and index cards my mother attached to every blank surface in the house. In her eyes, if I win, Carson wins too. It fucking sucks.

Recently, I revisited a Carson VHS video, in which he speaks to a class of black students—wearing a lab coat for whatever reason. He was preaching his mother's path, "She said we would be able to watch two or three pre-selected TV programs a week."

I showed the clip to my mom, saying, "His mom didn't take away the TV."

"Huh." My mom sat on this info for a second. "Well how about that. Maybe I didn't read the whole book or something."

Palms over my eyes, I was in disbelief. I had to laugh. Even if his book is full of half-truths, well, my mom only half-read it anyways.

Read more by Alex O'Keefe on his website.