Posted on 09/30/2005 7:52:43 PM PDT by veronica
Former Drug Czar and Secretary of Education Bill Bennett's comments over skin color, crime and abortion have lots of folks howling, from Nancy Pelosi to Howard Dean to the NAACP to Ted Kennedy to the White House (go figure). What prompted this bipartisan outrage?
Here's the incendiary remark that he made on his popular radio program:
"…if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."
Bennett has pointed out, correctly, that his remarks have been taken out of context. Even liberal commentators like Matt Yglesias and Brad DeLong feel the context of the remarks is mitigating and Bennett has no reason to apologize for them.
But let's forget about the context for a minute. Context can be so… so… oh, well, it can take all the fun out of it. So let's just focus on what Bennett said, totally out of context.
DeLong and Yglesias and are sufficiently reality-based enough to know that blacks commit a disproportionate share of violent crimes in the United States. This is not news. It's not even a controversial proposition. Given that fact, it's not a monumentally difficult conceptual leap to surmise that if you aborted every black child in the country from here on out (a hideousness that no one is advocating), the crime rate would drop.
Without getting into the tricky context of Bennett's remarks -- that doing so would be morally reprehensible, etc. -- what more is there to say about it? That it isn't true? No one, as of this writing, has argued that.
Bill Clinton claimed while he was president that he wanted to have a "national conversation on race." Perhaps he was being sincere. But it's plain from recent events that hardly anyone else in this country really, truly wants to have a "conversation" on this topic. If the mindless, knee-jerk reaction to Bennett's remarks -- including from places like the White House -- is any indicator, no one has any interest in an honest discussion of race.
Perhaps it's nothing new, but we live in a time where uncomfortable truths -- even challenging questions -- are to be shouted down and, if possible, driven from the public square. Harvard University's Larry Summers discovered this recently. Now Bill Bennett is on the receiving end of this same idiotarian nonsense. America is the worse for it. Thank goodness some liberals were honest enough to defend him. Let's hope others see fit to do the same.
The FBI publishes a yearly book called the Unifom Crime Report. The last time I read one the percentage of rape and murder committed by black people was 46% and 47%. I don't remember whch was which. If you subtract the number of violent crimes that black people commit, the U.S. would have fewer violent crimes than Europe. That said, it was a stupid thing for Bill to say what he said, where and when he said it. That a thing is true doesn't mean you should blab it in any situatiuon you are in. You give aid and comfort to enemies who don't care about nuance and context, only discrediting you.
I heard at least one commentator imply that Bennett's prejudiced mind "caused" him to reference blacks (rather than any other demographic group) in his comment. I know little about Bennett, but hadn't heard that he was prejudiced, so I tried to consider what might have been the unspoken framework for what he said.
I do think this particular study was in the back of Bennett's mind, since there was so much heated debate about the topic a few years back.
If I am right, I don't think Bennett should be blamed for using this framework, which is the very same framework that has been happily used by the libs to "sanctify" abortion.
BTW, I refuse to even consider taking a position on the study. To my mind, "social science" is not a hard science, and has few constants.
I can easily tolerate studies which show that Jewish people and East Asians are (statistically speaking) smarter than I am, so I don't think I have a knee-jerk bias against the Social sciences.
I try very hard to see people as human beings, rather than statistics and I hope they see me that way, rather than as the stereotypical freckle-faced, red-haired troublemaker.
Perhaps Bill should stick with writing books and perhaps he should make sure he has an outstanding editor.
Figured. Thanks.
Good observation...
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