Even More Divided

Referring to ideas found in the book, Freakonomics, and not to his own ideas, Bill Bennett has ignited the latest firestorm regarding race.

"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," former secretary of education Bill Bennett, now a radio host, said Wednesday, responding to a caller who wondered how much tax revenue had been lost over the years because of abortion. "That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations [like those found in Freakonomics] are, I think, tricky."

(Emphasis mine.)

And now calls for Mr. Bennett’s proverbially (hopefully) head ring throughout the land.

The thing that torques me off the most about this Bill Bennett dust-up is that, for some people, anything less that immediate denunciation of him as a mindless racist induces hysteria and vitriol.

My great-aunt is eighty-four, a victim of incurable BDS and hates Republicans (besides me); we don’t discuss politics. Being eighty-four, however, she forgets sometimes that we don’t. So when she asked me what I thought about the situation, I thought maybe, just maybe she asked because she was willing to listen. However, when I didn’t immediately call him a white, racist a**hole that should be banned from broadcasting and when I tried to flesh out the situation, she screamed over me and told me that I was whitewashing the comments because he is a Republican.

It would be nice to think that my aunt's reaction is due to her age and corresponding orneriness.

However, there are many other, much younger people who will hear the clip in its entirety, but will never hear Mr. Bennett say that such a proposition would be “ [a] ridiculous, and [a] morally reprehensible thing to do” even after the passage is played in its context over and over again. Why not? Because the ground has already been tilled, fertilized and watered and the seed of the idea has burst open: that Republicans are racists. After that, all pertinent ear canals will be blocked and no amount of logical explanation or explanatory logic will be able to penetrate that wall that people like Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers and their ideological brethren have built.

Two hundred years indeed.

I never got the chance to tell my aunt about my ‘however’ clause: that Mr. Bennett could have used a different outrageous example and that I found it curious that black babies were the first thing that popped into Mr. Bennett's mind. (Yes, I know all the relevant statistics regarding race, crime, illegitimacy and abortion, so don't bother.) I didn’t get the opportunity to mention these factors because she refused to listen and called me a liar. And when I am called a liar—especially after being specifically asked for my opinion--the conversation is over. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to scale that particular wall because I was too PO’d. I doubt that I ever will in this life.

So I simply shut my mouth and tried to go back to doing whatever it was that I was doing, as I fumed in silence.

Gee, thanks a flockin' lot, Big Media and, yes, you too, Bill Bennett.

(Thanks to Sister Toldjah, Rosemary Esmay and Slate; read about Judith Miller at Slate also.)

UPDATE: Steve Leavitt, one of the authors of Freakonomics, comments gives more context and sums up the situation succinctly:

He [Bill Bennett] made a factual statement (if you prohibit any group from reproducing, then the crime rate will go down), and then he noted that just because a statement is true, it doesn't mean that it is desirable or moral. That is, of course, an incredibly important distinction and one that we make over and over in Freakonomics.

MORE: Clearing Up My Remarks on the Bennett Remarks

Comments

[torchy]

In theory, if you exterminate any racial group the crime rate will go down, unless their extermination is considered a crime in itself, then it'd go up. It aint rocket surgery.

[Vincent Coccaro]

I feel like Bennett could have used a different example to illustrate his point - however it is very telling that the liberal mainstream media are squaking big time about this yet were silent as a tomb when Charlie Rangle compared the President to Bull Conner. Seems they are still practicing selective outrage.

[Peggy]

I grew up in the Deep South and have lived in the Northwest for a long time, and in both areas have observed the Democrats'/liberals' hypocrisy toward minority groups firsthand. Liberals do not see minority people as individuals, only as dehumanized groups, in the same way that pedophiles dehumanize children, viewing them as objects to be exploited. I think deep down the intelligent liberals are aware that this is an abomination, which is why they are so anxious to project it onto others regardless of whether it is true.

[susan]

But, nobody especially females will ever make any mention of Margaret Sanger's racist ideology and why she founded Planned Parenthood.

Sure, the abortion industry is all about women choice. Keep repeating the mantra good little girls.

Unfortunately, women choose to follow a notorious racists who believed that the poor and blacks should not breed by any means necessary including abortion so that a just and prosperous society can be manufactured without crime and poverty(in other words a Liberal's Socialist Utopia)

If NOW were honest, I might defend the organization as defenders of women's rights but as a female I can no longer support women who use subversive manipulation to empower themselves.

Twenty five years ago I remember being told that we don't want to bring children into a proverty stricken world and that it would be best to abort them. Little did I know at the time where such thinking was born. Now I do. Now I undertand why abortionists are Nazi-feminists. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a Nazi appologist and notorious racist.

[Iron Mike]

Interesting this didn't come up after the book Freakanomics came out (or did I miss "that" outrage?). Perhaps that is due to the liberal education agenda and the fact that the liberal whackos don't read books unless they are fluff!

[Steve]

Here is an article by Steven Bennett the author of Freakanomics. It was written 6 years ago and I believe his book came out this year. This is the author sited by Mr. Bennett as the originator of an idea whose possible conclusions he said he disagrees with.

http://slate.msn.com/id/33569/entry/33575/

From: Steve Sailer
To: Steven Levitt
Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1999

Your open-minded search for the truth, no matter how disturbing it may turn out to be, epitomizes the scientific ideal. Your study of abortion and crime is exactly what the social sciences need more of: courageous, hard-headed inquiries into the big topics that everybody else is afraid to touch. Even more impressive is your behavior since the controversy started. (Some background for readers: On Aug. 15, I circulated a critique of Steven Levitt and John Donohue's theory that legalized abortion reduced crime to the Human Biodiversity Discussion Group. A member passed it on to Steven, and despite his being deluged with media requests, he wrote to thank me for my criticisms. We then started up an e-mail exchange; this Slate "Dialogue" is its public continuation.)

With luck, I'll have room in my next message to respond to your important questions about how to make public and academic discourse less moralistic and more realistic. (Short answer: Junk political correctness.) Today I'll stick to the empirical issues. The problem with your abortion/reduced-crime theory is not that it encourages abortion or eugenic reasoning or whatever, but that it's largely untrue. Your biggest methodological mistake was to focus on the crime rates only in 1985 and 1997. Thus, you missed the 800-pound gorilla of crime trends: the rise and fall of the crack epidemic during the intervening years.

Here's the acid test. Your logic implies that the babies who managed to get born in the '70s should have grown up to be especially law-abiding teens in the early '90s. Did they?

Not exactly. In reality, they went on the worst youth murder spree in American history. According to FBI statistics, the murder rate for 1993's crop of 14- to 17-year-olds (who were born in the high-abortion years of 1975 to 1979) was a horrifying 3.6 times that of the kids who were 14 to 17 years old in 1984 (who were born in the pre-legalization years of 1966 to 1970). (Click here to see the graph.) In dramatic contrast, over the same time span the murder rate for those 25 and over (all born before legalization) dropped 6 percent.

Your model would also predict that the recent decline in crime should have shown up first among the youngest, but the opposite was true. The murder rate for 35- to 49-year-olds has been falling since the early '80s, and for 25- to 34-year-olds since 1991, but the two most homicidal years for 14- to 17-year-olds were 1993 and 1994.

The dubiousness of your theory becomes even more obvious when we break down this post-Roe vs. Wade generation by race.

Now, you say that your theory isn't "about race," but simply about the greater likelihood that "unwanted" babies will grow up to be bad guys. That correlation sounds plausible. Still any realistic theory about abortion and crime must deal with the massive correlation between violence and race. As you note, African-Americans have three times the abortion rate of whites. You don't mention, however, that, as Janet Reno's Justice Department flatly states that "blacks are 8 times more likely than whites to commit homicide." Therefore, blacks commit more murders than whites in total as well as per capita.

So, let's look at just black males born in 1975 to 1979. Since their mothers were having abortions at three times the white rate, that should have driven down their youth murder rate. Instead, from 1984 to 1993 the black male youth homicide rate grew an apocalyptic 5.1 times. (Click here to see graph.) This black juvenile rate also grew relative to the white juvenile murder rate, from five times worse in 1984 to 11 times worse in 1993.

Why, then, is this generation born in 1975 to 1979 now committing relatively fewer crimes as it ages? It makes no sense to give the credit to abortion, which so catastrophically failed to keep them on the straight and narrow when they were juveniles. Instead, the most obvious explanation is the ups and downs of the crack business, which first drove violent crime up in the late '80s and early '90s, then drove it down in the mid and late '90s. That's why the crime rate has fallen fastest exactly where it had previously grown fastest as a result of crack--in the biggest cities (e.g., New York) and among young black males. This generation born right after legalization is better behaved today in part because so many of its bad apples are now confined to prisons, wheelchairs, and coffins. For example, over the last two decades the U.S. has doubled the number of black males in prison, to nearly 1 million.

More encouragingly, the biggest decline in murder from 1993 to 1997 was among the newest generation of black males aged 14 to 17. These kids born mostly in the early '80s survived abortion levels similar to those faced by the crime-ridden 1975-to-1979 generation. Yet, their murder rate in 1997 was less than half that of the 14- to 17-year-olds of 1993. Seeing their big brothers gunned down in drive-by shootings and their big sisters becoming crack whores may have scared them straight.

Admittedly, it's still theoretically possible that without abortion the black youth murder rate would have, say, sextupled instead of merely quintupling. Still, there's a more interesting question: Why did the places with the highest abortion rates in the '70s (e.g., NYC and Washington D.C.) tend to suffer the worst crack-driven crime waves in the early '90s?

[Steve]

Actually it is authored by Steve Sailer and addressed to Steven Levitt.

[Steve]

Its a little early in the morning for me lets try again. I meant to get this article. You can delete the one above.

Here is an article by Steven Levitt the author of Freakanomics. It was written 6 years ago and I believe his book came out this year. This is the author sited by Mr. Bennett as the originator of an idea whose possible conclusions he said he disagrees with.

From: Steven Levitt
To: Steve Sailer
Monday, Aug. 23, 1999

In recent weeks there has been a lot of media coverage of a paper John Donohue and I recently wrote connecting the legalization of abortion in the 1970s to reduced crime in the 1990s. (A preliminary version of the paper is posted here.) The purpose of the study is to better understand the reasons for the sharp decline in crime during this decade, which, prior to our research, had largely eluded explanation. While there are many other theories as to why crime declined (more prisoners, better policing, the strong economy, the decline of crack, etc.), most experts agree that none of these very convincingly explains the 30 percent to 40 percent fall in crime since 1991.

The theoretical justification for our argument rests on two simple assumptions: 1) Legalized abortion leads to fewer "unwanted" babies being born, and 2) unwanted babies are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are therefore at an increased risk for criminal involvement later in life. The first assumption, that abortion reduces the number of unwanted children, is true virtually by definition. The second assumption, that unwanted children are at increased risk for criminal involvement, is supported by three decades of academic research. If one accepts these two assumptions, then a direct mechanism by which the legalization of abortion can reduce crime has been established. At that point, the question merely becomes: Is the magnitude of the impact large or small?

Our preliminary research suggests that the effect of abortion legalization is large. According to our estimates, as much as one-half of the remarkable decline in crime in the 1990s may be attributable to the legalization of abortion. We base our conclusions on four separate data analyses.

First, we demonstrate that crime rates began to fall 18 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across the nation, just the point at which babies born under legalized abortion would be reaching the peak adolescent crime years. In my opinion, this is the weakest of our four data analyses. In a simple time series, many factors are negatively correlated with crime. Furthermore, the world is a complicated place and it would be simplistic to believe that legalized abortion could overpower all other social determinants of crime.

Second, we show that the five states that legalized abortion in 1970--three years before Roe vs. Wade--saw crime begin to decrease roughly three years earlier than the rest of the nation. This is a bit more convincing to me but still far from conclusive.

Third, we demonstrate that states with high abortion rates in the mid-1970s have had much greater crime decreases in the 1990s than states that had low abortion rates in the 1970s. This relationship holds true even when we take into account changes in the size of prison populations, number of police, poverty rates, measures of the economy, changes in welfare generosity, and other changes in fertility. This is the evidence that really starts to be convincing, in my opinion.

Fourth, we show that the abortion-related drop in crime is occurring only for those who today are under the age of 25. This is exactly the age group we would expect to be affected by the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. That is where our paper stops. Our paper is a descriptive exercise attempting to explain why crime fell. While our paper highlights one benefit of allowing women to determine whether or not to bring pregnancies to term, we make no attempt to systematically analyze the many possible costs and benefits of legalized abortion. Consequently, we can make no judgment as to whether legalized abortion is good or bad. In no way does our paper endorse abortion as a form of birth control. In no way does our paper suggest that the government should restrict any woman's right to bear children. Although these are the most interesting issues for the media to discuss, our paper actually has very little to say on such topics.

I think the crux of the misinterpretation of our study is that critics of our work fail to see the distinction between identifying a relationship between social phenomena and endorsing such a relationship. When a scientist presents evidence that global warming is occurring, it does not mean that he or she favors global warming, but merely that the scientist believes such a phenomenon exists. That is precisely our position with respect to the link between abortion and crime: We are not arguing that such a relationship is good or bad, merely that it appears to exist.

As an aside, it has been both fascinating and disturbing to me how the media have insisted on reporting this as a study about race, when race really is not an integral part of the story. The link between abortion and unwantedness, and also between unwantedness and later criminality, have been shown most clearly in Scandinavian data. Abortion rates among African-Americans are higher, but overall, far more abortions are done by whites. None of our analysis is race-based because the crime data by race is generally not deemed reliable.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I am interested in your views on the paper and its analysis, but also on the broader topic of the coverage of scientific research in the popular press, particularly when it relates to sensitive subjects like abortion, crime, or race. Do you think any good comes from a public discussion of academic studies such as this one? What, if anything, could be done to make such public debates more productive?

[DarkStar]

Bennett is a pro in media verbal discourse. He was stupid for putting it that way.

It lacked logic as pointed out. If you take out any group, crime rate will go down.

He should have said, "Let's kill/jail/send into space all males aged 15-30 and the crime rate will drop".

[Steve]

I think the point was that he was in agreement with you on that.

He was making the point that Freakanomic cost benefit analysis of all things is NOT a way to conduct policy.

I would like to hear the previous 2 minutes of the program to get a little context to the conversation that Bill Bennet was in.

[Justin]

I have an extreme dislike for Bennett in general, but on this point, I agree that his statement was completely taken out of context and he is being unfairly criticized--unfortunately in our attack-dog media/political age, context rarely matters. Even liberal bloggers (Yglesis for one) have been pointing out that Bennett's remark was taken out of context.

[Cobb]

The more I read about this, the more frustrated and angry I get. Bennett might as well have been speaking Farsi for all the good it has done him at the hands of spinners and idiots.

Look at it this way: In order to support his main argument which is that economic ends do not support immoral means, he couldn't have picked a better example. The extraordinary moral outrage (albiet displaced) that he has generated by the merest suggestion of aborting black babies proves his point entirely. There are certain things that you just don't do, no matter what the economic benefits might be.

Unfortunately, we live in a nation where the ratio of airheads is high, and because of this there are certain things you can't even *say* without being hounded.

Bennett was dead right, and all this controversy proves it.

[torchy]

Thanks for that background Steve. The role of male influence isn't covered, though a necessary component to pregnancy during that pre-in vitro period. Could it be that the availability of abortion allowed for greater male loyalty to the potential family unit so that when children were brought to term by choice there was more likelihood that the child would enter a two parent family unit? Isn't there also a strong correlation between criminal behavior and lack of a male role model during developement, especially with the majority of crime being committed by men? And considering that the traditional male role as father to a family is that of authority figure, wouldn't it also create in the female offspring a weak perception of authority, thereby affecting their chances of engaging in crime? Abortion didn't become legal just by the mute acquiesence of men but also through a disguised self-interest. It wasn't just womens reproductive freedom that was at stake but mens reproductive freedom as well.

[Steve]

I will say though that I wish he had not brought up that example but, he being who he is, I wouldn't doubt he has been familiar with this freakanomics stuff for sometime. It popped into his mind while on-the-fly while trying to make a counter argument in a discussion with a caller.

It is something that was not premeditated and I think most people can relate to this type of thing happening to them. I think he now sees that he shouldn't have used that example and I wish he hadn't.

But Bill being anti-abortion for his whole adult life and havinig Planned Parenthood's founder Margaret Sanger being a known racist, eugenist, Nazis it is too bad he is the one being under suspicion at this time especially since he was refuting it.

[Steve]

This whole thing may have come as a great suprise to people that are unfamilliar with the kinds of things Bill Bennett reads due to his interests. I had heard very little of Freakanomics before Bill Bennet's mentioning it.

But I've said things to fairly informed people sometimes assumning that they have some familiarity with the subject only to realize they have no idea what I am talking about. We all, to some degree, live in a private world of our own reading and interests and we don't translate very well as we speak to others.

NPR audio of a interview with Steven Levitt:

http://www.npr.org/templates/
story/story.php?storyId=4844478

[J Oliphant]

The brouhaha says little that wasn't know. It mearly plays up liberal intolerance to free speach and it shows their own racial/ gender biasis.

What do you think the reaction would have been if he said selectively aborting boys would decrease the crime rate ? Or how about selectively aborting whites to reduce the war crime rate ?

His point was eminently well made.

[Kirk]

Go here:

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

See what was said about Irish parents eating their own children.

"A Modest Proposal" indeed. I heard the whole Bill Bennet episode in question (morning drive) and when he said what he said all I could think was "the sh*t storm is coming." It takes a person with the ability to examine the whole comment and not parse it down to one or two words and thereby declare him to be a racist. Those condemning Dr Bennet have lost sight of the fact that words do have meanings and the words must be taken in context for the true meaning to be discerned.

As to blacks he also mentioned that in relation to the percentage of blacks in the general US population (around 13%) that black males have a much higher incarceration rate than does the white population. He also said that the black on black crimes are significantly higher than are white on black crimes. He also said that in the black community they want better law enforcement. Is that a racist comment? When he was asked what is the cause for this disparity he responded with (paraphrased) "it is the absence of fathers who are committed to raising their children." I contribute this in part to LBJ's (not so)Great Society. In my opinion LBJ did more to hurt black families than the KKK ever dreamed of doing.

Try going to Morning in America with Bill Bennet to see if you can get the full transcript.

People must to be able to talk about sensitive stuff without getting emotional. If we can't do that then what is our society coming to.

[Steve]

Don't miss the point though that he was saying that one should NOT, should NOT, think this way when considering economics.

The point was originally Steven Levitt's 6 years ago and Bill Bennett was refuting it, refuting it. Steve Levitt didn't really say anything more, one way or another, about abortion policy being a good or bad thing. Or, at least that is what he claims he was doing/not doing.

I just wish Bill hadn't brought it up but then again if it would get people rethinking abortion on demand, partial birth abortion, parental notification, waiting periods, then maybe you could say it was brave of him.

There is a common thread between eugenics, abortion, euthanasia (Terry Shaivo), homosexuality, pagan occult practices, "socialism", anti-christian vitriolic, anti-semitism, media manipulation, censorship (campuses), university and news media "intellectuals", and corporate (some of the same ones) backing of these, and the Nazis party.

Usually I would rather not bring that up but since the word Nazis is thrown around so easily today I thought it might be best for people to keep in mind that it did have specific characteristics that should allow that word to be used more informatively rather than just as a pejorative to hurl at someone. I hate to say it but after all the accusations that have been made by some people I would like to say that it would appear to me that the left is a lot like this and is also funded by some of the same corporate foundations doing the samething today. Checkout the story of Alfred Kinsey (recent Hollywood movie), Rockefeller Foundation, and the Nazis. Or check out Pink Swastika by Scott Lively.

http://www.leaderu.com/jhs/lively.html
-----
http://www.abidingtruth.com/
pfrc/books/pinkswastika/html/
the_pinkswastika_4th_edition_-_final.htm

-----
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/
articles/MessalGenocide.shtml

A person could find all kinds of little things that were common to Nazism and any state that ever existed but there were somethings that were more specific to it, and maybe essential, and obvious.

Maybe I shouldn't have brought this kind of subject up but then again maybe someone better mention it.

[baldilocks]

I will repeat:

Yes, I know all the relevant statistics regarding race, crime, illegitimacy and abortion, so don't bother.

...unless you're just typing for onlookers and not for this choir you're preaching to.

[Tony]

Mr. Bennett could have used a different outrageous example and that I found it curious that black babies were the first thing that popped into Mr. Bennett's mind.

In the wake of the circling of the wagons by Republican talk show hosts, I thought the same thing. What an effing stupid thing that was for Bennett to say even in context, and he is being punished. Not so much for racism per se, but stupidity is always punished. Sometimes it takes longer for some people than others, but it is always punished.

[Steve]

If you are addressing me baldilocks I didn't bring up the stats in that article for their sake. I brought that up to show what it was that the author of Freakanomics has been speaking of for some time now. That is what Bill Bennett was refuting as a reason for abortion.

[Darleen]

This whole Bennett kerfluffle was strangely reminscent of something... I went digging on my feelings and it found that the whole deliberate distortion of Bennett's remarks AND the dark mutterings of his "obvious racism" (assertions without evidence) seem to be in direct line from the attacks on Daniel Patrick Moynihan when his paper The Negro Family: the case for national action was released in 1965. It didn't matter WHAT he said, but that he even broached the subject.

I discuss it more at my blog, and I link to this recent revisiting of the Moynihan episode.

BTW, I don't think "black babies" just "popped" into Bennett's head. As I've read it, the conversations immediately preceding this comment dealt with how the media had been covering (or not covering) New Orleans..all the rampant distortions of "black" looting, murder and rapes.

[Steve]

Because of the kinds of books Bill Bennett has written I would imagine he has heard of these Steven Levitt's 6 year old theories for a long time and I wouldn't doubt that he also read Steven Levitt's recent book. I think I recall that Bill Bennett has a degree in philosophy and that interest probably would acquaint him with any new theories before the rest of us in this subject area.

I am just trying to put myself in his place or remember anything in my past that might match this. The thing that seems obvious to me is that he has been reading about this and maybe he has dwelt on it a little. And like I said earlier, we all talk according to how we read and the meanings can get lost in a conversation with someone totally unfamiliar with what we've read.

I don't know about other people but my brain acts naturally as a defense attorney in a non-criminal (social faux pas sense) and even towards people I disagree with unless I detect that they are totally set upon prosecution in their own mind.

If the NPR interview indicates what is in that book then towards the end of that NPR interview Steven Levitt brings the issue up again. But Steven Levitt is not being excoriated even though he does not refute its conclusions like Bill Bennett did. So why isn't Steven Levitt receiving the criticism?

[Cobb]

Because Levitt isn't a target of Democrats.

[baldilocks]

Cobb: exactly.

[Aaron]

Freakonomics was a pretty famous book - my retired mom bought it for me, so it couldn't have been too obscure.

In the book he also talks about crack and why the drug dealer still lives with Mom...this might also be a reason why Bennet had the word "black" pop out in front of babies.

They're kind of connected in the book.

[Steve Sailer]

The contention that the higher abortion rate among black women should reduce the overall murder rate because black youths have a much higher homicide rate than white youths was introduced by Stephen D. Levitt and his co-author John J. Donohue way back in their December 1998 initial draft paper outlining their overall abortion-cut-crime theory.

Levitt and Donohue quantified this in their 2001 paper, estimating that the higher rate of abortion and homicide among blacks would account for 39% of the reduction in crime caused by legalization of abortion.

You can see all the links at http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/10/slate-its-sailers-fault.html