September 30, 2005
Burning Bill Bennett at the Racist Stake
As a regular listener to Bill Bennett's radio show Morning in America I just so happened to be listening in on the discussion which has raised such a media firestorm accusing Bill of being a racist. I would guess we must first assume the charge even means anything today. Charges of racism are as common as guilty liberal and poverty pimp appearances on TV these days. I will say up front though that I am not surprised the charge is being made. In our modern day PC knee-jerk opportunistic race exploitation I noticed the potential for out of context exploitation immediately. As a rule, negative racial stereotypes today can only be used for fund raising and extortion.
As an additional benefit I have also read "Freakonomics" (reviewed here) which was a key factor in this particular exchange. I frankly took exception to it's conclusions on abortion because it failed to account for the introduction of readily available birth control which by their conclusion should have had a much bigger impact.
Even the White House has distanced itself in a typically ignorant and cowardly manner giving credence to false charges in the process. I hope this is just some jerk staffer and not Bush himself. He has moved in the same circles as Bush and must know Bill Bennett better then to give these racism charges any weight.
The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.What Bill said was this:"The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
"But I do know that it's true that 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. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."It is being reported as this:
"But I do know that it's true that 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," said Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues."The implication being that Bill Bennett thinks one of two things:He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
1) Blacks have a higher rate of being involved in crime.
I frankly wonder what all the fuss is about. It is common knowledge that the crime rate among blacks in America is higher then among other ethnicities. It is also common knowledge that this crime is more likely to be carried out against other blacks. We can argue about how to deal with this or what the root causes are (racism, etc) but that does not change the underlying statistics.
2) Aborting black children will reduce the crime rate.
The primary reason put forth for cheap, easy and safe abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy. This is considered a humane way of reducing the number of unwanted children. Why do we want to reduce unwanted children? Because we also know that unwanted children are much more likely to become involved in crime. This is one of those feel good round about ways of saying abortion reduces crime without linking them directly. Oddly the horror Bill Bennett called "impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do" and is being attacked for saying is actually being practiced in a limited fashion today.
Race - 63% of abortion patients are white, however, black women are more than 3 times as likely to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2.5 times as likely.Eugenics anyone?
It's a shame that we are not allowed to discuss race issues in America today. If we could real solutions might be found. This is not about race. This is about destroying a high profile conservative. It's even more a shame when supposed allies stab their friends in the back out of fear when known lying race pimps go after them. Bill Bennett is a good man doing good work. This witch-hunt is an outrage.
UPDATE: The Captain has a different take but sadly he demonstrates a poor math understanding and how rate reduction works. Also the innate propensity to commit crime has nothing to do with it in the context of the discussion taking place because that is a look into root causes which is precisely what Bennett was ignoring to generate the absurd hypothetical in the first place. The Captain was suggesting that Bill should fall all over himself to make qualifying platitudes which would have completely undermined his reductio ad absurdum argument. In other words Bennett should have been more PC to avoid hurt feelings.
Carnival of the Trackbacks XXXI
Posted by Sid at September 30, 2005 11:55 AM | Politics
Comments
Freakonomics Author Tries to Cover Butt in Wake of Bennett Comments
In fact, the authors of Freakonomics made explicitly racial arguments in economics journal articles. They said nothing remotely racist, but they did stress the empirical connection between race and abortion and crime.
Posted by: John McAdams at October 3, 2005 10:47 PM
That link was choice. Their work finally gets widespread notoriety and they run from their own conclusions. As long as the primary focus was in favor of abortion no one seemd to mind.
Posted by: Sid at October 3, 2005 10:57 PM
