[Mb-civic] A Better Cure Than Abortion - William Raspberry - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

A Better Cure Than Abortion

By William Raspberry
Monday, October 10, 2005; Page A19

You know by now what William Bennett said: "You could abort every black 
baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

What you may not have figured out is what your reaction to his statement 
should be.
You could demand that the former education secretary and drug "czar" 
apologize, be fired by the radio station on which he made the remark and 
be ridden out of town on a rail.

You could say: "What a wonderful solution to crime. Let's do it -- oops, 
I forgot, I'm opposed to abortion."

You could call for an end to the hypocrisy, noting that Bennett made 
crystal clear -- even as he was delivering his awful words -- that he 
was not recommending any such "impossible, ridiculous and morally 
reprehensible" action, only making a rhetorical point on quite another 
matter.

You could challenge the underlying premise that blacks commit a 
disproportionate amount of the nation's crime -- which is what the 
Justice Policy Institute is trying to do. Jason Ziedenberg, the 
institute's executive director, has been making a number of points: 
among them that blacks are more likely than whites to end up in prison 
for the same offenses and that, holding constant such factors as 
education, employment and family structure, blacks are no more 
criminally disposed than whites.

Or you could tell a story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100900551.html
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