Protest RACIST Bill Bennett in Cincinnati next Tuesday!

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

don't let him play the victim. don't let him wiggle out of his blatant racism-the central argument of his point was that 'blacks commit more crimes' whether he really wants to abort black babies or not-he still at the least, made that slur

info on his event-please forward to ohio dems
http://www.ucrepublicans.com/bennett.aspx

[dogman]

1. Here's a sign.

'blacks commit more crimes'
WANT TO BET?

[Igel]

2. No, his point was that they had a higher crime rate.

This isn't a controversial statement, and is far from a novel utterance. And it's different from what you wrote.

The original research was to understand the relationship between poverty and crime rates. Only after incorporating geographic isolation (segregation), crappy education rates, and unemployment did the correlation firm up nicely. This led to policies (in the late '90s) to work at breaking up this persistent bundling of properties, and provided an explanation as to why single-issue approaches had usually failed.

It was quickly pointed out that those in such communities also had higher abortion rates; and that the increase in abortion rates correlated with the decrease in crime rates in those communities. This, a pro-choice argument when put forward, was a fairly straightforward implication.

It can be spun in a racist manner; it's unclear Bennett did so, if you read his comments in context. But that doesn't diminish the usefulness of the research, or the fact that those producing it were motivating highly progressive policies. Let's not banish everything that can be abused: included in the list would be fire and wells.

[mongo]

3. spun in a racist manner?

I don't think it's unclear at all what Bennett said, and it was a clearly racist statement:

Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006

[Igel]

4. Quote not a mangled retelling of what he said,

but what he said. The closer you get to the original source, the more reliable your interpretation is likely to be, the less filtered your thinking will be. Even the NYT managed to quote more of what Bennett actually said, without adding words.

But the piecemeal quotes manages to point out that first and foremost it was a "far-reaching ... extrapolation"; it doesn't point out his attitude, except to say he 'dismissed' it.

[AngryOldDem]

5. Exactly

It's like saying, "Not that I would necessarily approve of this, or endorse it, or anything, BUT..."

He said it. He just should have kept his big mouth shut. Period.

[Algorem]

6. looks like he chickened out-

http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/cleveland/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1128348241200061.xml&storylist=cleveland

Outcry prompts former education secretary to delay appearance

10/3/2005, 9:56 a.m. ET
The Associated Press

CINCINNATI (AP) — Former Education Secretary William Bennett has postponed an appearance at the University of Cincinnati because of what he called a "willful distortion" of his remarks about aborting black babies.

Bennett said controversy stemming from his "Morning in America" radio show last week would detract from serious discussions of issues. College Democrats at the university had said they would protest Tuesday's scheduled appearance.

"The current controversy that has arisen around comments I made on my radio show, based on a willful distortion of what I said, will take away from the serious discussion I wanted to engage in with the students and community at the University of Cincinnati," Bennett said in a statement released Sunday by the UC College Republicans.

While answering a caller's question, the author of "The Book of Virtues" took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up...