The Outstater

September 17, 2025

Rep. Carson’s ‘Racism’ Falls Flat

WELL, IF ALL YOU HAVE is a hammer everything looks like a nail. And so goes U.S. Rep. Andre Carson’s recent depiction of Indiana Republicans as  “racist.”

Last month he posted this on X: ”We must stand united against extremism that endangers our community and democracy — including against racist redistricting that threatens to silence Hoosier voices.”

But this is not about racism. It’s worse than that; it’s about politics. Carson is upset that redistricting which secured him a seat in the first place will now take it away by cracking the 7th District and making it more diverse (we thought that’s what everyone wanted).

Political nerds will remember that Carson’s district was handed to him by a GOP-controlled legislature after the 2020 census, It concentrated a high number of Democratic voters — particularly blacks from urban areas of Indianapolis and Marion County, a tactic known as “packing” that minimized Democratic influence in surrounding districts and helped secure GOP incumbencies there.

Indiana Republicans can be too clever for their own good.

But now that Carson has pulled the race card he will want to explain why incomes for hispanics and asians rose in 2024 but incomes for blacks fell. Blacks are now almost 25 percent poorer on average than even newly arrived hispanics, and that is true despite that most blacks have been in the U.S. for several generations and the massive welfare expansion during the Obama-Biden presidencies.

Most troubling, though, for Carson’s “racism is  holding us down” posture is the economist Thomas Sowell’s finding that black immigrants from Africa are generally more successful than black Americans born here.

There is an explanation that Carson may want to avoid. It is that the social-justice programs he has helped champion have destroyed the black family. The economist Stephen Moore of Unleash Prosperity elaborates:

“Sure, racism may still play a part in this story, but we think the single biggest factor behind this American tragedy has been that roughly half of black children now grow up in a single-parent household. The abysmal schools run by teacher unions in inner cities play a major role too. Worst of all, the modern welfare state has become a poverty-creation machine with black America as the victim.”

Andre Carson owes Hoosiers, especially black ones, an apology. — tcl

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