Bill Bennett

[Alex]

The racism in Bennett's remarks come not form the statistical correctness or incorrectness of the result he posits, but from the misidentification of root cause.

Blacks commit crimes at a higher rate than whites, this is true. But to say that a way to reduce crime is to reduce blacks (even if you personally reject the method of doing so) is to suggest that being black is what causes the increased rate of criminality. It is not.

Poverty is the factor that increases criminality. Middle class blacks do not commit crimes at a rate higher than middle class whites. Poor blacks do not commit crimes at a significantly higher rate than poor whites (and much of what difference does exist can be explained by the urban/rural split).

So the proper thing for Bennett to say would be that if you wanted to reduce the crime rate you could abort all poor babies (which would disproportionately affect blacks since they are disproportionately, for whatever reason, poor).

I don't think it was the most racist thing in the world, but I do think it is revealing that for Bennett the link seems to be more black = crime than poverty = crime so that when he was coming up with an example off the cuff that is the direction he went.

Bennett's larger point, that arguing abortion on anything other than simple moral grounds smacks of eugenics is certainly valid and employing the example he did is not necessarily racist, but the implicit assumption of what he said is.