The White House has denounced Bill Bennett’s controversial statement that, even though aborting black babies would cause a decrease in the crime rate, it would be morally reprehensible.
Bennett: Black Abortions Would Lower Crime (AP)
The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies. “The president believes the comments were not appropriate,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Bennett, on his radio show, “Morning in America,” was answering a caller’s question when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up.
“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,” said Bennett, author of “The Book of Virtues.”
He went on to call that “an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.”
As noted earlier, even critics like Brad DeLong recognize the context of Bennett’s remarks, so the White House’s knee-jerk defensiveness here is disappointing.
Even aside from the genocide issue, that blacks (or the young, or the poor, or white males, for that matter) commit crimes at a statistically significant higher rate than the population as a whole is incontrovertible.
