Deja Vu All Over Again

On Saturday, October 1st, the CNN question of the day inviting audience emails was whether former secretary of education William Bennett is a racist.

Is that really the question? Is what he said about aborting all black babies decreasing the crime rate true? And if it’s true, doesn’t he have the right to say it?

Remember Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder saying that black are better athletes because they were bred to be stronger by slave owners? If true was it appropriate to say it? And how can expressing the truth be a bad thing, i.e., racism?

It really depends on the context and the message. To say there are more great black athletes than white (e.g. basketball) only because slaves were bred to be physically superior stronger and faster is to demean. On the other hand you could say selective breeding of blacks as common practice by slave owners has influenced modern day traits and talents. When any group of people enslaves another and directly influences breeding they interfere with natural selection and adaptation.

Did selective breeding change the gene pool in the black culture and lead to a greater number of exceptionally talented black athletes today? It’s possible. If true, can it be justified? To me nothing about slavery can be justified.

Regardless of the truth the Jimmy "the Greek" comment got him into a huge mess. Now as Yogi Berra said, "it’s deja vu all over again".

William Bennett served as secretary of education under President Reagan and as drug czar under former President George Bush. He hosts a radio show called Morning in American. On Wednesday September 28th, he commented on his radio show in response to a caller who said that if we outlawed abortion we could make Social Security solvent. Bennett responded that this was an extreme example of a solution and he was reminded of the theory in the recent best selling book, Freakonomics, that legalizing abortion was the main factor in the lowering of the crime rate. Taken to extreme this would be like aborting all black children to reduce the crime rate – which he immediately said is a reprehensible idea. One irony is that he is being accused of making racist remarks and has authored books on the theme of virtue and morality, e.g. The Book of Virtues.

The next day Mr. Bennett defended his remarks as a hypothetical argument to make the point that moral issues like abortion could not be linked to pragmatic issues like the crime rate. Unfortunately implicit in his remark was the assumption that blacks have a high crime rate. It is true that African Americans or black Americans (I’m not sure what the current politically correct term is) represent 10% of the population but 55% of individuals in federal prison. Could it be that a higher percentage of blacks accused of federal crimes are actually sent to prison? Probably. Could this fully account for the over-representation in prisons? Probably not. More poverty and less education are the major contributing factors.

You could surely make the argument that it’s only been 40 years since the Civil Rights Act and that minorities still don’t have equal opportunity. But black leaders and role models like Bill Cosby and Chris Rock would say they are tired of excuses and blacks need to take responsibility for getting an education and changing their cultural values. I believe both positions are true.

So where does all this leave us with William Bennett? What he said was most likely literally true. His underlying intention was morally right. But his example was insensitive. To say if we aborted every black baby is the same as saying if we kill or eliminate all black people we would lower the crime rate. He could have said, "if we deported all blacks…" Even more true would be if we eliminated all poor people we could lower the crime rate. While we’re in the neighborhood why not eliminate all sick people and improve the overall health of the nation? We could lower smoking and obesity …this is easy. So what?

Crime has some correlation with race and race has some correlation with poverty. Had he said we could lower the crime rate by aborting all babies in the lower socioeconomic class he probably wouldn’t have stirred up so much controversy. I don’t believe that in his heart he is a racist. But "emotional intelligence" includes being aware of other people’s sensitivities, and in this instance, I believe he screwed up. Instead of being defensive he should apologize. We can all learn from his mistake, and then let’s drop it.