Why not? Because I don’t believe in enabling ignorance. The remark I hypothetically made is not offensive and only the ignorant would take offense.
Hold that thought. Maintain it.
and, as has been pointed out several times, incarceration rates does not equal crime rates. simple as that.
Yes. Just the other day, he was talking about puppies and rainbows and there were five or six threads in the pit alone smearing him for it!
He hasn’t been out of the pit since he got his show. Because it doesn’t matter what he says, only that he says something. Riiiight.
Well, no. Race is discussed in the book. The correllation is shown while it is demonstrated that it is not a causative one.
No. He most emphatically did not misrepresent the book. Even Levitt concedes as much on his website. The only gripe Levitt has is Bennett’s both endorsing and disputing Levitt’s claim. He agrees that Bennett is correct.
Well, I agree with you… and I don’t. Bennett did not make a particularly sensitive remark. No question about that.
The problem that I have is this being picked up by George Soros’s website, deliberately having it’s context reversed so that in the news stories it seems like Bennett is advocating the abortion of Black babies, and generally turned into a smear campaign that paints him as a racist.
I’ll concede it’s a faux pas. But only because we live in a hypersensitive society. The crime here, isn’t what Bennett said, the crime is the smear machine twisting it and destroying the man. That’s the issue, and that’s what disgusts me.
He did nothing of the sort - he made it plainly clear in his statement that if one were to abort all black babies, then the crime rate would decline. What is one suppose to deduce from this statement?
So what? Any number of correlations can be produced by examining a wide range of phenomenon. monstro provided a host of hypothetical’s that could probably be shown have strong correlations with one another.
However, just because it is an established fact that being black correlates with a disproportionate rate of the kind of violent crime that most people, black or white, understand when they mention crime, doesn’t mean that one can therefore logically deduce that being black is the cause of that crime. The two are linked, but there’s no clear understanding that there’s a direct link (cause-effect) relationship between the two.
It may not, on the face of it, be a racist statement, but it’s not hard for many people to deduce the logic of his argument as being racist:
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High correlation between blacks and crime - established fact
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Abort all black babies and crime rates will drop (inferred from the correlative fact, but one that does not logically follow - cannot necessarily deduce causation from correlation.
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Inference deduced from argument - “blackness” is a cause of “high rates of crime”
If that wasn’t the intented inference he was trying to elicit, then I think Bennett did a poor job of putting forth his argument.
This is, unfortunately, a fact. There is a much higher crime rate amongst black people.
I unnderstand the reasons why this is a fact. I’m not prejudice, and I don’t think it says anything in general about black people other than they are disproportionately underprivileged in this country (disclaimer.)
I see no reason why we should pussyfoot around this fact, or pretend it doesn’t exist. It is, in fact, countrerproductive. It’s a real issue. It’s a real fact, and there is nothing wrong with addressing it.
If it is not bigoted to discuss the problem that black people are disproportionately underprivileged, than it cannot be a problem to discuss that they have higher crime rates. The two go hand in hand.
blacks are over represented in prisons. yes. but the crime data that is always pointed out is number of persons found guilty /imprisoned vs. percentages of total found guilty.
this does not equate to ‘blacks are responsible for more crime/ more violent crime etc.’.
in the first place, one person in prison does NOT equal one crime. one person may in fact be reponsible for a thousand crimes and that fact is not discernable by data most often referred.
all crime (even all violent crime) is not reported. not all reported crime is solved.
I do not see any proof offered that the solved rate data is represenative of all crime as a whole.
Oh, come on. Arrests and convictions are a common method of measuring crime. Perfect? Probably not. Your second point would be very important if someone had claimed causality. They didn’t. It was a simple correlation that works for the point he was making. Was the point dumb, insensitive, and unnecessary to his argument? Absolutely.
I tried to. Took you too long. Back on you.
What the fuck is your problem? Wait. I don’t care enough to know. Nevermind. :rolleyes:
What you are presenting is the ratio people imprisoned versus convicted. I have not ever seen that statistic presented, much less as a surrogate for the crime rate which is violent crimes per capita.
No. It doesn’t. I’m not sure what your ratio represents. I’ve never seen it used.
It seems to me that the whole premise of your objection is that the ration of convictions to imprisonment is the crime rate. This is not a fact. The crime rate is the the number of reported crimes versus the population. A crime does not have to be solved nor does there have to be a conviction for it to be a part of the crime rate. Of course, it does need to be reported.
Some studies will attempt to correct for unreported crimes in much the same way unemployment figures are corrected. Others do not.
At any rate, statistically, there is a higher crime rate amongst the black population. That is unfortunately a fact. It is a fact Levitt deals with in Freakonomics. It’s an interesting book. It’s really a study in seperating out causation from correllation.
For example, if you look at the crime rate of all black people versus the general population, that crime rate is significantly higher. From this a careless person might conclude that black people are more predisposed to committing crimes.
However, there are numerous other correllations to crime besides race. There is poverty, education, and whether or not one comes from a single family home. What Freakonomics does is show us how Levitt seperates these issues out in order to demonstrate causality.
In the case of race, it is simple. If you compare a sample of black people at the poverty level with a sample of the general population at the poverty level, the two crime rates are identical. Being black does not effect a propensity to crime if you control for poverty.
If you compare people at the poverty level versus the general population then the people at the poverty level have an extremely high crime rate.
Therefore, we can logically conclude that while race is correllated with crime, it is not causative.
This may sound simplistic but from such techniques Levitt is able to glean causative correllation between the KKK and Real Estate agents, for example. He is able to demonstrate definitively that Sumo wrestling is fixed. He got a number of Chicago teachers fired by definitively proving they were cheating on behalf of their students for standardized testing. Most interesting to me though, was his study of the economics of drug dealing, beginning with the question why do most drug dealers live with their Mom?
Let’s be generous, then. Lets stipulate that Bennet is not demonstratively racist, but merely clumsy, inept, and thunderously insensitive to the reaction of his fellow citizens. We remain, of course, somewhat surprised that a man so frequent to the public stage is so…innocent. Let’s count our blessings, that no man who wishes to remain on said public stage can endorse racism, and be tolerated.
Clearly, this man who so recently appointed himself the nation’s scold laureate, has seen better days. That he should hustle himself so ignominiously, to scramble after the crumbs to fall from the table of your Hannitys, your Limbaughs, your Savages.
And let us not forget that at one time the crypto-Calvinist Mr. Bennet was being bruited about as a possible presidential candidate! (My fellow short term memory enthusiasts may wish to look that up.) We should thank our lucky stars that such a clumsy and inept buttwhistler was not elected President!
Lucky us!
crime is reported as x percent to population ration.
incarceration is reported as x number of (various categories). so far, most folks are talking as if the two things were pretty much the same thing, and of course, that the incarcerated ratio is extrapolative to the measurment of “all crime will show up this way”. as in "x percent of violent criminals incarcerated are x race, therefore, x race is responsible for that percentage of violent crime.
that is not (From what I see) a supportive conclusion from the data reported, yet is bandied about as an absolute truth.
the reasons I give for “it’s not supportable” are:
- the numbers for crime are reported as a raw number, crime data then is put out as a percentage of the population.
- incarceration data is reported according to individuals, not according to numbers of crimes.
look at it this way. if our population is 100 people, 80 of whom are white, 20 minorities, the number of crimes reported and solved (remembering that many crimes are not reported, many more are not solved, and we have no reliable data to suggest that the data that we have on solved crime is representative of crime as a whole, and some suggestion that it may not be); and lets say that the number of violent crimes for that 100 is 10. But that one white person is responsible for 8 of those violent crimes, and two blacks are responsible for one each, it will look like blacks are responsible for more violent crimes, since there’s two of them, but in reality the white was responsible for more violent crimes.
the data is reported as:
violent crime rate per raw number of popultions, and number of incarcerated (which then can be calculalted out as representative of that population as a whole)>
the two numbers should not be used together because the data is not measured the same way.
when you’re cooking and adding a 4 pound bag of flour plus 3 eggs, you wouldn’t tend to think of it as a predominantly eggy measure, yet many tend to look at the raw numbers of folks in prison as if that some how is representative of how likely how often , how responsible for that type of crime that category is.
(and that little example doesn’t even begin to cover plea bargains, reduced pleas, unsolved crime rates and the unreported factor._)
Against whose ledger goes an unsolved crime?
You’re flailing. Good to see.
No one has provided statistics for any such thing. What the statistics show is that black people are more likely to be arrested or convicted, not they are actually committing more crimes.
Then please, by all means, show some evidence that the actual crime rates of white and black Americans are equivalent. Failing that, it seems reasonable to assume that the traditional crime statistics point to a real, if overstated, correlation between race and crime.

“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce the number of mental institution patients, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every Jewish baby in this country, and your commiment rate would go down.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to increase the average IQ of Americans, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every blonde baby in this country, and your average IQ would go up.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to increase the average productivity of Americans, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every Hispanic baby in this country, and your productivity would go up.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce the incidence of alcoholism, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every Native American baby in this country, and your sobreity would go up.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce racism, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every white baby in this country, and your racism would go down.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce terrorism, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every Muslim baby in this country, and your terrorism would go down.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce the spread of STDs, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every homosexual baby in this country, and your STDs would go down.”
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce willful ignorance, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every Christian baby in this country, and the number of willfully ignorant people would go down.”
Some of those reflect mere stereotypes, some represent actual correlative relationships. In private, I would see no problem whatsoever with referencing one of those relationships to make a the kind of point that Bennett was making. On the radio, I would try to refrain, only because my statement could easily be taken out of context and/or misunderstood, causing much needless offense. Speaking extemperaneously, however, anyone would eventually let his guard down and say something careless.
But it’s still not half as careless as some of the backlash.
As others have noted in this thread, Bill “Snake Eyes” Bennett is a hypocritical, right wing piece of shit.
I can’t believe how some of the morons wingnuts here are defending him, especially Scylla. Hey, you idiot, you want me to lend you a backhoe so you can dig yourself in a little deeper?
In any case, is Bennett a racist? Probably no more than your average white person is who says he’s not and thinks he’s not. But what he said was still fucking offensive and idiotic.
You just don’t talk about eliminating an entire race while pointing out the beneficial things that might accomplish. Not as a hypothetical, not for any reason. His excuse, “Well, I was just bloviating,” doesn’t wash.
He really needs to get off the radio, go to Vegas, and do what he likes best: blowing his wealth on the one-armed-bandit. Stupid fuck.

You just don’t talk about eliminating an entire race while pointing out the beneficial things that might accomplish. Not as a hypothetical, not for any reason.
Yeah, that’s double-plus ungood.
Seriously, though. Are you saying that you shouldn’t say that sort of thing on a public forum like Bennett’s radio show, or that you shouldn’t even say it in private? If it’s the former, then you should agree that it was merely a mental lapse on Bennett’s part. If it’s the latter, then I hope you take my 1984 reference to heart, you censorious twit.
You’re not serious, are you? The man was advocating genocide, for crying out loud!
Um…don’t see if this has been said before, but for it to be genocide, wouldn’t the fetuses in-utero have to be regarded as fully human children? Which means that by your assertion that this was a call for genocide, all abortion is murder in the cruelest, most rephrehensable form?
despite William Bennett for his role as drug czar and would-be morality watchdog, but the context makes it clear that Bennett was not advocating aborting black babies, just making a rhetorical point
“I’m not a racist, but I kinda see what he means about the black people making all the crime, so he gets a pass.”

Um…don’t see if this has been said before, but for it to be genocide, wouldn’t the fetuses in-utero have to be regarded as fully human children? Which means that by your assertion that this was a call for genocide, all abortion is murder in the cruelest, most rephrehensable form?
No.
Because the significance is not any single abortion, but the fact that advocating the abortion of all black fetuses, in perpetuity, would lead to no more black babies and, eventually, no more black people, period.
Nice try though. :rolleyes: