|
"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 William Bennett
Anyone wondering how the Republican Party really feels about Black people only needs to heed the Grand Old Party’s reaction to the words above which William Bennett uttered on his syndicated radio show on Sept. 28. Bennett, who bills himself as a pro-life, Christian Conservative, strongly suggested that aborting every Black baby would be an effective method of fighting crime. This Machiavellian notion is far too offensive, hostile, and potentially threatening to the already precarious plight of Blacks in this country to be taken lightly.
Bill Bennett
For the remark came not from a rabid Ku Klux Klansman, or a shock jock in search of ratings, like the creep who callously referred to Black males as "the most dangerous animal on the face of the Earth" a few years ago, but from another brilliant, well-respected, Harvard Law School graduate like the one who was recently installed as the next Chief Justice.
From 1985 to 1988, when Bill Bennett served as Secretary of Education in the cabinet of Ronald Reagan he devoted himself to undercutting hard-fought African-American academic advances by opposing affirmative action and multiculturalism, while supporting school vouchers for all-white private schools and a curriculum rooted in Western civilization.
He resigned from that post in 1989 to accept an appointment from the first President Bush to become the country’s first ever Drug Czar. In his new capacity, Bennett became the architect of the overhaul of the criminal justice system which would lead to a doubling of the incarceration rate to the point where over 2,200,000 inmates are presently housed behind bars.
| |
But 80 percent of the increase in the Federal prison population was due to convictions of non-violent drug offenders and anti-establishment, social order violators, the majority of whom were Black. According to projections made by the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Statistics, 28.5 percent of all African-American males born today will end up in prison.
I pray that it is readily apparent to everyone that Black babies are no more biologically predisposed to commit crime than infants of any other skin color, and that there must be a combination of intervening educational, employment, housing and other public policy factors which explain why the prison population is preponderantly African-American. For example, I believe all would agree that it would be insane to entertain the idea of preemptive genocide based on eye or hair color.
Therefore, what is most revealing here is how deep-seated the racism must be in a person who would even think of grouping people in a color-coded fashion. So, excuse me for being alarmed when the same man who engineered this mass jailing of Black men starts to speak in such absolute terms about the cultural benefits of aborting African-American babies. Although this suggestion of ethnic cleansing comes from a mainstream pillar of the political community, it nonetheless amounts to an open declaration of war on Blacks, no different from Hitler’s final solution for the Jews.
For like Hitler, who never backed off his diabolical plan for Jews, Bennett steadfastly refuses to retract his words, stating matter-of-factly, "I don’t think people have the right to be angry." And rather than rebuke their colleague, most Conservatives have rallied to his defense, which does not bode well for the future of Black people under a regime where the White House, the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans.
Before you relax, thinking "it can’t happen here," never forget that Hitler was duly elected in a democracy, and that everything he did was perfectly legal, since majority rules.
Editor’s note: Attorney Lloyd Williams is a member of the NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars. |
