shesus

I'm not sure if this would be better in politics so any mod can move this if there is a better place.

We were reading the paper this morning and found this article. I am appalled and disgusted by what Bill Bennett said about a solution to lower crime. I think that it is horrible and very racist. I have always been pro-choice, but if this is the direction some people are willing to take it, I would become a pro-lifer in a heart beat. I have included an excerpt from the article and also a link to the sound clip and more follow up interviews. Just wondering if everyone else is as shocked and disgusted as I am about this opinion.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006

While I do believe that crime stems from having a lack of resources, I do not believe that abortion is the answer. People need to look into better education and supply more opportunities to people in poverty. But I will let you state your thoughts while I go fume for awhile.

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Ustwo

Ummmm shesus, Bennett was making an absurd statement in order to show how the claim that abortion lowers crime rates is in itself absurd. He is not advocating it.

So what exactly are you disgusted with? The two who said that abortion over the last 30 years has lowered crime or Bennett's making a Swiftian "Modest Proposal" to show how bad a concept this is?

(If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about click HERE )

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Strange Famous

very clearly, legalizing abortion reduces the number of criminal abortions.

In all seriousness, if the guy was trying to make a mockery of the logic or not, he has obviously made an error of judgement and it will reflect very badly on. I dont know who Bennett is, but I assume that if he holds political office he has already resigned?

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shesus

Ustwo, I see the jest, but I think it was a very poor choice of words. Especially today when media twists and turns every word a person says. I read through the Modest Proposal link that you posted and that seems to be a worse jest imo. I honestly think that it is horrible even to mention something like that. It seems today that instead of actually wanting to fix the problems, people want to overlook them or make a mockery of them. Poverty is a serious issue, as well as crime, and it is going to get worse unless someone makes an effort to find a possible solution instead of proposing ridiculous solutions to sound witty.

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Ustwo

I wouldn't call it a jest, satire does not need to be funny to be effective.

We had some people whos claim was that abortion lowers crime. Bennett wanted to point out the absurdity of the situation by stating a truth which was more horrible than the problem it was meant to fix. He carried the conclusion to the absurd in order to show it was absurd. He was absolutely correct in stating that aborting all black babies would lower crime rates after all. Was it a poor choice of words in todays climate? Yes, very, and the media enjoys such things as they can have a field day quoting out of context.

You miss the point entirely if you think Bennett just wanted to mock the problem with a ridiculous solution.

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shakran

And just TELL me that if Senator Clinton said the same thing you wouldn't be foaming at the mouth to go after her for it.

And well you should, because even in jest such statements are not acceptible.

Plus, we're not looking at how he meant it. This is in line with A Modest Proposal in which it was stated, jokingly, that a good way to reduce the population explosion would be to eat children. It is certainly true that eating children would reduce the population because children by their very nature add to the population , but it's a horriffic plan that would never be enacted.

He made his proposal along the same lines - His statement implied that, even though it's a horriffic plan that would never be enacted, aborting black pregnancies would reduce crime because black people by their very nature are criminals. Whether that's what he meant or not, that's what his statement implied.

So let's dissect this. Either he WAS being racist and was TRYING to imply that black people are, because of their race, predisposed to commit crimes, OR he didn't mean that, and is so vacuously stupid that he doesn't understand the meaning of what he says.

Either way, his radio career and any political aspirations he may have should be ended.

filtherton

There is evidence that abortion was at least partly responsible for the drop in violent crime in the 90's. As far as i could tell, the people who wrote freakonomics in no way claimed that abortion would be an effective means of fighting crime, just that depending on how you look at the numbers, there is a very strong correlation between roe vs. wade and a drop in the crime rate a generation later. It would also be true that if everyone had an abortion, violent crime would eventually cease. I agree that bennet's words were taken out of context, but that only serves him right for taking the argument that abortion can be linked with a decrease in violent crime out of context.

JumpinJesus

Transcripts from mediamatters.org:

The fact that he qualifies his statment - not once, but twice - makes it clear to me that even if he was speaking satirically, he tends to believe it to be true. In fact, he even says it's true.

What I find bothersome is that crime is not exclusive to race. It is more indicative of economic position than race. If Bennett is as educated as I believe he is, then he is also aware of this. His statement was veiled as satire but was very indicative of the way in which people of his ilk think. Tying into the false media reports of the savage blacks in New Orleans after Katrina hit, it is also indicative that we are all too quick to believe that blacks are predisposed to crime simply because they are black. When institutional racsim is discussed, this is the very kind of thinking we are talking about.

To me, this is also representative of many of those on the right who claim that racism no longer exists because of a few appointments to the president's cabinet while being able to make comments like this on the air without even for a moment being aware of the irony. This is the kind of racism that ires me the most. It's a modern version of "some of my best friends are black..."

A caveat: my next comment is not meant to flame, though I'm sure it will, so I'm prepared to edit if necessary.

If you are able to listen to comments such as those made by Bennett and say with all sincerity that it is in no way racist, then you are part of the problem.

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JumpinJesus

I haven't read Freakonomics so I don't know how they made the correlation, but I find these kinds of deductions bothersome in that anybody can make any correlation between any two events and make a loose causality relationship.

For example, I could say that replacing sugar with high fructose corn syrup in Coca Cola helped lead to me having high cholesterol simply because one event preceeded the other. And while there may be some correlation, it is impossible to say that one was a direct cause of the other. We can always take stastistical information and make it say whatever we want it to say for a particular effect.

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Jinn

You're right, this IS inflammatory. I would have accepted it if you'd offered an explanation , but as it is it really is just an unbacked statement. Why would not finding this racist contribute to the "problem."?

I think his statement was perfectly legitimate-- because of its qualifications.



That's legit. Hey, this is a morally horrible thing to do, but if it were your SOLE purpose to lower crime, you could abort black babies. This is statistically and factually correct, yet he qualified it to say that he did not advocate it because it would be "morally reprehensible."

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cellophanedeity

I'm with Ustwo on this.

Based on the exerpt of the interview, it seems like he was being absurd to make his point. The problem that goes with this is that many people don't understand that satire is supposed to seem absurdly extreme and often offencive, especially if Juvinalian.

If he had left out the word "black" I have a feeling there wouldn't be as much uproar, but he wouldn't have made his point.

Black people are more commonly maginalized than other races.
Marginalized people tend to have less access to resources.
Therefore, black people generally have less access to resources.
When resources aren't there, crime develops.
How does one get more resources? Reduce the amount of people.
Therefore: Reducing the number of marginalized people would reduce the amount of crime.

He then says that this "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,"

It's the same as me saying that "To reduce the amount of rape cases, castrate all men" It's ridiculous for a hundred reasons, and no rational person would consider this anything other than an "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,"

Extremes help point out why things won't work. It helped influence the powers in Swift's time, but unfortunately they were better at understanding satire than we do now-a-days. -_-

Jinn

So I went away for a bit, and had to come back and reply again.. you defintiely accomplished your goal of being inflammatory.

This quote smacks of the unfortunate "its my way or the highway" type of logic that prevents people from seeing the gray in life. I urge you to consider the fact that nothing in life, except the colors themselves, are truly black-and-white. By saying "unless you agree with my intepretation of his comments, you're helping racism" its pretty evident that your viewpoint is the ONLY nonracist one. I'm not trying to flame anyone in particular, but realize that your way is not the only way. Although some would say that unless you support bush, you're unpatriotic, or unless you see this as racist, you're helping racism -- its quite simply not true. You can support your troops without supporting their Commander in Chief, just like you can fight racism without seeing it in Bennet's statements. There is always a gray, and saying that it's "your way or the highway" is an ignorant viewpoint if you ever hope to understand other people.

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JumpinJesus

The reason I find it contributing to the problem is because he is stating it is a fact that aborting black babies would reduce the crime rate. How does one come to such a conclusion? In order to do this, one must imply that the largest perpetrators of crime are black. While it may be true that there is a higher proportion of blacks convicted of crimes per population, it does not follow that they in fact commit the most crimes. He is advocating a position which states that blacks are the main root of criminal activity in our country. To hear this statement - and its implications - and agree is to me to subscribe to that very thinking, which is racist. It is stating that since some blacks commit crimes, the best way to prevent any of them commiting crimes is to kill them all off. His qualification that it would be morally reprehensible comes in between two qualifications that it's also true. His advocacy or nonadvocacy isn't an issue to me. His influence with statements like this, however, is.

I suppose I'm just very leery of his decision to use that argument. Of all the examples he could have used to disagree with the caller, he used this. The caller was broaching the subject that had abortion been illegal, then the tax base would be much larger today due to the millions of people who would now be adults. Bennet took it in an entirely different direction and started discussing crime and aborting black babies. Even the caller, if you listen to the clip, was taken aback.

My comment is inflammatory, I realize, but Bennett's comment was even more so, in my opinion.

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JumpinJesus

Okay, I see your point. I would remove the statement, but I don't want to give the impression that I don't have the conviction to stand by my words. But you're right, it does smack of a "my way or the highway" attitude. I like to pride myself on being more thoughtful in how I approach problems, and my choice of words could have been better.


The more I read his statment, the more I can see your point. However, I still think it was a very poor choice of argument. For someone known for his intelligence and speaking ability, I would have thought he'd be more clear with his argument.

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shesus

Cellophanedeity: You made a very strong post to this topic.
And the following is not directed at you...

The problem still stands...black people are being called out in the 'satirical' comment. However, the FBI website lists statistics and surprisingly blacks are not much more the cause of murders than white people. In fact, men are the main problem if you all insist on jumping on this bandwagon. The statistics I found are that of murder offenders the 63.7% are males, 7% are females and 29.3% are unknown. For the race part of the equation: 32% are white, 35.7% are black, 1.9% are other, and 30.4% are unkown. If you would like to see the table go to: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/03cius.htm and click on Table 2.5.

Now, what I was hoping for was that this wouldn't become a back and forth issue on racial issues. While race is involved in the comments, there is a bigger problem. Obviously, our male population is being misguided. However, the blame is being put on the blacks living in poverty. This is a serious issue. As a teacher in a generational black inner-city area, I see the lack of resources and opportunities for our youth. I think that is the main problem. However, by making comments and, as I said before, jests to place blame the problems are never going to be solved. Some solutions are finding the causes behind the crimes and trying to find ways to combat them. The first main way to this is by putting more money in education so that resources and ways out of poverty are possible. Without an education, jobs are hard to find and without money crime is easy to find. I think it can be argued that many problems stem from lack of education and opportunities in our society.

Now, if we could try to find some possible solutions to the problem and get off the "You're racist" conversation, this would be beneficial...If not, this thread will be closed and nothing will be solved except more racial tension among the community of TFP.

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ratbastid

This was an unfortunate thing to have said, but if you look at it in context, he's saying it in a way that you know he KNOWS it's a ridiculous thing to say. His whole point is that you can't extrapolate to ridiculous ends from single, specific actions.

That said, it demonstrated a lack of foresight that he said it. This was obviously an off-the-cuff statement that isn't central to his point at all (and I mean, this is a former Cabinet Secretary--the most power he has is the power to overcharge for his lectures), but he should have known it would be taken out of context and made into this huge news point.

filtherton

If you replaced sugar with high fructose corn syrup in area A before area B then found that the average cholesterol rates in area A went up before they did in B, well then, that may be something you want to look into.

It doesn't make much sense to me to fancy yourself a reasonable person and to also be skeptical of information that you haven't exposed yourself to. I understand what you're saying though, because I generally would tend to agree. If you read the book, though, the authors do make a reasonable argument as to why the conventional wisdom(innovative policing, the economy, etc...) on the falling crime rates of the nineties is mostly unsupported by any kind of data. They don't attribute it solely to abortion, they also mention the increased number of prisons and a larger number of police on the streets.

It also is plausible that abortion might lower the crime rate, since being an unwanted child generally increases your chances of becoming a criminal. Just like being raised by a poor unwed teenage mother increase your chances of becoming a criminal and being addicted to post season dissapointment increases your chances of being a viking fan. It is as simple as reducing the size of one group that happens to produce a lot of criminals.

Lasereth

Well, what he said is a fact. The point behind what he said is an obvious satire. He even said in the same paragraph that it was a terrible thing to do...so I don't see the issue here.

-Lasereth

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Martian

It is a terrible thing to say.

But I have this modest proposal...

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Ustwo

I'd be very surprised if abortion doesn't lower crime rates. The only argument is, is such a idea a fair topic to use in discussing the practice of abortion.

Of course it was 'racist' as it involves race as the primary characteristic. You could also make a very logical argument based on the amount of crime committed by blacks vrs their % of the population that such a statement is also true. Scientifically you would need to see socio-economic corrected data to determine if race is not a contributory factor. I have not seen such data but I would assume it exists out there. Race is one of those fun subjects which can be used in a positive way at times but never in a negative.

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Lebell

In context, it was a perfectly reasonable statement.

This reminds me of the flap around former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm's "Right to Die" speech.

But hey, it sells newspapers.

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trickyy

yeah, we haven't had anyone say something that is blatantly offensive when reduced to soundbite form in a while. it was only a matter of time.

steven d levitt is a pretty interesting researcher, though. here are some papers. freakonomics is much of this information in reader's digest language.
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/LevittCV.html

rsl12

Two things:

1. Bill Bennet seems to have had a logical slip-up. He is trying to make two separate points, and somehow they ended up blended together. The one that he concludes with is that "these far-out, far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are tricky." Which is a pretty good point. The book Freakonomics does not prove conclusively that abortion rights leads to lower levels of crime, and one could argue that the data from which the conclusion was drawn are too limited for any strong statement.

The other point, which Bennet tries to blend into the first point, is, "if you were to abort all black babies, the crime rate would go down, even though it would be reprehensible." This example seems to be supporting an implied, but not stated, argument that, "just because abortions lower crime rates, doesn't mean that they are morally justified." Completely different argument, and also a pretty decent one, despite the way he put it!

I agree with the argument he is trying to make, but not his method of making it. His comment is not a satirical comment--it's reductio ad absurdum. What is "absurd" in his mind is the idea of aborting all black babies. The implied argument, after all, is that "you can't do something reprehensible just to reduce crime."

What is *not* absurd in his mind, what is implied as being a perfectly clear fact in his argument, is the fact that aborting black babies would lead to a lower crime rate. What he says, quite plainly, is this: "I know it's true that if your sole purpose was to reduce crime, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

That's not the way you phrase a hypothetical argument. The way you would phrase it is: "let's say, one day, statisticians figured out that aborting all black babies would lead to a reduction in crime." There's a big big difference.

In his defense, I think the fact is right, actually. If you were to abort a large portion of babies from lower income families, crime would be reduced. Blacks are disproportionately represented in the poor income bracket; therefore, aborting black babies would lead to reductions in crime. If this is what he meant, and maybe it was, he should have been *much* more careful in how he said it. His statement can easily be misconstrued as meaning that blacks are inherently more likely to grow up to be criminals.

2. Freakonomics is a great read! I recommend it to everyone. The argument regarding the link between abortion and crime isn't iron-clad, but it's still pretty darn convincing. In addition, it's very very entertaining--not dry at all. His interest is interesting statistics, not a political agenda. For examples of his type of analyses, try out this great bit from the book, regarding high-income baby names:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/

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trickyy

yes, it's a great book. i also liked his ability to find cheating teachers (who altered answers on standardized tests) by sifting through data.

Hardknock

How about we abort all the white babies, then there wouldn't be any self centered assholes running around.

The fact that you people are defending his argument while trying to say that "in context" he's right, makes me sick.

Ustwo

Explain where he is wrong then.

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Hardknock

Explain where he is right.

How do 12% of the population cause 100% of the crime in this country? Seems to me that blacks are a convient scapegoat for Bennett.

n0nsensical

He said "reduce" crime not "eliminate" it. Hell, crime rates would go down if ALL babies were aborted too since younger people commit more crime. Of course, if someone said that, there wouldn't be legions of people jumping on him and making it out to be "ageism" because even if that person DID hate young people, nobody would care.

Obviously saying what he said was a really dumb move because people love to jump on things like this and make it out to be racism, so he was just asking for trouble. I see it as a simple factual analysis, but there are a lot of people out there who can't handle either facts or analysis (cf evolution debate).

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Jinn

I'll even agree with you .. in 2003 there was 6.7 million arrests of white males, and only 2.5 million of black males.

And you know what? Bennet's comment is still true.

If you'd aborted every black baby, you'd have 2.5 million less crimes. Omitting white males does not make it racist in any way shape or form.

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Hardknock

You and I both know that factual analysis was not the driving force behind him making this ignorant statement.

On second thought I'm not sure that you don't know....

cellophanedeity

We're not defending his argument. I think it's "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," especially the morally reprehensible thing.

I am not defending people who seriously believe this. I am defending the fine tradition of Juvenalian Satire -_-*

And if the sentence had said "white" instead of "black" would it not be any more morally reprehensible? No. It would still be heinous, we just wouldn't be as angry. I'm sure that most of us here understand that white folks are just as criminal as black folks. We're all evil.

edit: I just read another post closer. This isn't satire at all, but something to do with absurdity. If it was a written piece of literature, as I always tend to think of things as, then maybe it could be considered satire. Pardon my ignorance of literary terms, I'm only a second year.

rsl12

Quoting myself: "If you were to abort a large portion of babies from lower income families, crime would be reduced. Blacks are disproportionately represented in the poor income bracket; therefore, aborting black babies would lead to reductions in crime."

I don't know if he meant it this way, but if he did, I would agree with the statement. An analogous argument would be: "if you put all anglers in jail, there would be less sexual harassment." I have no doubt it's true--most anglers are men, and men make up 99% of sexual harassment perpetrators. The fact that angling has nothing to do with sexual harassment doesn't negate the validity of the statement.

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Ustwo

He never said that, he said 'crime rates would go down'.

Since I have nothing nice to say at this point, I'm done. I don't think you read anything in this thread.

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smooth

I think your post was very well written, and I'm glad you made this contribution. It's one of the clearest deconstructions I've seen in a while on here. That said, the causal chain you lay out in your conclusion of how Bennett could be making a valid statement regarding black babies born into impoverished households vis-a-vis crime rates does not stand up to scrutiny of the empirical data.

I urge you to review the primary source data. The largest problem I have with his statement is that it's embedded within an equally flammable proposition: that one could commit genocide, or abortions en masse. This frames the ensuing conversations about his statement in such a way as to mask underlying assumptions loaded into his model--assumptions you appropriately and intelligently teased out. But if you look at various posts within this thread, you will see numerous statements assuming his underlying position, black babies commit a disproportionate amount of crime, is accurate and and rearticulating it as a truth claim. I contrast these kinds of responses with your hypothesis, which is testable (and falseified according to the data I am aware of).

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FatFreeGoodness

Shakran: You got it exactly right. I’m astonished that so many people can’t see this even after thinking and discussing it.

ohh_shesus: Your statistics are flawed, and actually show the opposite of what you claim. You state: “…the FBI website lists statistics and surprisingly blacks are not much more the cause of murders than white people. In fact, men are the main problem if you all insist on jumping on this bandwagon. The statistics I found are that of murder offenders the 63.7% are males, 7% are females and 29.3% are unknown. For the race part of the equation: 32% are white, 35.7% are black, 1.9% are other, and 30.4% are unknown.” You ignore two important points: (1) Not all crimes are murder. (2) If blacks commit 35.7% of murders while comprising only about 13% of the total population, then your figures show they are indeed statistically far more likely to commit a murder than someone of a different race.

JumpinJesus: I also don’t think the comment is racist. It does show a recognition that (currently) a black child growing up is more likely to be involved in a crime than the average “non-black” child. Recognizing occurrence associated with race is not by itself racist.
Observation: Evaluate the claim “If you only wanted to reduce the measured crime rate in this county, you could leave all crimes committed by or against black people out of the figures.” Would this be true? Of course. It’s also functionally equivalent to the statement you claim is racist.
Does this mean the crime is actually related to the color of their skin? Of course not. Does it make the action desirable? No.
You also make the claim that ‘just because blacks are convicted of crimes at a far higher rate than the rest of the population does not prove that they actually commit crimes at a rate higher than the rest of the population.’ Tenuous, but technically true. However, if you look at the highest crime areas in the country, you find them mostly almost completely black. Unless you believe that the criminals and victims are imported into the area, this confirms the statement that the crime rate among blacks is indeed higher than the average.
However, that a racial statistic is "true" does not show it is a characteristic of the race. It would once have been true that virtually all golfing events were dominated by whites. While both true and a racial statistic, it does not show that golfing skills are in any way related to being white.
It's true that most black people are law abiding. It’s also true that crime is in no way DIRECTLY related to skin color. Neither point is relevant to Bennetts comment.

Everyone:

1) Bennett is well known as loudly and publicly anti-abortion. It would not occur to him that that a comment including the words “you could abort every black baby” might be taken as his seriously advocating such abortions.
2) Bennett’s comment is not satire. It is hyperbole. They are different.
3) I agree that using race in the comment was unfortunate, in that so many people will (mostly unintentionally) distort the meaning and take offense. However, he was talking live, and responding to comments made by someone else. It’s not like he carefully worked out the best way to make the point.

FatFreeGoodness

Smooth: "But if you look at various posts within this thread, you will see numerous statements assuming his underlying position, black babies commit a disproportionate amount of crime, is accurate and and rearticulating it as a truth claim. I contrast these kinds of responses with your hypothesis, which is testable (and falseified according to the data I am aware of)."Smooth: "But if you look at various posts within this thread, you will see numerous statements assuming his underlying position, black babies commit a disproportionate amount of crime, is accurate and and rearticulating it as a truth claim. I contrast these kinds of responses with your hypothesis, which is testable (and falsified according to the data I am aware of)."

I am not sure what you are saying here. Do you claim that the data that shows blacks in the US commit a disproportionate percentage of crimes is faked?
Or are you saying that “while the statistic of higher black crime rates may be true, the conclusion that eliminating all blacks would reduce crime is nonetheless false.”

If what you mean is that “while it is true that blacks commit a disproportionate percentage of crimes in the US, this is unrelated to race and one consequence of many other social issues.” then I would agree. However, I think this is irrelevant to Bennetts point.

We do agree his point could have been better made without any reference to race, and I’m sure he wishes he had done so.

FatFreeGoodness

He did not say that. I'm not sure why you think he did.
He said that if you eliminated all black youth, the crime rate would go down. He assumed that the crime rate among black youth is higher than non-black youth, which is statistically correct. He made the assumption that if we eliminated black youth, other groups would not increase their crime rates to make up the difference; this is less obvious, but probably an acceptable assumption since it was not his point.
A better illustration of his position might have been: "Given that someone who has committed one crime is more likely to commit another than someone who has never committed any crime, If we were to simply execute everyone who has ever even been charged with a crime, the crime rate would go down. But this would be a horrible and reprehensible solution that is worse than the problem."
This is exactly what he was trying to say. Killing (obviously innocent) babies to him is a horrible crime, far worse than the good intention of reducing crime. It's very unfortunate that he used aborting black babies to illustrate his point, but recall that he did not bring it up.

jwoody

There's only one way to settle this.

What I want you to do is print out the Racial Thermometer (tm) and question a cross section of the population to see whether [the person on the radio] is a racist.

When we have good cross-section of black opinion from around the world, we'll collate the results and have our definitive answer.

Until then, I'm going to keep an open mind on the matter.

Remember, you're only questioning people whose skin colour matches the right hand side of the card.

For best results hold the card to the cheek or forehead of the questionee.

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tspikes51

This is simple logic. Let's say that a disease accounts for 50% of infant mortality. If you eradicate that disease, is it not logical to assume that the infant mortality rate would be cut in half??? This is the same logic that this guy is using, the only difference is morality.

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"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

Marvelous Marv

We sure do, but rather than focus on the meaning of Bennett's words, you continue to make wild misinterpretations, bad analogies, and factual misstatements.

While we're on the subject of ignorance, however, I'm going to post a link/quote. Since you asked to "explain where he is right," here it is. Since you appear determined not to understand his words, I'm not going to post an explanation of the actual meaning of Bennett's statement for you.

One of many links that say this

Unlike you, I am not under the impression that Bennett, a staunch anti-abortionist, wants to abort black babies. That would be ignorant.

However, feel free to "explain where he's wrong."

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"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher