A step backwards for Mehlman’s African-American outreach

September 29, 2005

It was just a couple of months ago that Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman was getting serious about political outreach to the African-American community. One problem, however, is that Mehlman characterized the Republicans’ race problems as a thing of the past — and they clearly remain a part of the GOP’s present.

Consider, for example, State Rep. Stacey Campfield’s (R-Tenn.) thoughts on the Tennessee’s Black Legislative Caucus.

A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state’s Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.

“My understanding is that the KKK doesn’t even ban members by race,” said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the KKK “has less racist bylaws” than the black lawmakers’ group.

The freshman Republican from Knoxville was rebuffed earlier this year when he asked for the Black Caucus’ bylaws and inquired about joining. There are 18 black state lawmakers in Tennessee.

Caucus chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw, a Democrat, dismissed Campfield’s request and called him a “strange guy” who was simply interested in stirring up trouble.

Campfield also notes on his blog that “many of my friends and neighbors are considered minority.” It’s not “some of my best friends are black,” but it’s close.

Conservative blowhard Bill Bennett is about as offensive.

Addressing a caller’s suggestion that the “lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years” would be enough to preserve Social Security’s solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such “far-reaching, extensive extrapolations” by declaring that if “you wanted to reduce crime … if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies “would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,” then added again, “but the crime rate would go down.”

Back to the drawing board, right Mehlman?

September 29, 2005 at 12:07 pm

Is Bennett making a connection between “black poverty” and “black crime,” or he just saying less African-Americans would mean less criminals committing crimes? He is either racist, or he is making the “liberal argument” that poverty is a major cause of crime. What is Bennett thinking?

He’s not speaking of poverty, obviously, because he should have said “poor or disadvantaged.” But good point that it is a class, not a race, issue. That’s the most revealing part of the statement: that he doesn’t even understand that there are not-poor, non-criminal blacks, and having fewer of them would raise the crime rate.

Also, it is no “liberal” theory to say poverty and crime are interrelated. It is a statistical probability far more likely than other statistical probabilities we take for granted (at least for certain crimes). Framing it as a liberal theory is the GOP’s attempt to play down the science of it (remember global warming?). Any social scientist-types got a link on that type of data?

Here’s a
new piece on the greenhouse effect, FYI. Good one to show your “it’s all just liberal scientists twisting a natural warming cycle” friends.

This is exactly the sort of conversation that I imagine makes its way into right-wing blogs as evidence of the “liberal” propensity to make an ad hominem attack of “racist” against anyone who recognizes an unpleasant statistical reality. I don’t see anything offensive about Bennett’s statement. He was using a reductio ad absurdum argument to demonstrate the absurdity of the abortion-social security connection.

The objective fact is that the incarceration rate among blacks is higher than the national average; it hardly strikes me as “racist” to realize this. See http://www.naacp.org/news/2001/2001-04-04.html (acknowledging “the disproportionate minority confinement during the so-called ‘war on drugs’, [and] the increased incarceration of people of color for nonviolent offenses .”); http://www.naacp.org/news/2003/2003-10-23.html (“African Americans comprise 28% of the general population, but total 76% of the prison population” of Maryland).

We can and should have an open discussion about what social conditions and forces are leading to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans, but the objective fact is that, as things currently stand, elimination of the incarceration of African Americans would cause a marked decline in the national rate. But Bennett was hardly calling for an African American genocide for the sake of reducing the national crime rate; rather, he was pointing out that it’s ridiculous to suggest that abortion is in any way linked to Social Security liquidity. (He might also have pointed out that all of those aborted babies, in addition to contributing to Social Security, would themselves have eventually become a drain on the system, so we wouldn’t really be any better off than we are now, but his response to an absurd argument with a reductio perhaps drove the point home more vividly.)

Eadie’s argument that “there are not-poor, non-criminal blacks, and having fewer of them would raise the crime rate” misses the point that, *on average*, the incarceration rate among African Americans is higher than that among other ethnic groups. Selective elimination of segments of the population is intellectually dishonest; for example, IF there were fewer “not-criminal” individuals in ANY segment of the population, of *course* the crime rate would be higher than it is, but that’s no response to the statistical reality that, taken as a whole, the African American population does indeed have a higher incarceration rate. If there were no “non-criminals” at all, the crime rate would be 100%, though I don’t know who would be locking them up at that point.

The point I’m trying to make here is that it does no good for the liberal/progressive cause to start crying “Racist!” every time someone makes a valid reference to a legitimate social statistic. I think it’s particularly inappropriate here, since Bennett wasn’t even citing these statistics in support of a position on race relations at all, he was using it to rebut an ignorant argument against abortion and in favor of social security reform, two positions with which I suspect he actually agrees. Recognizing the reality that blacks are disproportionately incarcerated is not racist, but decrying anyone who acknowledges that reality in a public forum strikes me as underhanded and dishonest.

James,

i hear you, but you’re missing the point. There are not just more blacks locked up, there are more poor blacks locked up. Middle and upper class blacks do just fine. So to only focus on race is to miss the class element–which is exactly what Bennett did.

I agree that “racist” shouldn’t be slung around too casually. This is more subtle, though: Bennett and his associates only see the race issue; the sucess of middle and upper class blacks shows this to be a warped, and warping, view. It would be like saying “lock up more white people and meth use goes down.” Not true; you’d have to lock up poor, rural white peopel to really see an effect. Saying “lock up white people” isn’t much better than saying “lock up males” or “lock up humans.” It misses the truely significant statistic: economics

Sorry, forgot a thesis: Missing the economic factor is either a conscious or unconscious action that furthers a racially biased (and incorrect) notion that blacks are somehow prone to crime. Pretty close to a racist agenda for this day and age.

Eadie,

Let’s not forget the context in which Bennett’s comment was made; he wasn’t discussing the crime rate or race relations. He was making a point about correlations, and the fact that the attenuated correlation between abortion and Social Security is too weak to be worthy of consideration in an argument about either subject. He was absolutely right about that. He was also correct that there is a strong correlation between race and incarceration, and his statement that “the crime rate would go down” if the impact of African Americans was factored out of the calculation is literally true.

Lots of other factors no doubt show significant correlation to the incarceration rate, and poverty is certainly one of them. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that poverty, unlike race, is probably a factor in which an element of causation, rather than mere correlation, exists. There are plenty of others as well, and you’re right that a discussion of the crime rate that focused only on race without taking other factors into account would be deficient, and might even suggest a bias on the part of the speaker. But here, where Bennett was talking about a subject completely unrelated to race or crime, and offered the disproportionately high rate of incarceration among African Americans merely as a premise in a reductio argument, I see no reason whatsoever to think that he was acting on the basis of a racist motivation, or that he fails to appreciate the fact that other factors bear just as strongly on the crime rate as race does.

Not “just as strongly,” MORE strongly. The real factor is class. Clearly. Overwhelmingly. It is misleading, pure and simple, to cite a statistic that is refuted by simple, minor examination. The racial statistic is a function of the greater number of POOR blacks to NON POOR blacks. It is a ration issue.

Once you correct for that, the racial perponderance DOES NOT stack up.

for example, statistics will show that people who belong to the AARP have a greater chance of dying. True. But even a cursory examination will show that the statement, “AARP members are more likely to die” is misleading, because you have to account for the AGE of AARP members. Likewise, you have to account for the extreme number of POOR blacks compared to MIDDLE CLASS AND UPPER CLASS blacks.

Simple. Misleading. If intentional, then diabolical. If not, then just an example of how his mind works, not “racist,” per se, but unable to account for class issues as causes of crime more than race. Comfortable seeing race as a factor in crime and not looking even the slightest bit deeper. It’s not about comfort and facts, it’s about reality. Joining the AARP does not make you more likely to die; being old does. Being black does not make you more likely to committ crime; being poor does.

Isn’t the inability to see class issues (or to admit them) and play dumb on race part of the issue with GOP leadership? This exchange was an example of that.

Being black does not make you more likely to committ crime; being poor does. That’s my point!

A last comment, and I’m going home for the night.

We need to distinguish between causation and correlation here. Dictionary.com defines “correlation” as “The simultaneous change in value of two numerically valued random variables: the positive correlation between cigarette smoking and the incidence of lung cancer; the negative correlation between age and normal vision.” A “cause,” on the other hand, is defined as “The producer of an effect, result, or consequence.”

A correlation between two observed phenomena can exist because one is the cause of the other (e.g., smoking and lung cancer), or because both are affected by a common cause (Eadie’s example of AARP membership and death). The recognition of a correlation, therefore, does not necessarily imply a cause-and-effect relationship between the observations. As I noted in my second post, poverty is likely a *cause* of increased crime, whereas being African American merely bears a positive *correlation* to likelihood of incarceration, because of the high poverty rate among blacks.

Thus, recognition of the positive correlation between race and incarceration does not necessarily suggest that race *causes* crime. It may well be that another variable (here, the high poverty rate, and probably some others such as the frequency of racial profiling against blacks, and inadequate public education in black neighborhoods, which also correlates to poverty) is at work. None of this, however, invalidates Bennett’s rhetorical point that one way to reduce the crime rate would be to factor out the influence of the racial group with the highest per capita incarceration rate. Nor, in my view, does its recognition make him a racist.

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