(no subject)

[geminigirl]

I'm a little surprised no one's commented on this yet...it's rather horrifying what William Bennett (the same one who was Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, and who wrote the "Book of Virtues") said here...

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I mentioned it on my politics filter.

[agent139.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me he said something stupid he shouldn't have, but I wouldn't be surprised if the statistics were behind him on that one.

Then again, you know what? Abort EVERYONE and we won't have to worry about crime at all. Hurrah!

[alibee.livejournal.com]

If I posted every time someone in government said/did something that made me want to projectile vomit a la "Exorcist" then I'd
a) be bulimic
b) never have time to do real work

And sadly, that is the truth.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Hadn't heard that one... :(

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The stats aren't behind him on this.

Alabama has apopulation of 4,447,100, a large percentage are black. 4,545.9 reported incidents per 100,000 people

Oregon has a population of 3,421,399, far smaller percentage of black folks (and most of them urban), it also has a large Mormon population (thought to be more law abiding than the average person; 4,845.4 reported incidents per 100,000 people.

http://www.disastercenter.com/cr...ime/ orcrime.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/cr...ime/ alcrime.htm

So we have a dichotomy, where the lower density population of white folks has a higher rate of crime than the higher density population with the significant blak population.

I ranted about this earlier today.

Lots of other folks have ranted about it too.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

But he's not in gov't anymore, he has a large (something like 11 million listeners) radio show.

He has more impact on popular attitude than politicians, in part because he is seen as, "the great American Moralist."

TK

[agent139.livejournal.com]

Ah ok.

Well I was just being silly anyhow.

[maxdwolf.livejournal.com]

It may or may not have been his actual meaning, but his explanation afterwards was that he was not saying that race correlates w. crime, but that a birth rate does but that is no excuse for abortion. That he chose that particular wording is suspicious, but I find enough of the ideas that he openly adheres to awful enough I don't need hypotheticals.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Lessee... running the smell test on this (and having read the transcript)... bullshit.

He made a very specific pair of claims... one that you can't say abortions, as a whole, are causative to the drop in crime in the '90s, and two that if we really want to drop the crime rate we can do it by seeing to it that zero black children are born.

He didn't make any claims about birthrate in the black community; though he did imply that single mothers are a net drain on the economy, and have children who never become producttive: what he said was blacks cause crime.

TK

[tommx.livejournal.com]

i hadn't heard it, but my reaction is pretty much "what does one expect from a pig but a grunt?"

i find that racists are looking for ways to insinuate their ugly views into the various forums in which they are heard. this is one example. they then present it as something to be horrified by, but they still have managed to get a comment in that foments bitterness, and shows that there are still a lot of people in this country whose minds are still 2 centuries behind the times.

I don't read it that way.

[maxdwolf.livejournal.com]

I went back and listened to the segment in question. While he disagreed with the notion supposedly from Freakanomics that abortion reduces crime, he did posit that if the correlation held true then aborting all the black babies would reduce crime and be totally morally reprehensible. His point was that one shouldn't use economic arguments to support a pro-life position. He did not say that blacks caused crime. His quote implied that, but in his explanation later he claimed it would have applied to any segment of the population. One may choose not to believe him. One may even make a good argument that he should not be believed. But he has not explicited said that blacks cause crime.

Re: I don't read it that way.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No. He said the general claim of Freakanomics was false (that a reduction in unwanted children by those who couldn't afford them led to a drop in crime), but that reducing a specific set of people from having children would.

He could have just said, "have a lot of abortions, and crime drops, because there are fewer people, in the cohort most likely to commit crimes (males aged 18-25). But he didn't. In fact he argued with that point.

He did say that a specific act, aborting all black babies, would reduce crime. He didn't even use the fig leaf of poor/disadvantaged.

The reasoning thus seems to be, blacks commit crimes, because they are black.

I've listened to the clip, I've read the transcript, and that's what he did.

You may give the benefit of all the doubt you like, but it's the way it reads, and not completely inconsistent with his prior statements (as expressed in his writings).

TK

I apologize

[maxdwolf.livejournal.com]

In listening for the second time I realize I was hearing an if where there wasn't. I apologize.

Re: I apologize

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Accepted, gratefully.

It happens to all of us, and Lord knows it can be hard to find context on the net; and then the lack of it is hanging out for all to see.

TK