WASHINGTON (AP) – Housing Secretary Ben Carson says poverty is a “state of mind.”
In a radio interview Wednesday, the former neurosurgeon said parents need to instill in their children the “mindset of a winner.”
“If you take somebody with the wrong mindset,” Carson says, “you can give them everything in the world and they’ll work their way back down to the bottom.”
He made the remarks in an interview with Armstrong Williams on SiriusXM.
Carson, who grew up poor in inner-city Detroit with a single mother who had a third-grade education, says if people don’t have a defeatist attitude, then there’s hope. “I think the majority of people don’t have that defeatist attitude, but they sometimes just don’t see the way, and that’s where government can come in and be very helpful.”