Would it have been OK for Bennett to say that "aborting all white babies would reduce the crime rate"? I'm a little confused. I wonder if the uproar I'm reading would be there if Bennet had replaced "black" with "white." Aborting all white babies is hyperbole. Aborting all black babies is racism.

This also demonstrates something that happens way too often on this board. One party takes words, phrases, or sentences out of context to paint the writer as a ______ (fill in the blank). Is this truly a sign of higher learning, or is it a sign of something else?

If we start analyzing single statements in a stand-alone manner, we could end up with the conclusion that martin Luther King, Jr., hated his own people, that Shelby Thames is a qualified university president, or that USM faculty are some of the most illiterate in the business.

Did Bennett advocate aborting even one black baby? No. Should he have picked a better analogy? Yes. The end result of reading and digesting that article, however, cannot lead any reasonable person to conclude that he is racist.