September 30, 2005 @ 3:58 pm

Education Secretary Vilified for Racist Comments

Alyssa Rashbaum

"If you wanted to reduce crime," he told one caller, "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."

right Democrats and Republicans have been lashing out at Bennett - the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, under Reagan, and current Fox News contributor - and his shocking comments.

"This is precisely the kind of insensitive, hurtful and ignorant rhetoric that Americans have grown tired of," Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) told CNN. "Where is the indignation from the GOP, as one of their prominent members talk about aborting an entire race of Americans as a way of ridding this country of crime? How ridiculous! How asinine! How insane can one be?"

"What could possibly have possessed Secretary Bennett to say those words, especially at this time?" said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California). "What could he possibly have been thinking? This is what is so alarming about his words."

More alarming, however, is Bennett's refusal to admit wrongdoing, or to issue an apology.

"I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition," he told CNN. "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.

"I'm not racist, and I'll put my record up against theirs," he said in reference to those who have spoken out against him. "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," he continued. "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."

Bruce Gordon, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), however, demanded an apology.

"In 2005, there is no place for the kind of racist statement made by Bennett," Gordon said in a written statement given to CNN. "While the entire nation is trying to help survivors, black and white, to recover from the damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is unconscionable for Bennett to make such ignorant and insensitive comments."

Article tags: Racism, William Bennett, Education Secretary, Naacp