How about this nugget from William Bennett.

"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.

"That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down,"

and

"I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition. Put that forward. Examined it. And then said about it that it's morally reprehensible. To recommend abortion of an entire group of people in order to lower your crime rate is morally reprehensible. But this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means," he told CNN.

"I'm not racist, and I'll put my record up against theirs," referring to Pelosi and other critics. "I've been a champion of the real civil rights issue of our times -- equal educational opportunities for kids."

"We've got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses," Bennett said.

"I don't think people have the right to be angry, if they look at the whole thing. But if they get a selective part of my comment, I can see why they would be angry. If somebody thought I was advocating that, they ought to be angry. I would be angry."

"But that's not what I advocate."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/30/ ... index.html

woah.

if you aborted every baby of every race for a year, the crime rate would probably go down

I personally think our own Senator had been impersonating the former Secretary as part of his plan to save the Democratic Party.

....

Damn.
Just... Damn.

This is either from Freakanomics, or a theory by the dude who wrote it, and also, provable. Why did he point out black people? because he's a racist, but also a moron, and morally comprised hypocrite. I wish we lived in the type of world where people like him would be marginalized, but we live in a type of world where people with money will always matter, and so B. Bennett remains a person of interest.

This should give you a hint into what the Republican Party believes at its core. I don't think ANY of the open Republicans on this board (Mike, Dalen) believe anything of the sort, but the folks pulling the strings and sending the money and making the decisions make many of them based upon assumptions like these.

I want to know what Jack Kemp has to say about this. He's Bennett's partner with Empower America - if that's still the name -, but he's also assumed the most Afro-American friendly CONSERVATIVE Republican. I cannot imagine he's happy....

You're right. That's more the point I wanted to make and why I deleted my post when I realized it sounded like I was defending him or justifying his position.

Aren't we all conflating "poor" with "black", just as many did in New Orleans in the wake of Kat's devastation?

And isn't the problem more that Republicans want to keep personal economy and income in stasis, the poor remaining poor, the rich, rich, and the middle-class subsidizing both sides?

by quite a bit i'd imagine.

but...

No, I don't believe so. They don't love the poor, but they pretty much hate blacks where I come from. It's nothing to hear a matronly old dowager drop the N-bomb in distinguished company. The break up the Democratic Party in the South stems almost solely from racism, and hell Ken Mehlman admitted as much when he apologized for the "Southern Strategy" employed by Nixon et al.

I do believe that there are a lot of Republicans who are true economic conservatives, but I don't for one second think that they are a majority of that party.

It's certainly much more a socioeconomic problem rather than a racial one. I blame Blanco.

I mean, if the meth freaks break into and burn down one more house around here, I may lose it. They're basically all white, lower to lower-middle class white.

My friends and I sometimes discuss the possiblility of a possible future race war. I think that a class war, if looked at objectively, would be far more rational.

a lot of the republicans up here are tolerable - pretty middle of the road on social issies but economic conservatives. when I lived in NC - it really shocked me how many n bombs I heard out of my wife's family members and even how a few of them admitted to me they had been to a few klan rallies. it's pretty insane.

"they're takin' our jobs"

It would be less messy if you just changed the damn drug laws.

racism is the reason the drug laws still exist tho

honest question:
is it racist that i think black people are really cool and crave their acceptance?

Cool is (always) urban, but not necessarily urbane, and in the north, from whence you arise, the Afro-American population is largely urban. Thus, you have come to equte city-dwelling with black... So, not really a problem, but possibly a false analogy, i.e. not all urban-core-residing blacks are hip.

obviously not all are cool.
but i don't just mean young cool hip kids.

i really craved the acceptance of the 55 year old guy from alabama who i worked with, and who told me really long stories over beers.

Dude, a white businessman making $150,000 a year deserves a coupla rails now and again, 'cause he works hard for a living... He should be allowed to play hard, thus.

Meanwhile, an unemployed/underemployed black ghetto-dweller living off FoodShare and grifting who smokes rock on occasion is living outside his means... And needs to be punish with HARD time in a pound-yr-ass prison.

Maybe you guys that are shocked by what bennett said could point out what's shocking.

I didn't click on the cnn link but it appears that his statement was intended to argue how dangerous Machiavellian policies and tendencies in general. Its an irrefuttable statistical fact that blacks as a race commit a disproportionate amount of crimes. That's not arguing that there is a "crime" gene present in blacks or that being black causes one to be more likely to commit crimes. Its correlation not causation. The idea of aborting black babies was supposed to be an illustration of such an idea that NO ONE would support. If you are reading racism into anything he said, you're really quick to jump to conclusions.

I believe that he most believes what first, and most articulately, came out of his mouth... The caveat seemed to be tacked on after a long pause, and just to cover his behind from a charge of racism.

I've heard the N-word alot, but I have NEVER met or know anyone who has been to a Klan rally. The Klan has no presence here, but I know it exist in a few other parishes like Livingston.

yeah you should check out my neighbors.

billy is right about what Bennett said though - he wasn't really being racist himself but was using an extreme example to make a point. i still hate bennett though - a real tool.

yeah - when I heard that I was pretty floored. I started going off on the klan and quite a few people at the gathering where I was started to defend the klan and say they "weren't all bad" and gave examples of how they would beat up mean who were beating there wives. oh man that was an interesting day. i asked them how they found the time for that with all the lynchings they had to do.

we don't have much klan here but we do get these skinhead groups coming in every now and then. at least you can see their faces and laugh at those idiots.

Wasn't the Klan headquartered as far "north" as Indianapolis, back in the thirties and forties?

So, I can see, on an organizational level, there not being much Klan activity in certain precincts where white people have to deal with blacks daily, but... What about sympathizers?