Bennett and Blacks

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,

(from CNN.com)

In all the months after Bill Bennett said that I haven't noticed anyone, even The Nation, point out what WOULD happen if we aborted every black baby in the United States. We'd just go back to having Irish criminals. My Irish history professor (no Hibernophile) gleefully claimed to have seen statistics that showed that "every petty thief in the British Isles has an Irish last name." Personally I wouldn't doubt it at all.

Almost immediately someone jumped on him to explain why the Irish, the street criminals of the British Isles, became the stereotyped policemen in the United States, arresting blacks, Puerto Ricans and others who occupied the same social category that the Irish had occupied in the British Isles.

Crime is caused by social conditions, not the existence or non-existence of certain racial and ethnic groups. Until the social conditions that cause crime change crime will continue, regardless of whether we get rid of certain ethnic or racial groups.