My Email to Bill Bennett

I'm gonna be honest with myself here, he'll probably never get this. And I really had a TOUGH a$$ time finding the right words, but dammit I had to say something!

"Aborting African-American babies?!? Oh, this fool got us TWISTED!"

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Hello Mr. Bennett,

It is hard for me to believe that a well-educated man with a history in politics (not to mention a presidential Cabinet position) can make such an ignorant and stupid statement. However, I cannot say that this surprises me one bit (it was the Reagan Administration) considering you were in charge of the underachieving and at times clue-less system that educated me while I attending DC and Prince George's County Public Schools in the 1980s. Fortunately, I came out of those systems with enough knowledge not to let your comments go without any response and with enough integrity to stand up for a group of people whose unborns you feel don't deserve life because they'll increase the crime rate.

The fact of the matter is that crime reduction in this country has less to do with race than it does wtih economics! Poor people in this country live an entirely different life than those who are lucky enough to be maintain life above the ever-rising poverty-line. Being poor in this country often means having to find ways to survive. And if that means committing crime, then by all means poor people will commit crimes to survive. Survival doesn't mean committing a crime to support a drug habit (crack cocaine did first appear during the Reagan Administration right) or some other negatively-viewed affliction we associate solely with poor people (which is a myth in itself). Survival means doing what you have to do in order to feed yourself, your family, and live day-to-day.

What is needed to help decrease the crime rate is not the abortion of a single race's offspring (I am still wondering how you could mouth those words), but a raising of the level of education given to people across the country, so that those in poor communities are afforded the same opportunities that those in wealthy countries are affored. Maybe then we can reduce the crime rate by pulling uneducated poor people up into the class of highly-educated wealthy people through their use of a solid foundation of education.

But oh yeah, there's one problem with that, right? People like you probably don't want poor people rising there! You don't want that unaborted African American child living next door to you, do you? You're probably terrified of the thought.

So let me help you calm your nerves. When it boils down to it, people are just people! Regardless of skin-color, race, ethnic background, OR finanical status, we all tend to have similar goals in life. When people in this country are educated equally and treated equally, then our crime rate will go down. Not when we start aborting babies that we assume will be felons!

Also, I must charge you with hypocrisy considering you were a part of an Administration that was in power when the crack cocaine epidemic took over an entire community (the African-American community) and spread to other communities. Perhaps if you, and members of the Reagan Administration found a way to stop the spread of this genocidal drug, you wouldn't have so many poor people today! Maybe there wouldn't be so many "abort-able" African-American crime-rate-increasing babies if you didn't "let" - I am struggling to use that word considering all the suspicions surround the Reagan Administration and crack cocaine - the crack cocaine epidemic spread like wildfire! I guess that since crack couldn't do the job, reducing the crime rate is your new excuse for getting rid of the "trouble-makers" in this country? Well, it looks like you've made a little trouble yourself.

Mr. Bennett, you hugely underestimate the intelligence, strength, will, integrity, and self-respect of African Americans in this country, MY PEOPLE! Your comments will get you a lot of emotional and passionate responses from people like myself, some more scathing than others. I pray to God that you take the time to listen to the same people you think could have been aborted to reduce your precious crime rate, and see that we have feelings, values, and most of all, intelligence, integrity, and self-respect! So I beg you to think twice before you make such an ignorant and inherently stupid statement.

Sincerely,

Michael Carroll