William Bennett and Vicente Fox: Bosom Buddies

Bill Bennett, Bill Bennett, Bill Bennett. Where to begin?

The obvious cries of racism have already been yelped from the hilltops. I would like to look at another aspect of Bill’s comment. To do so, I refer to Vicente Fox’s statement that Mexican immigrants would do the jobs that “not even blacks” were willing to do. What bothers me is that both men were trying to make very general points – immigrants tend to do work that Americans eschew, targeting a certain population for pre-birth annihilation could bring down crime rates but would be monstrous – but fell easily into the race trap and reflexively called out blacks as the bottom of societal barrel. Who are the laziest out-of-work Americans, asked Vicente. Blacks! Who are all the criminals, asked Bill Bennett? Again, “blacks” was the knee-jerk reply.

The gratuitous insertion of race – no, the substitution of the entire race of black people for all things malevolent is just getting tiresome. There are in fact a few black babies who are not destined to end up in jail. And, I must point out that much as the overwhelming majority of the population is white, so is the overwhelming majority the criminal population. By sheer force of numbers, whites are the majority of almost every group in America. And yes, while many blacks represent themselves as hard thug gangsters because it has somehow become cool in a countercultural way, most blacks are not gangsters or even petty criminals. And yes, while the media stretches and strains to pin welfare exclusively on black women, white women are also recipients of AFDC. True, blacks are overrepresented in those populations in comparison to our numbers in the population, however Vicente and Bill, WE ARE NOT ALL CRIMINALS or nor do we constitute ALL UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE and I will thank you to STOP CALLING MY MOM and DAD and STEPDAD and COUSINS and FRIENDS shiftless criminals. We have all had quite enough. The next time you want to refer to slothful people or to criminals, please just do so. Leave us out of it.