Ummmm….lemme guess…YOU’RE a real racist!

** Responding to aramis comment a couple of entries back:

Charlotte Hays in her “loose canon” blog of September 30, 2005 – “Guess Who the Real Racists Are” – implies that Bill Bennett was only refuting a thesis put forward in the popular book "Freakonomics” that the crime rate dropped because of the effects of Roe v. Wade, the law legalizing abortion. Because Bennett is against abortion he is against the thesis, of course. But in interpreting it for us he specifically uses the term “black baby” in describing how the crime rate would certainly go down. Here’s what he said:

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.

Hays claims the Freakonomics thesis is “inherently racist” because “black males make up a disproportionate segment of the prison population.”

But as always, it’s good to read the book before you comment on it. The book never mentions race as a factor. It cites poverty and poor family conditions as the factors in the creation of a criminal class. Here’s the verbatim from the book:
P. 6 Freakonomics

So, how did Roe v. Wade help trigger, a generation later, the greatest crime drop in recorded history?

As far as crime is concerned, it turns out that not all children are born equal. Not even close. Decades of studies have shown that a child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal. And the millions of women most likely to have an abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade—poor, unmarried, and teenage mothers for whom illegal abortions had been too expensive or too hard to get- were often models of adversity. They were the very women whose children, if born, would have been much more likely than average to become criminals. (For author Steven Leavitt's respone to Bennett's remarks see this in the Freakonomics website.)

A post in the Hays blog (rea 1219) sums it up:

Well, of course race isnt itself a factor. Its poverty. The culture of poverty (and need and hopelessness) breeds criminals. Our black communities often times are also our poorest. Thats a reality, and thats why there is a correlation. And of course there are several reasons for this (stemming from racial inequality) but none having to do with skin pigmentation, (unless we include others' perceptions of it.)

Even if the statistics are skewed, it’s important how you choose your words. And Bennett’s words are the words of a racist – maybe even in spite of his intentions.