Saturday, October 15, 2005
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Abort Bennett, Part 2: Let's Call a Cracker a Cracker
OK. I'd stop beating this dead horse's ass except he just won't stay still. Cracker Bill was out on the stump last weekend demonstrating that he is not only a racist, but also cynical and stupid too!
Last Saturday, Bill "Trust Me I'm a Serious Thinker" Bennett decided that he would clear his reputation by carefully elucidating his intellectually complex position on genocidal approaches to crime control and the heavy burden borne by public intellectuals in modern America before a cheering crowd of conservative businessmen in Bakersfield California (a well known center of culture and learning).
According to an unapologetic Bennett, the media distorted his radio comments and turned his denunciation of a hypothetical atrocity into an endorsement. "I was putting forward a bad argument in order to put it down," Bennett argued. "They reported and emphasized only the abhorrent argument, not my shooting it down."
That would be an outrage... If it was true. Unfortunately for Bennett, this particular herring is way too red to mistake for the real target. Here's what Bennett said on his radio program:
"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."
Now, for the slower of uptake, let's set that out again, this time with emphasis added to the more troubling (slobberingly racist) part of this "thought experiment":
"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."
Did you spot the problem? In case a member of the Bennett family is reading this, I'll simplify the problem by taking out the confusing extra words. ""I do know that it's true that...abort...black...your crime rate would go down." See? In Bennett's big serious brain, the idea that high crime is caused by the existence of the black folks in America is a self-evident fact. Bennett says in effect: "If you get rid of blacks, crime goes down (but of course, that would be wrong!)." Then says the media is trying to make it seem like he was advocating genocide when he was saying exactly the opposite -- you know, the "that would be wrong" part. He doesn't get (or chooses to pretend he doesn't) that the assertion of what he "knows" about blacks and crime is both empirically false and rhetorically racist. On the Fox News Sunday program following Bennett's original broadcast, perpetually constipated commentator and national embarrassment Brit Hume defended Bennett's remarks as "factually unassailable." Brit Hume: racist.
Here's the thing (again for benefit of the ideologically impaired), the social correlation that counts is not race:crime, it is class:crime. In America, as everywhere else in the universe, poor people are more apt to both commit crimes and be victimized by crime as well as other social pathologies. That's one of those facts that make poverty unpleasant. One of the facts that make capitalism unpleasant is that it creates a poverty class. One of the unpleasant facts about America is that its history of racism (and racism's apparent continued existence) has placed a disproportionate number of black families in poverty. In any capitalist society, the spaces of poverty will be filled by the most vulnerable groups and individuals around -- typically racial and ethnic minorities, women, and children. The rate of crimes committed by middle class African Americans is no different than that of middle class whites, latinos, or asians. Same with the crime rates of wealthy whites, blacks, latinos, etc.: quite high, just not defined as crime. Big news: There is no racial tendency to commit crime. This would not need to be said except that conservative intellectuals need remedial training in the basics of modern knowledge. They've been busy studying 18th century economics and 19th century politcal theory, you see.
So to help the Bennetts and the Humes, it's not end blacks=end crime; it's end poverty=end crime. In the end, to follow out Bill's odious counterfantasy, if you rid America of its black population the crime rate would settle right back to where it is now, just with a different complexion as other vulnerable populations took up the spaces of poverty without relief or redress in post-reagan America. Moreover, if Bill wants to push this cheap thought gimmick further, if he aborted any sufficiently large category of people in America he'd be bound to kill off a number of potential criminals since any large population would likely include a significant number of people living without much hope in poverty; thus he would get his (temporary) decrease in the crime rate. And, by the way, this whole mode of discourse wherein one speaks about a whole race of people as if they were not actually part of the community is hideous on its face. Would Bill ever say something like, "if you were to abort every catholic male baby, your child molestation rate would go down (but that would be wrong!)"? I wonder why Bill's mind went immediately to black babies...
Last Saturday, Bill "Trust Me I'm a Serious Thinker" Bennett decided that he would clear his reputation by carefully elucidating his intellectually complex position on genocidal approaches to crime control and the heavy burden borne by public intellectuals in modern America before a cheering crowd of conservative businessmen in Bakersfield California (a well known center of culture and learning).
According to an unapologetic Bennett, the media distorted his radio comments and turned his denunciation of a hypothetical atrocity into an endorsement. "I was putting forward a bad argument in order to put it down," Bennett argued. "They reported and emphasized only the abhorrent argument, not my shooting it down."
That would be an outrage... If it was true. Unfortunately for Bennett, this particular herring is way too red to mistake for the real target. Here's what Bennett said on his radio program:
"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."
Now, for the slower of uptake, let's set that out again, this time with emphasis added to the more troubling (slobberingly racist) part of this "thought experiment":
"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."
Did you spot the problem? In case a member of the Bennett family is reading this, I'll simplify the problem by taking out the confusing extra words. ""I do know that it's true that...abort...black...your crime rate would go down." See? In Bennett's big serious brain, the idea that high crime is caused by the existence of the black folks in America is a self-evident fact. Bennett says in effect: "If you get rid of blacks, crime goes down (but of course, that would be wrong!)." Then says the media is trying to make it seem like he was advocating genocide when he was saying exactly the opposite -- you know, the "that would be wrong" part. He doesn't get (or chooses to pretend he doesn't) that the assertion of what he "knows" about blacks and crime is both empirically false and rhetorically racist. On the Fox News Sunday program following Bennett's original broadcast, perpetually constipated commentator and national embarrassment Brit Hume defended Bennett's remarks as "factually unassailable." Brit Hume: racist.
Here's the thing (again for benefit of the ideologically impaired), the social correlation that counts is not race:crime, it is class:crime. In America, as everywhere else in the universe, poor people are more apt to both commit crimes and be victimized by crime as well as other social pathologies. That's one of those facts that make poverty unpleasant. One of the facts that make capitalism unpleasant is that it creates a poverty class. One of the unpleasant facts about America is that its history of racism (and racism's apparent continued existence) has placed a disproportionate number of black families in poverty. In any capitalist society, the spaces of poverty will be filled by the most vulnerable groups and individuals around -- typically racial and ethnic minorities, women, and children. The rate of crimes committed by middle class African Americans is no different than that of middle class whites, latinos, or asians. Same with the crime rates of wealthy whites, blacks, latinos, etc.: quite high, just not defined as crime. Big news: There is no racial tendency to commit crime. This would not need to be said except that conservative intellectuals need remedial training in the basics of modern knowledge. They've been busy studying 18th century economics and 19th century politcal theory, you see.
So to help the Bennetts and the Humes, it's not end blacks=end crime; it's end poverty=end crime. In the end, to follow out Bill's odious counterfantasy, if you rid America of its black population the crime rate would settle right back to where it is now, just with a different complexion as other vulnerable populations took up the spaces of poverty without relief or redress in post-reagan America. Moreover, if Bill wants to push this cheap thought gimmick further, if he aborted any sufficiently large category of people in America he'd be bound to kill off a number of potential criminals since any large population would likely include a significant number of people living without much hope in poverty; thus he would get his (temporary) decrease in the crime rate. And, by the way, this whole mode of discourse wherein one speaks about a whole race of people as if they were not actually part of the community is hideous on its face. Would Bill ever say something like, "if you were to abort every catholic male baby, your child molestation rate would go down (but that would be wrong!)"? I wonder why Bill's mind went immediately to black babies...
Bill Bennett: racist.
Bennett's supporters, however, have another card to play: White intellectual's burden. These folks want you to know that the real reason you misunderstand Bennett's comments is because you, untrained in the finer points of academic discourse, don't understand "thought experiments." According to fellow right-wing intellectual wannabe, Bill Kristol, Bennett's real mistake was "trying to conduct a thought experiment on the radio." Even softie liberals like Brad DeLong buy into this notion: "Never attempt a reductio ad absurdum argument on talk radio...somebody is bound to think you are endorsing the horrible absurdity that you are rejecting." OOOHHHH! A reductio ad absurdum! I see. Latin stuff. Must be all egghead like.
Says Bennett: "A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should not have received the condemnations it has." Oh. Sorry, Bill. Didn't mean to jump on you; didn't realize you were doing thought experiments on the radio. I'll just sit quietly in the corner over here and breathe through my mouth.
Are you kidding me? Thought experiment? You mean like Einstein and Bohr and Planck working out unobservable quantum phenomena through imagined subatomic scenarios? That kind of thougt experiment? I think I'll puke. Bennett's cracker ruminations are to thought experiments what farts are to Mozart's Oboe Concerto.
All right. I'm dropping the subject now.
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