I'm with Glenn. Bennett made a choice to say "black." In the context, which seems to have been referring to the Freakonomics argument that crime drops in the 1990s were due to (possible) increase in numbers of abortions in 1970s, he is introducing race where it was not a factor before. (The Levitt speculation is that unwanted children are more likely to wind up criminals.)

Further, the statement suggests an inherent black propensity to crime, at any and all times. You might be able to argue that if you abort all poor kids, crime would go down, because people who are poor are inherently more likely to cross the line of the law for all sorts of reasons. But are people who are black, regardless of wealth, inherently more likely to commit crime? Does Bennett think the data show that?

There's also the argument, well supported by data, that crime rates are simply a function of birth rates, and as the number of late-teens/early-20s declines, so does crime. Which is to say, you could abort half of all pregnancies and the crime rate would go down, you don't need to get into any comparatives like male, poor, or Southern.

But you also don't need to say black.

Obviously Bennett is not "calling for genocide" and the blogger that DeLong referred to is the only person I saw who took Bennett to mean that. But he did just say that black people are inherently more likely to be criminals and hell yes, he should apologize for that.

I originally just protested against the 'genocide' charge, but now reading the quote in context, I feel like letting up on the racism charge as well. Far from racism, I think the quote encaptures alot of the nuances about race and such many people are criticizing him for being ignorant of. He seems to be basing his reasoning on he fact, for whatever reasons (poverty, oppression, uneducation) that blacks commit a higher share of crime per capita than whites do. He effectively says

"Look if you want to lower crime, you could abort every black baby in the country; you'd also be killing alot of people who will never lead a criminal lifestyle and go on to do better things but you would eliminate alot of future criminals and hence lower crime if that is your goal."

At least that's how it appears to me on a rereading.  

I think correct statement is that blacks commit a higher share of crimes per capita that we as a society choose to enforce and incarcerate.  I'd be willing to bet that a lot more white collar crime per capita is committed by whites and so on.

But, unlike Bennett, he was actually guilty of crime with which he was charged. 

If we aborted all the Bill Bennetts in this country then the bullshit rate would go down.

That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your bullshit rate would go down.

Of course, if we all just stopped giving this bloated fool any attention then the bullshit rate may stay high, but its effects would be minimalized.

He said "black" specifically because he knew it would be the most offensive example and thus would make his point (i.e. that you shouldn't argue the abortion debate on solely utilitarian grounds) in the strongest way possible.

Bennett was guilty of tactless and inflammatory bad taste. It was rather like the Republican Congressman's "Barney Fag" slip of the tongue. Even if it wasn't deliberate, I think that his slip is an indicative sort of rudeness.

What Bennett said was "fighting words". One of the weaknesses of Democrats vs. Republicans is that, as rational and civilize academics an bureaucrats, few Democrats understand what fighting words are -- how to use, avoid, and respond to them according to circumstance. Republicans, by contrast, understand fighting words very well.

Two related points.  Without the race issue explicity highlights one of the most controversial points in Freakanomics is that Roe and the drop in the crime rate 20 years later are correlated.  As a control they point out that both California and New York legalized abortion earlier than Roe and both states saw drops in crimer earlier than the rest of the nation.

Stanley Crouch in today's New York Daily News refered to the criticism of Bill Cosby's comments about parenting and eduction.  He hammered those who reject the facts so as not to "blame the victim."  He has no use for this line of reasoning.

"I suspect this is a result of economics. African Americans are more likely to be poor and when poor people abuse drugs the dysfunctions which result from that behavior are much more likely to have a public impact and therefore to land them in jail . . . "

Well, you'd need to do a study to compare the way poor white drug abusers are treated relative to poor black drug abusers. But I suspect the poor whites are still treated better than blacks. The penalties for crack are particularly harsh. Is it a coincidence that crack first became popular in the black community? And why aren't the penalties for Meth Amphetimines as harsh--a drug used by poor whites and just as dangerous and disruptive to society?

a couple of points about defending the indefensible....he should have hung up... it was simply wrong to say it...and if you measured how many blacks aborted... equaled total of crimes vs. the great white-mans misdeeds...goodness how many more have to die in Iraq? And how much more pork...will become law and etc....duh? maybe we might be getting so used to this crap that gets spinning we all have become insensitive to what is real...just the other day I overheard some young people talking...college kids...they were eating food outside and were quite noisy.. they stated something like oops we better start acting like "white people should" refering to the difference in color of those who were looting/finding  food during Katrina...sad

What I find most interesting about this remark is that it comes at a time when all the headlines are about rich, Republican white criminals. Might Bennett have wanted to distract us from the most serious ongoing crime wave?

Try this: If we never elected another Republican to public office, the corruption rates would go way, way down. 

"Since it was an argument about the social effe3cts of abortion, you can see how Bennett ended up saying it, but his choice of examples was poor."

He should have said babies of poor, single women to make his point rather than use black babies as a surrogate.  Even though statistically more black babies are born to poor, single women.  I suspect he injected race to make his example more morally reprehensible, but it backfired.

What difference does it make that Bush's spokesman has denounced Bennett's remark?

Try this: Bush is a man in whom there is no truth, so his saying something means it's probably false (Matt is right).

But that's mistaken--there being no truth in Bush doesn't imply he doesn't utter true remarks when it's otherwise expedient to do so.

And we know that Bush is these days rather desperate and beleagured, more likely than ever to resort to falsehoods to salvage his presidency.

But still, since it's so hard to know whether Bush is making use of the truth for reasons of expediency or saying something he doesn't believe for the same reasons, it's best just to take what he says as not counting for nor against, as not counting as evidence, as unrelated to truth in any reliable way.  

http://www.justicepolicy.org/downloads/Pathway8.pdf

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/soo.pdf  (especially page 21)

if the above does not open try: linkhttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/soo.htm 

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/gvc.htm#Violence

Racism is defined as the belief that your race is superior to another, you can be a very nice person, a good person, a kind person, but if you have this belief you are a racist.  However, what really counts is what you do when you meet someone, how you treat them and if you let your beliefs color how you see them.

It bothers me that when a black person says that they feel that racism still exists, then they are told that they should not play the race card, that racism is gone and that it does not affect how black people are treated in the US.  However, when someone says something that is racist (what he said is racist, because it implies that the race of someone is indicative of how likely they are to commit a crime, and thus there is something inherently inferior about the black race) you can paint it with as many pretty pictures as you wish, but that is basically what he said. 

Does this statment mean that he is racist, i don't know, that would depend on how he treats blacks when he meets them, how many he has hired, promoted, if would he let them marry his kids, would he consider dating one.   

In my opinion the statment makes no sense, because if you aborted all black kids, then some other group would come in and take over the socio-economic  rung in the ladder that was left open, just as blacks took that rung from other ethnic groups that used to occupy it. So the crime rate probably would not go down.

Just as these groups would then take over the sports and music industries that are also overrepresented by blacks.

Should he apologize, I don't think so, it is his opinion and he is entitled to it.  

Whatever your views, treat others fairly and be open to their point of view, even if you don't agree with it.  Look with an open mind at how others are treated, listen a little more closely to how they are described in the media and I think things would go much better.  As a black person, I know that sometimes I can get a little oversensitive about certain things and how easy it is to ascribe everything negative that happens to race, but whites should also be aware that sometimes they can be amazingly obtuse when it comes to racial inequalites in this country.

For those of you who don't think you are racist, but think these remarks are ok, if you could would you change your race to black, everything else would be the same, your income, family background.  If the answer is no, why not?  Have you ever dated a black person?  Have your kids?  How many of your close friends are black?  How much contact do you have with black people?  Does a negative answer to any of these things mean you are racist?  Not necessarily, but statistics show that you are more likely to have negative views of blacks.

This is an interesting site (also check out the book blink) 

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ 

Finally I don't care what some radio host says on his show, what I care about is that when I walk into a store, am in my car and I am applying for a job, my race is as invisible as everyone says it is.

I'm sorry, but it's clear Bill Bennett was expressing an unconscious wish in his choice of 'argument'.

So why do people like Bennett focus on race in the first place, and why did Bill Bennett think of it spontaneously in a radio conversation?  What was it doing in his mind in that context?

Why the fuck are social 'scientists' like UpChuck Murray being paid to pay close attention to racial difference, and come up with 'proof' about such things?

These are genetic determinists. They think long and hard about That Which They Are Not Thank God, and even apply mathematics to it. This road, especially when funded among the elite in order to influence social policy, leads inevitably to disaster.

It's an in group/out group thing.  Ethnicity has worked as an indicator because it is a visual cue.  Soon technology will provide us with other, more complex ways of excluding and stigmatizing people. Genetically perhaps. 

calfl:

what's your reason for the troll rating of "inappropriate" or "1" for my comment?

Not that I personally give a damn, but I hate to see people being discouraged about talking about how talking points and political P.R. are done on this site! One of the main reasons I enjoy this place is that people come here specifically to talk about such things!

If you intimated from my comment that I was against anyone doing what I suspect, well, you're wrong, but that shouldn't matter when you rate someone anyway, you're not supposed to be rating someone down if you disagree with them.

Lighten up, stop with the P.C. police act, if that's what you're doing. Please don't start doing it to others. The site is to discuss ideas. The ratings are to control trolling.

Certainly a 3 or even a 2 is understandable if you think something like this is distractingly off-topic. But a 1 is a whole different thing, and I, for one, am going to be watching you now to see if you're handing them out irrationally or abusively.

Please read Josh's guidelines.

Matt, one could also argue that we could cut the crime rate by aborting all white children too, because after all, some poor people are white.

It is a relief to see that at least a few people get it, though Matthew is not among them.  To summarize to an extent, Bennett's remarks are racist because:
~They single out blacks as a target.  (Matt's evasion by substituting other groups is putting words into Bennett's mouth.  He said blacks for a reason.)
~They assume that blacks are inherently predisposed to commit crimes, though Bennett did not explicitly say so.  Without the assumption, there's no basis for having made the remark.
~The 'this is reprehensible' part of the statement is sandwiched between two assertions that aborting black fetuses would reduce crime.  It is clear what is the dominant message and what is the fig leaf.
Someone wondered if the impetus for Bennett's remarks was from the Left.  No.  The impetus is claims by contemporary scientific racists that blacks are genetically disposed to crime and violence.  The foremost purveyor of that viewpoint on the Internet is Steve Sailer.   (I don't mean to say that there are no racists on the Left, only that this viewpoint comes from the Right.)
I don't know whether to credit Matt's cluelessness on this topic to naivete or arrogance.  Perhaps it is some of both.  

"By aborting the white babies we can reduce the crime rate from 35% to 5%, but we can only drop from 35% to 30% by eliminating black babies"

Oops, you forgot the denominator.  If all white babies were aborted, the total population would decline making the crime rate approach the 50% rate of the black population.

I had no idea George W Bush was a liberal.

He wants to keep spending like there is no tomorrow, he envisions a global military crusade for democracy like Woodrow Wilson, he wants to open our borders and flood the country with Mexicans, he wants a prescription drug benefit, he supports increasing spending on, and federal control of, education.

Hell, yeah, he's a liberal.  He sure ain't a conservative in my book.

Honestly, it sounds pretty  far out there. But no more than your assertion that many whites harbor a secret desire to see an entire population of black baries aborted.

Bennet's use of a  specific racial group to make an example is hardly racist unless we really want to expand the definition of what constitutes racism.

I don't know who 'they' are but Bennet's remark had nothing to do with Blacks being inherently predisposed to crime. You even acknowledge as much but assert that was the true basis for the remark. The only assumption Bennet worked on making the remark is that young Blacks end up engaging in criminality at rates higher than that of other ethnic groups in America (if that's true) he made no assumption, not even a guesstimate as to why this is so (genetics, poverty, culture etc.)

 The 'dominant message' of his quote is that utilizing utilitarian arguments to oppose abortion is stupid. Not only because abortion should be opposed because you believe it is immoral but because if you make it a case of utilitarianism, someone can utilize a utilitarian argument to argue in favor of abortion. After all. according to Bennet you could lower the crime rate in this country by aborting every black child.  You would effectively be exterminating an entire population of people, some of whom won't be criminals but hey, the crime rate would drop. The dominant message of his quote is that abortion should be opposed because it is immoral, not because less babies decreases the tax base, makes it harder to fund social security or any other utilitarian argument.

I'm not trying to acertain whether or not what Bennet said was offensive, that is arbitrarily and collectively decided and it is quite clear from the reaction that what he said was offensive. I'm defending Bennet's remarks against the harges that they were racist or genocidal.

The caller most certainly did bring up abortion, that was what they were discussing. Bennet was referring to a caller's reasoning that abortion is bad because it harms social security solvency.  Bennet was telling the caller to stay focused, that that is no legitimate reason to oppose abortion.

Quoting Brad DeLong

 Bennet did not "concede" that "aborting all African-American babies 'would be ...morally reprehensible." That was his point. His caller said: "Abortion is bad because it has worsened  the financing of Social Security." Bennet says: "Stay focused. Were anti-abortion not because we think that abortion is a means that  leads to bad ends like a higher Social Security deficit;  we're anti-abortion because abortion is bad;  make arguments like 'abortion is bad because it increases the Social Security deficit' and other people will make arguments like 'abortion is good because it lowers the crime rate'  and we'll lose sight of the main point."

What's interesting (and revealing) about Bennett's comment is not whether it's logical or not, but that it was the first thing to pop into his head as he defended his position on abortion. What kind of freak comes up with an example that involves killing all black children?

Go back to the slots, Bill.

First, crime is predominantly commited by the young. If there is demographic dip for whatever reason in the 18-25 age group, the crime rate will go down.

Secondly, if someone took out a successful contract on Matthew Yglesias, then the world would have one less stupid blogger. It would be morally reprehensible and all that and I'm not advocating it, but I should not have to apologize for stating a stark truth.

Yes you can, because crime rates are highest in a particular age demographic. So, if you didn't have any 0-25 year olds, the crime rate in the 25-70 year olds that remain would be very low.

Borrowing from dailykos.com, a quote from a Human Rights Watch report:

Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men.

Shocking as such national statistics are, they mask even worse racial disparities in individual states. In seven states, for example, blacks constitute between 80 and 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, black men are admitted to prison on drug charges at rates that are from 20 to 57 times greater than those of white men. These racial disparities in drug offenders admitted to prison skew the racial balance of state prison populations. In two states, one in every 13 black men is in prison. In seven states, blacks are incarcerated at more than 13 times the rate of whites.

Good god Matthew, what's the point of defending Bennett even if the factuality of his statement is empirically accurate?!

If the Klan's Imperial Wizard got on the radio and said "If we rounded up all the negro bucks in America and strung each of them from a tree,  it would greatly reduce the total poplulation of the glorious South", would you feel compelled to defend the basic conclusion of his little hate speech?

I imagine he said 'black babies' because he was basing his point on the assumption that african-americans are more likely to get involved in criminality than other ethnic groups. It would appear that alot of FBI crime data bears this assumption out, at least superficially. This is the only thing he has said on the subject;

" There was alot of discussion about race and crime in New Orleans," Bennet said. "There was discussion  - a lot of it wrong - but nevertheless, media jumping on stories about looting and shooting and gangs and roving gangs and so on."

 "There's no question this is on our minds," Bennet said.  "What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking ... we don't hesitate to talk about things that are touchy."

 Bennet said, "I'm sorry if people are hurt , I really am. But we can't say this in an area of American life (and) public policy that we are not allowed to talk about  - race and crime."