Ben Carson Tells U.S. To 'Grow Up' Over Racist Gripes; Stacey Abrams Calls Him 'Infantile'

Rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams on Sunday scorched Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson after he told Americans to “grow up” and get over what he considers a heightened sensitivity to racist messaging.

Abrams, a Georgia gubernatorial candidate in 2018 and possible vice presidential pick, lashed Carson’s take as an “infantile response,” on ABC’s “This Week.”

“This isn’t about growing up,” she added. “It’s about taking responsibility and having accountability for the actions that have been taken by this country, and by people acting on behalf of this country.”

Carson earlier on the program shrugged off concerns about monuments and U.S. military base names honoring the Confederacy and its leaders.

He also indicated it was no big deal when asked by George Stephanopoulus if it was appropriate for Trump to accept the GOP nomination in Jacksonville on the 60th anniversary in the city of a vicious attack on Black civil rights protesters by the Ku Klux Klan.

“We’ve reached a point in our society where we dissect everything and try to ascribe some nefarious notion to it,” Carson complained. “We really need to move away from that. We need to move away from being offended by everything, of going through history and looking at everything, you know, of renaming everything.”

It “really gets to a point of being ridiculous after a while,” he added. “You know, we’re going to have to grow up as a society.”

Abrams shot back: “I think that is a fairly infantile response — to say that words don’t have meanings, that dates don’t have meanings, that dates don’t have power.”

She pointed out that the Trump administration “stripped away health protections” last week for the LGBTQ community on the fourth anniversary of the mass shooting of members of the community at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. The administration on Friday revoked a provision of the Affordable Care Act that had broadened bans on sex discrimination in health care to include transgender patients.

Abrams noted that President Donald Trump also scheduled a MAGA rally on Juneteenth, the June 19 anniversary commemorating the emancipation of Black people from slavery — in Tulsa, scene of a notorious massacre of Black residents in 1921.

Trump last week changed the date, saying he was moved by “African American friends” to reschedule the rally “out of respect for this Holiday.”

Check out Carson and Abrams in the video up top.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.