Are factual statements racist?
Bill Bennett 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.
Think about it for a moment . . . time’s up. While this statement is offensive and, honestly, stupid to make, it’s factual. Of course, you could also say the same thing and substitute the word Southern for black. Or male for black. Or poor for black. Bennett was not advocating doing such a thing.
Bob Krumm, in a must read, says:
Instead of being shocked that he said it, we should be shocked that it’s true.
If I say, more black people suffer from sickle cell anemia, would the response be that I am racist or that maybe we ought to look into why this disease is found almost exclusively in blacks? I’d hope the latter. And, no, I’m not calling crime a disease nor am I saying that there’s some sort of genetic predisposition to criminal behavior inherent in black folks. I’m saying that if something affects people of a particular race, maybe society should be serious about addressing it and not automatically offended when someone mentions it. Bennett chose a rather poor and offensive way of expressing his point.
Meanwhile, Stacey Campfield, noting that the Black Legislative Caucus restricted members based on race, said:
My understanding is that the KKK doesn’t even ban members by race
I don’t know anything about the KKK or its rules. For the sake of argument, let’s assume it is a true and factual statement. Is it racist? I tend to think it’s not. Sure, no one likes to be compared to the KKK but it is not an inherently racist statement. And it may even be true.
September 30th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
Except that it’s not factual. If you want to statistically lower the crime rate, you’d have to kill all of today’s black people. You simply don’t know what tomorrow’s going to look like.
That said, while Bennet’s point wasn’t nearly so nefarious as some have tried to paint it, he’d have been hard-pressed to find a stupider way to phrase it.
September 30th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
That’s a fair point but a bit too optimistic. I think as long as minorities remain poor, crime will be a factor for them.
September 30th, 2005 at 6:43 pm
Just don’t say niggardly. I’d even tread lightly around goobers.
October 1st, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Interestingly enough, an ultra-conservative coworker of mine approached me about this yesterday, and he was furious about it, and said it was “absolutely racist.” It surprised me coming from this guy, who normally thinks that Sean Hannity is pretty reasonable, level-headed guy. The way he put it: “By phrasing it the way he did, Bennett made crime about race instead of race being coincidental.” He has a point.
October 2nd, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Having heard the exchange in question, I am really surprised by the uproar.
He was responding to a pro-life questioner who opined that…”Social Security would not be in trouble today if we hadn’t aborted all those babies”.
Bennett thought that was a poor argument and said that the pros and cons of abortion should be decided on morality, not economics. It was as bad as if you used the argument that…”to reduce crime we should abort all black males”. He added that that was a horrific argument and not worthy of discussion.
And the left explodes….
It didn’t seem very controversial to me at the time.
October 5th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
bjbarron:
It’s not what he said so much as how he said it. What does it say, exactly, about Bennet that the first thing to pop into his mind when he thought of “crime” is “black people?” And I’m afraid his subsequent refusal to apologize for the poor choice of example is quite telling.
Is it the cross-burning, “strange fruit” kind of racism? Probably not. But I don’t see how it’s too far removed from Jimmy the Greek racism…