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I have something else that would signifigantly reduce the crime rate.
A substantial increase in the minimum wage.
As well, a cultural movement created with the purpose of teaching that yes, greed and self-rightousness is a very bad thing (And I don't give a fuck HOW religious you are).
Bill Bennett is still seen as the major moralist in America. And that makes me sick. The guy has absolutly no concept of what morality is in the first place. Period.
But if you killed all the white babies, crime would plummet, too.
If you killed all the hispanic babies, crime would plummet.
If you killed all the asian babies, crime would plummet.
People commit crimes. If a large swath of people are killed, crime will plummet.
I can't imagine why High Roller Bennet would use African Americans as his example. What possible reason could he have? ...
Bigotry?
Racism?
Stupidity?
Low self-esteem due to having a very little...sense of justice?
So many choices, so little time.
I vote for low self esteem--if he doesn't have it, he should.
aimai
There is a reason he goes to a Vegas Dom and play slots.
He can't feel good about himself. I've seen WWII vets play craps, guys past 80.
If you gas all republicans, the white collar crime rate would go down too.
I wished he would try to take a Black woman's baby away. Sure, he'd walk over, but he would be limping back...
Aside from his revelation that he spends a lot of time imagining how to rid the US of Black folks (you've got to admit, that was rather creative), how could compulsory abortion based on race, a crime against humanity itself, "reduce" the crime rate. It seems to me that you would be at least at net 0, if not positive in the crime rate department.
He was hit with this off-the-wall point from a caller, and the first thing that popped into his mind was that babies of single women probably wouldn't be productive citizens. The second thing he could think of was the analogy that aborting all the black babies would reduce crime.
What a hateful piece of shit.
And yes, Steve is right, the compulsive gamblers who play slots are really, really pathetic. From what I've read, they also tend to hit bottom faster than compulsive gamblers who prefer horses or games with some brain involved.
Y'know, reasonable state-funded child care, medical care, and some kind of "floor" to complement any social ceilings would reduce crime too.
My eyes popped out when I read this. He actually said that ON THE AIR? Jesus H. Christ. I suppose he would be in to aborting all Jews also, but then he wouldn't be able to find an accountant who would work on Sundays for him.
Jen,
I think he saves Sundays for slots and punishment.
Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,"
Note that his first concern is that aborting all African American babies would be impossible. NOT that it would be morally reprehensible.
logorrhea, you make another good point.
Bennett, the gift that just keeps giving. I say, give him his own show! (As long as we get to title it "Bill: The leading intellectual of the GOP".
No, see, my guess is somewhere in Bill's mind is this: the neat thing is if you aborted all the black babies, you'd get the benefit to the crime rate WITHOUT adversely impacting government revenue the way the caller was worried about. I mean, everybody knows black people live off welfare and don't pay taxes.
YIIIIIKES. Same reaction as Jen. This needs to get exposed, though I have a feeling the people who still respect Bill Bennett will be about as concerned as the good folks of Gretna were about their sheriff's behavior. But wow.
Steve, because of your photo caption, I will never, ever look at Jolly Green Giant Corn the same way again.
http://www.adclassix.com/ads2/
38...nibletscorn.htm
Please tell us you made that word up and never heard it from a white guy. But I have a sneaking suspicion you did.
What a stupid discussion that was.
But the first thing that popped into my mind was: wishful thinking on his and the caller's part. They wish every black baby was aborted in this country. They hate Roe v. Wade because white women are aborting their babies. They could care less than a fuck about black women having abortions. But since they can't figure out a way to pull that off, you get conversations like these that just amount to wishful thinking on their part.
Bennett is a racist idiot. He's also a pig.
steve, back in the 1920s, when the klan dominated indiana, not only were they against blacks and jews, but also catholics.
iirc, bennett is catholic.
so, it's funny to see him in the hood and sheet of a klanner.
it would be typical of a johnny-come-lately catholic asshole like bennett to copy the white proddy dogs above him on the social/economic ladder.
and btw, some prods still consider catholics beyond the pale.
'course, Bennett is technically correct.
Black people commit a dispropotionately high percentage of crimes. Therefore, aborting all black children would eventually cause the crime rate to decrease.
Conversely, aborting all white people or asian-americans would cause the crime rate to increase.
'course, Bennet's still a racist scumbag.
(Levitt's Freakonomic book does show that legalizing abortion early 70s was a significant factor in the dramatic drop in crime during the 1990s. Just cause Bennet or his caller don't like it doesn't make it false.)
Obe,
Do you consider the act of "aborting all Black babies" a crime or not? As far as I'm concerned, Bill is NOT technically correct or right in in any real or abstract universe. Committing an endless crime spree against Blacks will do NOTHING to reduce crime. Ever.
Sickening.
The caller's original point about all those aborted "persons" funding social security sounded familiar. Then I remembered Jesse at Pandagon took on this argument a while back and showed just how stupid it really is.
Man, I just can't keep up with the idiocy of it all.
Sickening.
The caller's original point about all those aborted "persons" funding social security sounded familiar. Then I remembered Jesse at Pandagon took on this argument a while back and showed just how stupid it really is.
Man, I just can't keep up with the idiocy of it all.
Obe,
Do you consider the act of "aborting all Black babies" a crime or not?
No. Abortion is legal. (And I firmly believe that abortion should continue to be legal. But that's another topic.)
'course, forcing any woman to have an unwanted abortion, as is common in China, is morally reprehensible. And if forcing someone to have an abortion is not a crime, then it ought to be.
Argh, double post. Sorry.
First off, just because Black Jack Bill attends a Catholic church doesn't make him a Catholic - place him under the Pharisee category.
Second, pity the poor pious fellow. He attended that special GOP Bible class - you now the one - where they teach you that babies come from welfare checks.
And third, from a statistical point of view, since most crime is committed by the male gender, 15-35 age group, anything that lowers that age group as a % of the total population will lower the crime rate. So I say, LOCK THEM ALL UP until 35.
As far as I'm concerned, Bill is NOT technically correct or right in in any real or abstract universe.
Well, you're wrong. Sometimes the truth is ugly.
Unless your point that if it were a crime for a black woman NOT to have an abortion, then every black woman having a baby would be committing a crime, thereby increasing in the crime rate among black women -- in which case you're probably right. (If not having an abortion is outlawed, then only outlaws won't have abortions.)
Or maybe your point is if forced abortions for blacks became the law, then black people (heck, all people) would engage in massive civil disobedience, which would obviously increase the crime rate.
But then you're just getting way out there in hypothetical thought-experiment land, and you probably should be doing something more productive with your time.
Bennett is a "moralist"? A complete racist asshole like that? And somebody gives him a nationwide network radio show? Father Coughlin must be laughing from his little dark hole in hell.
Well, what can one say? This is the first thing that pops into his head? Guess he does some heavy thinking while gambling.
Obe...if you aborted every White baby in the U.S., guess what?
You'd also see a drop in the crime rate. The math is so simple, even a troll like you can understand it if you weren't so bent on being a flame-war inducing contrarian...
Whites commit crime too. If one eliminated a large swath of virtually any group of substantial numbers, a noticeable dip in crime would be seen. Very simple. But for some reason, Bill fixated on the little fantasy in his head (alongside the one where a dominatrix-geared Kathy Bates whips his naked *ss with a truncheon while his scrotum is yanked by a piano wire connected to a spinning roulette wheel) of seeing a generation of Black kids eliminated from the 50 states.
May his next visit to Vegas end as Joe Pesci's final visit to the Vegas desert did in "Casino". 
You didn't address my point: Committing an endless crime spree against Blacks will do NOTHING to reduce crime. Ever.
You're the one in "experiment-land." My assumption, from the beginning, was that Bill Bennett was suggesting compulsory abortion of all Black fetuses. I think I said that upthread. And YES, forcing some one to have an abortion is in an assault on the woman, and, after Laci Peterson, murder of the unborn in many states.
Obe:
Your formulation that crime rates would be reduced by wholesale abortions because "Black people commit a dispropotionately high percentage of crimes" is only "technically correct" if you believe that African-Americans are genetically disposed to commit crime at a greater rate than anyone else. And that's just a purely (which I say with a smile) racist statement. Because there's no evidence that there's a "crime gene" or that it's otherwise inheritable.
Why hasn't he been fired yet for this comment? I just want top point out that if every black baby was aborted crime would not go down one bit. When was the last time that you a new born or an infant committing a crime? This comment proves what has been suspected all along about the Republican party. Along Rush Limbaugh calling Nagin a Nigger, what new strategy are the Republicans taking since Katrina. Could they be using the Katrina disasters for a new southern strategy? I mean these slips are permitted inside the republican noise machine. They are always coordinated.
Well, well. We could come up with some stats that prove that if we aborted the offspring of conservative whites about 50-60 years ago, we would have less white collar crime, federal cronyism and government incompetance.
The premise of Freakanomics was that the legalization of abortion created less crime in the nineties because those that were aborted, when abortion was legalized in the 70's, would have been of age to commit crime. The premise was that the majority of abortions were from poor or low income single or teenage parents. Nowhere did the authors mention that color was the factor in less crime nor did they say that crime went down immediately.
Bennett simply says that crime would go down if black babies were aborted. This is totally untrue and outright racism. Because (a) crime would not go down, the effects would take decades to come to that conclusion and (b) you are assuming that blacks are genetically predisposed to commit crime, which is racist.
Besides, the concept of "crime" is so subjective and changes over time.
Our codes are not that straight forward. Sure, killing is illegal. Most people can understand that. But after it was explained to me how a criminal code for "vehicular homicide" came into being, to specifically exclude Whites from having to deal with more serious charges, I think there is more to this "20 years for crack v. 2 for cocaine" argument that the codes are rigged to criminalize common Black behavior and excuse common White behavior. Old vagrancy laws are my other clue.
The Right can be counted on to make fools of them in public, but ever since Katrina, they've really come undone, haven't they?
Someone must have slipped truth serum in the water down there because we are starting to see the true message as opposed to there hidden rhetoric.
Here's a question: what's the incarceration rate like among blacks vs. other ethnic groups? Cause, technically, he might be right. Not in any owing to a racial predisposition to committing crimes, but purely due to the tendency of our judicial system to convict black people in higher proportion to other groups.
None of which matters in the context of his remarks. I don't for a second doubt the motivation behind them: given the opportunity to do so, I'm pretty sure he'd not hesitate to apply the final solution to the white man's burden.
To me, the really scary thing is that that was the first thing he thought in response to the caller, and he hasn't even developed enough shame to censor those thoughts.
Obe...if you aborted every White baby in the U.S., guess what?
You'd also see a drop in the crime rate.
Nope. "Crime rate" means the number of crimes in a constant population (e.g., 15 homicides per 100,000 people), not the total number of crimes. Therefore, if you eliminated all white people, the absolute number of crimes would go way down, but not the crime rate.
Making any statement about the genocide of any race is not only racist but just psychopathic. Would anyone of you make such a comment about any group of people ever?
Nope. "Crime rate" means the number of crimes in a constant population (e.g., 15 homicides per 100,000 people), not the total number of crimes. Therefore, if you eliminated all white people, the absolute number of crimes would go way down, but not the crime rate.
Obe | 09.28.05 - 9:58 pm | #
Ok kids, lets use the internet for good instead of evil:
Exhibit A: Alabama: population of 4,447,100, lots of them are black folks. What's the crime rate: 4,545.9 reported incidents per 100,000 people
Exhibit B: Oregon: population 3,421,399, not too many black folks, lots of mormons; crime rate: 4,845.4 reported incidents per 100,000 people.
http://www.disastercenter.com/cr...ime/
orcrime.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/cr...ime/
alcrime.htm
Bennett simply says that crime would go down if black babies were aborted. This is totally untrue and outright racism. Because (a) crime would not go down, the effects would take decades to come to that conclusion and (b) you are assuming that blacks are genetically predisposed to commit crime, which is racist.
(a) Bennett is not arguing that black babies commit crimes. Of course the effect of abortion on crime rate takes many years to show up.
(b) Genetic predisposition has absolutely nothing to do with crime rates. Black Americans have a higher crime rate than most other ethnic groups for many reasons, such as job discrimination, racist law enforcement, shitty schools, and the various structural forces in our society that screw poor people and keep them screwed -- but genetic predisposition is not one the list. As long as children of certain ethnic groups are more often born 50 yards behind the starting line in the rat race of our society, those ethnic groups will continue to have higher crime rates.
Man, if we aborted all the Irish babies, there'd be more alcohol for the rest of us!
But Obe, those female black babies only grow up to be incarcerated with a prevalence of 2.6%, while Hispanic males' prevalence is (7.7%) and the prevalence for white males (2.6%.. So, if Bennett is such a deep thinker why didn't he suggest saving the black female babies while aborting some of those Hispanic and white male babies.
Also, if you abort all the black babies, we have to find someone new to abuse and force to the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, which might induce them to commit crime (Remember the analysis of Freakonomics was based on lack of economic opportunity not race). So, you might not get all that much crime reduction bang for your abortion buck. Maybe better to import some other race to be even lower status than American blacks. Maybe Australian can lend us some aborigines.
Also, are arguing that incarceration rates = crime rate. True blacks are incarcerated at approximately 5 times the rate of non-Hispanic whites, but this doesn't mean that rate of commision of crimes is five times higher. I don't think that you really have the data to back up your nit-picking in this regard.
So, if Bennett is such a deep thinker why didn't he suggest saving the black female babies while aborting some of those Hispanic and white male babies.
Who said Bennett is a deep thinker? In my opinion, he's a shallow, racist prick with a gambling problem.
Also, if you abort all the black babies...
Let me state, once again, that I am 100% opposed to any forced abortion. As for aborting all black babies, that's impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible. I don't know why anyone would even mention it.
Maybe better to import some other race to be even lower status than American blacks. Maybe Australian can lend us some aborigines.
The Australian aborigines -- now there's some people who are really getting screwed. Like being black AND native american. at the same time.
Also, are arguing that incarceration rates = crime rate. True blacks are incarcerated at approximately 5 times the rate of non-Hispanic whites, but this doesn't mean that rate of commision of crimes is five times higher. I don't think that you really have the data to back up your nit-picking in this regard.
Are you really going to argue that crime rates do not vary by race and ethnicity? I'd glad to be proven wrong on that point. (But comparing Oregon to Alabama does not prove diddly.)
No, actually comparing Oregon to Alabama proves a lot. If your agreeing with Bennett that blacks are statistically more likely than whites to commit crimes then you have to explain why Alabama, with a higher percentage of black citizens doesn't have a higher crime rate. After all, when Bill's abortion for black folks program is over, the whole country would look a little more like Oregon, right? Also, I don't have to prove the negative, that "crime rates do not vary by race and ethnicity." You have to prove the proposition in the affirmative with appropriate evidence because it is the basis of your argument that Billy is in theory correct.
"you're" for "your" in the second line
Well, I just Googled around for statistics on race and crime. Unfortunately most websites on this topic are white power garbage, so I didn't find good numbers one way or the other.
As for Oregon and Alabama, there are far more differences between the two states than just racial. Interesting and useful, but far from conclusive.
As for Oregon and Alabama, there are far more differences between the two states than just racial.
Yeah, I suppose so. But if you drive east of Portland, past Gresham, to where you can hear the banjos playing, you'll find a very charming confluence of meth, country music, and jacked-up 4x4s. Lots of unwed mothers, deadbeat dads, the whole nine white-trash yards. Remember, Tonya Harding was from here.
well, of course crime rates are down, there's lots fewer pirates (and hence global warming is up too.)
Well looks like the poster boy for the Seven Deadly sins has lived up to his calling.
Not to mention coming off as a Nazi.
It boggles the mind why thinking person who takes a good look at this morbidly obese freak would take him seriously about anything related to religion or morality. Considering he embodies the worst of humanity, not the best.
Obe is a jackass racist troll. The Oregon to Alabama comparison is exactly the point. Alabama has a much higher percentage of African-Americans than Oregon. If African-Americans were more inclined to commit crimes based on genetic predisposition, Alabama would have a higher crime rate.
If you can show a set of circumstances where that is not the case, I'd be surprised. But you won't because you're a racist jackass.
Obe:
You obviously don't know much about statistics or the scientific method.
The fact that a higher than average percentage of African-American males are incarcerated does not lead to the conclusion that African-Americans are more likely to commit crimes. It's not evidence that there's a causal relationship.
It's sort of like saying that because the South tends to vote Republican that there's something about living below the Mason-Dixon line that makes people vote red. Statistics for the past 40 years show that the South has, indeed, voted increasingly for Republicans. But claiming that it's because they live on one side of an arbitrarily-drawn line is just stupid.
stickler,
somewhat ot, but a player for the portland trail blazers -- a black player, whose name i forgot -- said, iirc, that he was afraid of oregon outside of portland because he was afraid of being lynched.
and i believe parts of oregon and washington state are as redneck as many in indiana aka kentucky del norte.
All right, let concede to Obe the fact that blacks commit more crime.
It doesn't take into account that blacks are 5 times more likely than whites to live in poverty-impacted neighborhoods, and more alarmingly, 75 percent of poor blacks live in poor neighborhoods while this is true for only 25 percent of poor whites
pardon me -- i should've called indiana alta quentuqui, to keep with the spanish motif.
and back in the day -- say 100-150 years ago -- blacks and irish were both treated like dogs.
so bennett better watch it. who can say the u.s. will never kill a religious or ethnic group?
back in 1905, if you had told some one that a european country would've killed six million jews for being jews, he would've thought you were crazy.
Obe is a jackass racist troll. The Oregon to Alabama comparison is exactly the point. Alabama has a much higher percentage of African-Americans than Oregon. If African-Americans were more inclined to commit crimes based on genetic predisposition, Alabama would have a higher crime rate.
Since African-Americans are NOT genetically inclined to commit more crimes, the comparison proves diddly.
But claiming that it's because they live on one side of an arbitrarily-drawn line is just stupid.
Correct. The relationship between race and crime rate, or between geography and voting patterns, is not causal. It is correlative.
The Oregon to Alabama comparison is exactly the point.
Singularity, are you claiming that white people are genetically more inclined to commit crimes? Racist troll indeed.
Obe: under the UN Universal Charter on Human Rights, I believe systematized forced abortion would definitely qualify as genocide and a crime against humanity.
Also, the key to crime in the first place is an issue of social mobility, wage fairness, and povery... people tend to enter high-risk yet lucrative propositions (crime) at much higher rates if lower-risk, reasonable-return options are not available.
I guess social breakdown and rampant crime is the price we pay for the Republicans willing to share a tiny bit of their lucre to help society function better for all of us. Thanks, jerkoffs!
Sad to me is that this stuff is now openly stated. No one from his cohort to condemn it.
Dude, where's my country?
Obe,
They did in the 19th Century when the Irish were the poor criminals.
Obe: under the UN Universal Charter on Human Rights, I believe systematized forced abortion would definitely qualify as genocide and a crime against humanity.
No doubt. If forced abortions applied only blacks, that's clear case of genocide. (As opposed to China, which does not discriminate against a racial group in its forced abortion policy. ASFAIK, no country or international court has accused China of genocide for this.)
'course, current events in Darfur show that the enforcement mechanisms against genocide are pathetic, especially when blacks are the victims.
Obe,
They did in the 19th Century when the Irish were the poor criminals.
Did what? (Sorry, I lost the thread somewhere.)
Obe: Correct. The relationship between race and crime rate, or between geography and voting patterns, is not causal. It is correlative.
If you know that, then you should know that what Bennet said is not "technically correct" as you claimed in your earlier post. You also said "aborting all black children would eventually cause the crime rate to decrease" because "Black people commit a dispropotionately (sic) high percentage of crimes." Unless you have proof that they commit a higher percentage of crimes because they are black your statement is false and racist to boot. But you made it anyway.
Unless you have proof that they commit a higher percentage of crimes because they are black your statement is false and racist to boot.
No. To say that black people commit crimes because they are black is racist. But I'm saying just the opposite. The relationship between race and crime rate is NOT causal.
The crime rate of black people is simply a number. Just like the crime rate of white people, the average SAT score of Oregonians, or the average net worth of unemployed 42-year-old Asian-American mothers.
Uhh, anyone else get the feeling that debating Obe is like digging a hole in the desert? I don't think Obe is a troll so much as he/she has no idea where to go with this line of reasoning.
"Is that your "Final Solution" Mr. Bennett, or do you want to use your lifeline to uncle Goebbels
Um, Obe, actually, increased prosecution of blacks for drug crimes artificially inflates the conviction rates of blacks. Lawyers admit that this is nothing short of a pogrom -- I have had white attorneys in DAs offices say as much to me. Whites use more illegal drugs in an absolute sense and as a percentage of overall drug use, but police concentrate their efforts on poor and black neighborhoods. It's basically taken as a given in law school now (even conservative-leaning ones) that the drug war and the death penalty unequivocbly falls more heavily on blacks. Police are looking for blacks to arrest -- amazingly enough, they find them.
So correlation between conviction and crime commission are skewed, due to improper enforcement. Despite the billions of black market money laundered through Wall Street, the cops won't be cleaning it out anytime soon. If you take this into account, you can easily come up with numbers which show whites commiting a disproportionate amount of crime -- that's BEFORE you get to the obvious -- and valid -- comparison of Oregon to other states.
(And I lived in Oregon for a number of years. The depiction of the areas outside Portland on this blog, while not very nice, are accurate enough in my book in many cases.)
Which brings us to another issue: cost of crime. White collar crime costs the taxpayer an order of magnitude more than _all_other_crimes_combined_ in dollars. (I remember reading this last in a Hightower book, though I've seen the statistics elsewhere.) As far as sheer damage to the nation is concerned, whites commit more crime. This makes sense: the majority will ALWAYS do more damage than a minority because they have more power. Once we have a slew of black CEOs, maybe things will even themselves out, but right now, the average criminal is white, and most criminal damage is caused by whites, though the average _convict_ is of color.
Give it a couple of decades and this may change, but it's the status quo right now.
If you commited the evil and pernicious practice of racial profiling objectively, you'd be pulling white people off the street. But, of course, no one would ever recommend racial profiling unless it was done *illogically*, in a way that didn't affect onesself.
Again, it must be noted that these results in crime are a function of the majority having more power and influence in society. Something tells me that whites in Laos and Yemen have crime rates more like blacks here -- e.g., proportionately minority. (Ignoring how fuzzy the definition of "white" becomes once we look at nations outside the U.S.)
If you take this into account, you can easily come up with numbers which show whites commiting a disproportionate amount of crime
Interesting. I understood that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and that's because of our society's racist and past and present.
Let's assume you are correct, and that whites commit a disproportionate amount of crime. Can you give us a theory to explain? (And "genetic disposition" is not allowed.)
I've lived in Oregon my entire life, and I don't think it's any more racist (and I include Portland) than most other places I've visited. That's not to say that it's not racist -- the SPLC won a civil rights case for the family of an Ethiopian man beaten to death 15 years ago by some people who lived around the corner from me -- but I've heard the same expressions of racism elsewhere.
Obe, you can't agree with Bill Bennett (as you did) and pretend that it's not a racist comment. Bennett said that aborting every black baby in the country would make the crime rate go down. You said that was "technically correct". But that can't happen unless there's a causal relationship between the number of black babies and the crime rate. You've said that there isn't -- which is the only thing you're on solid ground about so far -- so you're apparently trying to have it both ways.
If there is no causal relationship, there is no effect. That's the whole "cause and effect" thingie.
As for "correlation", all I can say is cum hoc ergo propter hoc and point you to Wikipedia's article on "Correlation implies causation (logical fallacy)". Because that's what you and Bennett are saying.
His show is nationally syndicated by Salem Communications Corp.
Here's a list of the radio stations that carry his show.
Here is a paltry list of his immediate sponsors.
Let's get him fired, please?
darrelplant,
I think we're just talking past each other. "Correlation implies causation" IS a logical fallacy -- just because two factors correlate (such as race and crime) not does mean that one causes the other.
Let's turn it around. We can all agree that committing a crime does not CAUSE a person to become black. If black people have a higher crime rate than white people, and space aliens suddenly abducted every criminal, then the proportion of black people would drop. That's mathematics, not racism.
I have a great idea. Lets abort all the kids of Republicans and christian fundamentalists. Remember that the apple does not fall far from the tree. We could almost totally eliminate white collar crime and completely eliminate all the religious scams that are sucking dry our poor superstitious, fearful, uneducated white trash.
Can I hear an AMEN!
I don't understand while everyone is arguing against Obe's claim that Bennett's statement is "technically correct."
Allow me to clarify:
1) Bennett's statement assumes that forced abortion of black babies is not considered a crime. The statement, "if that were your sole purpose," implies that this is not considered a crime, but an act of policymakers.
2) Crimes only count if they are included in the crime rate as released by the Justice Department.
3) There is the assumption that the crime rate among blacks would remain higher than among other ethnicities. The situation is hypothetical, so we can only speculate from trends that this would be the case.
If we make these three assumptions, which I assume Bennett did, then his statement is correct.
A note on the third point: Bennett's comment, "So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky," indicates that my third assertion was his point all along. He was trying to show how the caller's speculative logic is invalid. He used such an extreme example to underscore his point.
Do any of you have the ability to think logically rather than emotionally? Bennett was making a truthful, factual, logic-based statement that in no way suggests or condones the actual abortion of a population of people.
"Obe" is much closer to seeing Bennett's comment for what it is than any of the rest of you from what I see in your posts. Bennett's words are a logic-based point that effectually mean what the statistics already prove--that blacks as a population drive up the total RATE of crime in the U.S. This cannot statistically be argued against. In no way is he proposing the elimination of the black population.
When I see emotionally-charged responses to challenging issues which should ideally be discussed logically, it just reaffirms my feeling that most of the world lives in a childish sea of irrational everyday thought. People like Bennett who bring these kinds of issues to the forefront with unabashed candor are good for the world. Wishful victims like Pelosi embody an unhealthy, false mentality that is holding the world back.
Amazing but what Bennett said is true. Blacks just do not _think_ the way normal people do. If you put more than 50 blacks together in a room they start killing each other because they have that jungle mentality. Anyone who thinks otherwise just has no clue to what real black people are like. I suggest you go out into the real world and experience black america before you start your slandering.
Dear Halo,
Would you please post these comments in whole with out any missing minutes (as in time) or seconds. I feel these comments may have been taken out of context. Let's have the whole deal.
Thank you,
Rev. Orellano
Obe said:
Interesting. I understood that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and that's because of our society's racist and past and present.
***
I heard that, then I heard opposite. However, I KNOW that blacks are more likely to be *prosecuted* and *sentenced* for a given crime, even if I were wrong about whites committing a disproportionate amount. I don't think I am though. And I am also certain about the disproportionate effects of crimes caused by whites, but that's obvious: two extra hubcap thieves will in no way "balance" an additional Ken Lay or George Bush.
Obe said:
Let's assume you are correct, and that whites commit a disproportionate amount of crime. Can you give us a theory to explain? (And "genetic disposition" is not allowed.)
***
Power. People will do what you let them do, as grandma used to say. To put it more formally, there's Lord Byron's "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda neat."
Um. Or something like that.
The sword of damocles does not sit above the neck of the white businessman as it does the black social climber or latino inventor. Lawyers discuss the effects and effectiveness of punishment for discouraging crime all the time. Let's pretend that all those silly psychologists and many sociologists are wrong and say threat of punishment has at least a significant effect on crime.
Alright then. Even the dumbest black kid [from an economic background average for his ethnicity] knows that most courts in the U.S. have the deck stacked against him. A white kid, also from an economic background average for his ethnicity, would not see things as quite so threatening.
A child of privilege from a *white* family is much more likely to believe he has carte blanche to run amok.
A child of privilege from a black family may be an ass, but if he has any sense, he remembers his melanin content is a strike against him with many Powers That Be and he picks his friends and activities with care.
Imagine going through life expecting to one day having to beat false charges against you. You know it will happen, it's just a matter of time. This is where I am, and many of my peers are.
How the hell would anyone need to resort to genetics? And, Obe, such a genetics argument (you supposed in your post) would insult *me*. I'm the color the racist rightwingers are gunning for. Not going to hear it from me, anymore than you'll see an edition of the bell curve point out a white genetic predisposition for thievery, despite the province of embezzelment and money laundering being dominated by whites in the U.S.
And again, the reason for whites cornering the market here on those methods is because, surprise surprise, whites tend to have more money than minorities and more access to the levers of power to commit those crimes. Would you be astounded to find that in China, ethnic Koreans commit very little corporate crime and the Chinese run organized crime, or that in Paraguay hispanics are the top embezzlers?
You'd have to be an imbecile to ignore the blatantly obvious social structure that lends itself to, enables, or even encourages certain criminal behavior for certain groups and discourages it or makes it impossible for others.
Or you'd have to have a combination of intellectual dishonesty, insecurity, and hubris. This combination is more likely. This is the basis of Republican racial thought. But once you can ignore obvious aspects of society as a cause of social phenomenon, you can jump straight to genetics.
Interestingly enough, this is even more absurd when you think about it. The layman can speak with reasonable authority on sociology -- he's lived in society all his life, after all -- but pretty much talks out of his ass when it comes to genetics, a field that's really still in its infancy compared to many other aspects of biology. But I digress.
THIS POST BY geos SAYS IT ALL:
"Ok kids, lets use the internet for good instead of evil:
Exhibit A: Alabama: population of 4,447,100, lots of them are black folks. What's the crime rate: 4,545.9 reported incidents per 100,000 people
Exhibit B: Oregon: population 3,421,399, not too many black folks, lots of mormons; crime rate: 4,845.4 reported incidents per 100,000 people.
http://www.disastercenter.com/cr...ime/ orcrime.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/cr...ime/ alcrime.htm"
Is William Bennett about as big a retard as they come? He should be fired for making such outrageous statements about black people.
Close look at Bennett's words at Poopsheet:
http://elephantpoopsheet.blogspot.com/
This comment goes out to all of you who believe that Blacks are all on welfare and have multiple babies. I am hear to inform you that YOU ARE DEAD WRONG!!! Sorry to burst your bubble but there are many many many educated, intelligent African Americans. Yes, I am one of them BS, MBA, & a PhD with no children by choice. Sure you can find some African Americans who steel, live off of welfare and are not educated but you can find that in any race. As for white people, do you feel that you are pure. Please tell me you are not believing that!!! White people make up 75% of all welfare recipents. Since you want to talk about all the bad things that blacks do what about Meth Labs, Incest, Murder, Canabilizm, it seems that your crimes are way more sinister. What I am trying to convey is that there is bad in EVERY RACE including yours. It's ignorant people that keep racism alive.
Nubian Goddess, with all those degrees, you still don't know the difference between STEEL and STEAL? I guess you weren't an English major.
And the moral of the story?
some thoughts should never leave one's mind
Bennet does not want all blacks aborted.
Bennet does want to think about hypothetical situations.
It is usually the less intelligent people who do not like to have other people thinking about unlikely hypothetical situations.
What Bennet said is correct.
Surveys of reported crime show blacks committing more crime per capita than other races, so it is not just the prosecution rate that causes the difference.
Blacks DO have a genetic predisposition to commit crime.
Almost no one wants the law abiding negros to be punished unjustly.
If my use of the word "negro" in the last sentence, rather than "black" got you angry, then you are most likely stupid for caring about something so inconsequential, and are helping to make actual discussion of important topics more difficult for people.
Nothing I have said so far is hateful.
If you do not believe me , it is probably because you are too stupid to figure out my actual motivations for saying these things. This is probably related to your avoiding having thought about any unlikely hypothetical scenarios for most of your life.
What Bennet said was very interesting from a tactical point of view, because most of the possible counter arguments divide the prochoice from the anti-racists.
In other words,
if all races are equal , and you don't mind abortion, then what WOULD be the problem with aborting all the black babies? Woudn't the whites reproduce to catch up in a few generations? Wouldn't white babies be just as good as black ones?
For the record, I would rather no black or white babies were aborted, and i do believe that whites and blacks have different genetic tendencies for intelligence on the average, and for criminal behavior.
Belief in racial differences is good because they DO exist.
Hating people when you are not sure if they are actually evil or not is only advisable in certain situations. For example if your are 80 percent sure that they guy who stabbed you in the prison shower was this guy, should you attack him? But he might be innocent. But if you don't you might get raped more. I am not sure about whether hating a person when you are not sure of his/ her actual past is advisable , but it seems in most cases it is inadvisable.
Those of you who are merely misinformed about the science, and actually believe that the racial difference in tendency to commit crime is caused almost entirely by environment do not anger me so much.
It is the people who do not even concede that it is even remotely possible that genes can play a role in the tendency to commit crime who do.
Would any of you be against some billionaire, paying large numbers of blacks to abort their babies?
IF so why?
I am really interested in the reasons given by people who are prochoice and who also do not believe in racial behavioral differences.
Nubian Mother,
Most racists believe that there are bad and good in every race.
But they are still racist because they believe that the percentage of good people in each race differs somewhat and that the difference is caused by their genes.
And they are correct.
And why are so many people so convinced that the racists are incorrect?
ntrstr:
It is the people who do not even concede that it is even remotely possible that genes can play a role in the tendency to commit crime who do.
***
And now, here's the aforementioned dumbass that I described hypothetically who thinks genetics has informed human knowledge as to racial disparities. It hasn't. It was (briefly) in my field of study.
For one thing, the concept of ethnicity, as it is commonly used, has bupkiss to do with significant distinctions within the genotype of a population. As a result, a "black" man -- note that the term is arbitrary and unscientifically defined -- can have more genetically in common with a "white" man than with another "black" man. Races were invented not to taxonomically divide humans for study, but to establish an excuse to commit various blasphemies against one another. The concepts of white and black change as decades go by. The Irish weren't always white and the North Africans weren't always black (and some still aren't -- it's a bit tricky to keep track).
Basically, it's made-up bullshit using a single phenotypical trait that is subjectively evaluated as a measuring rod for a host of genetic traits that have no correlation or chemical link to that trait. It's like measuring dick size by eye color.
And yet, there are some who will try even that, perhaps even on this blog.
But let's assume all this dumbass bullshittery has even a modicum of truth behind it. Okay, and we have to pretend -- you can't even assume this, it's such a flat-out lie that it can't even be maintained seriously, like the moon is made of cheese -- we have to pretend that "white," "black," "latino (!)" "asian (!!)" etc., shorthands based on a few physical traits that ignore several thousand not-immediately-obvious genetic traits, are somehow codifiable ethnicities that can be distinguished scientifically. (You can certainly identify broad population groups, but you only get broad trends there -- if you start to look at them closely you end up with subdivsions that defy melanin content. Eventually, you end up with family groups, but no one wants to call those "races.") The only way one can identify a genetically-prone-to-criminal-behavior group is, of course, to note the efficacy of its criminal behavior. In other words, whose criminal behavior is dragging society down the most.
Well, as I've already pointed out, the most damaging crime and the majority thereofis committed by those in power, exactly how it's been for around ten thousand years of human history. This is because those with power a) will commit more crime because they don't expect to be caught, b) will commit more crime because their power allows them to escape capture after commission, and c) have more influence to misuse in the comission of said crime. To be specific, the most dangerous criminals in the U.S. include Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Bush, Lay, et. al. We add Rice and Gonzales, but note the relatively low representation of people of their shades (oh my *that's* a scientific classification that will survive peer review) in the halls of power.
In other words, you end up with whites being the most dangerous, crime-ridden "race" in the U.S. Any economic analysis will come out the same way.
By the dumbass racist logic used by some of our esteemed pe-- um, let's say other blog posters -- a trend where criminal behavior falls heavily on one race is indicative of a genetic predisposition towards crime. No linking criteria necessary! My goodness, this certainly saves on research grants! No need to put all those silly scientists in a lab to verify this by using "chemistry" and "the scientific method." Being a complete asshole is not only self-satisfying but *frugal*, like masturbating with off-brand lotion.
But I digress! By the magic that is racist logic, the fact that white crime has a heavier and more severe and disproportionate effect on society than all other races put together allows me to conclude that whites are more prone to crime than other races. Weeee! Watch me go! Wait till all my white friends find out! They'll be so impressed with my cleverness they probably won't be able to say anything!
(NOTE: By using verifiable facts -- economic damage caused by crime -- the racist analysis above comes out faulting whites rather than blacks. It is the use of verifiable facts that makes the analysis significantly different than what is employed by the usual white supremacist crowd.)
Of course, using this logic in China leads one to conclude that the Chinese are predisposed to crime, more than any other race in China! Pity those honest ethnic Koreans.
Until you go to Korea, where those Koreans are leaders in corruption!
And using it in Turkey would lead one to find those Turks as being far more criminal, by genetic predisposition, than the Kurds!
. . . until you visited Kurd-controlled Iraq, where the Kurd majority displays such a serious misuse of power (as they HAVE pretty much all the power so they're the only ones who can seriously misuse it) that we conclude *Kurds* are predisposed to criminal behavior!
And then using it in Zimbabwe would -- oh, my, oops, we have different kinds of "black" there, don't we, and the ethnicities there were defined long before the white/black definitions in the rapidly-changing U.S., so they have an argument for being superior to our defintions. (After all, they're more precise and linked to geography and distinct, intermarrying groups as opposed to the you-must-have-been-dropped-at-birth-fucking-dumb Visible Melanin Content Standard (tm)). Well, I guess it would show that one tribe of people-we-would-call-black-but-have to-distinguish-from-other-people-we-would-call-
black-because there's-a-long-history-of-division would commit more crime than some other people-we-would-call-black-but-have to-distinguish-from-other-people-we-would-call-
black. . .
Well, if this seems complicated, it is. Stupidity and evil are ALWAYS more complicated than intelligence or selflessness. It's only easier at the first step.
Hm. Blatant racism is almost a luxury. It's like living in fear of developing an undiscoverable cancer and finding out you have a violent flu. At least you know where you stand.
"Being a complete asshole is not only self-satisfying but *frugal*, like masturbating with off-brand lotion."
----- No One of Consequence
*************************************
hahahah. awesome, that brought a smile to my face on a crappy day, thanks! I don't buy the racial-crime link personally. I mean c'mon. Crime is more linked to poverty (which is unrelated to race directly, but indirectly more blacks are poor, because of historic reasons) But considering a lot of midwestern/southern states, Whites and hispanics are the usual crime perpetrators. The newspaper from my hometown is full of whites with DUI and meth busts and hispanics for fighting/gang related violence. Does that mean we should eliminate all whites and hispanics? heh, no, because then the town would be completely empty except for that one asian family, one black guy, and one native american. Though they'd appreciate it I'm sure.
NubianGoddess,
You claim to be a educated black woman with a "BS, MBA, & a PhD". It is difficult to believe that given your lack of understanding of proper English grammer. It is "I am here to inform you" not "I am hear to inform you", "Cannibalism" not "Canabilizm", "steal" not "steel". Looks like you need to get back to school.
Dear No one of consequence,
How do police identify the probable race of a person based on their DNA?
They look at a particular area that they know almost always contains a sequence that correlates strongly with "the race the person looks like"
This portion of this chromosome, may not even have any sections that code for proteins, but the fact that it is a strong enough correlation that it can be used to identify how someone looks should make it seem likely to you that the other parts that actually do code for proteins probably do contain alleles that correlate with race also, even if they are not as strong a correlation.
The amount of melanin in the skin is not really what determines what race someone appears to be. The determining
factors are really the morphology of the face and other body parts.
If you showed people an albine negro, they would say that he is part of the black race, and if you stained a caucasion persons skin with walnut or something , very evenly, people would still call him a white person.
So even though i agree that the amount of melanin in the skin does not seem to be very predictive of behavior, I will not say the same thing for morphology.
Even if thereis a gene that affects appearance that has little effect on behavior, if that gene happens to lie very close to another gene that does have a strong effect on behavior, then the first gene's particular allele can still be used to make predictions about behavior, because when genes are close together they are relatively unlikely to get separated.
I agree that there are some blacks who are less genetically similar to each other than one of them is to a particular white man. Maybe the traits we tend to be good at noticing are the ones that are relatively more important for gauging behavior, maybe not.
Do you even admit that there are some genes that code for proteins that is found it 60 percent of of people who appear black, but only in 40 percent of people who appear white?
If there are, say ten such genes, and each those genes affect behaviors in some way that is roughly similar to the effect of the other nice, wouldn't you expect people to notice some correlation between the appearance and the behavior.
Whether the words black, asian, negro, mean exactly what they used to mean in yesteryear is not really too relevant. Each new generation notices that certain morphologies correlate with certain behavioral trends.
Didn't scientists recently find two genes that affect the brain, for which
the variants were not any where near randomly distributed over various ethnicities?
In response to your comments about research,
we should continue to research and find exactly which genes affect criminality and how much effect they have. But if you don't have absolute proof of it, in the meantime, you should try to guess. Dont just assume that there is not any correlation between genes and criminality.
And about the Zimbabweans whom you claim are strongly distinct groups,
well, if they are distinct enough that there are many somewhat consistent trends in the frequencies of many of the alleles , then i would expect that
there WOULD likely be some difference
in behavior caused by that difference.
Environment almost certainly plays a role in behavior, and criminality.
It is an interesting point about the type of crime and how harmful it is to humanity. But you know that we were talking about violent crime mainly. Violent.
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