I've been guilty of doing this... You want to make a point, for instance, that the ends don't justify the means, so you give an example. The example is supposed to show how you can get a bad result by clinging too dogmatically to whatever "rule" it is you are debating. Since you want to be sure that the other side can't argue that you should still follow the rule even with the undesirable result, so you make sure the result is very undesirable - you pick an extreme case that no sane person will be inclined to argue as acceptable.

Then you realize what you've done - the subject of the debate is no longer whether we should always follow this or that "rule", or whether the ends justify the means. It's now about your hideous counterexample and how demented and evil you must be to think of it.

A specific example. As a rebellious teen doing the power-struggle/quest for independence thing, a parent reminded me that it was my obligation to do whatever I was told by the parents (a position I still do not agree with, although with far less self-interest involved in my reasoning these days)... I wanted to point out that such a rule was not absolute, and that - for example - I should not obey parental commands that were morally wrong. The parent, whether truly unable to understand what I meant or whether making a risky move in a game of power-struggle chess, challenged me to provide an example of a morally wrong command that I could be given and rightfully disobey. I could have brought up Abraham's wrong-headed obedience in his willingness to perform a child sacrifice, but the parents would have taken Abraham's side. So I chose, instead, something I knew would disgust even them - bestiality. To paraphrase, "if you told me to have relations with our dog, then I should disobey."

WoW!!

I was up the whole night, with an anguished parent who could not understand where such sick and demented ideas would come from, and who was, I believe, considering whether I should be treated for demon possession.

You would think I could have learned my lesson from that... but I guess I'm hard headed... I still have a talent for unfortunate examples. And that's what Bennett was doing...

BUT STILL

What was indefensible was the idea implicit in his remarks that blacks - as a race - are more apt to become criminals. Which is bullshit. I don't know if the gambling that Bennett got busted for was legal or not, but I'll warrant that lily-white Bill has done some criminal gambling activity. And wasn't he a member of the Reagan administration? Blacks, because they are disproportionately represented among the poor and the dwellers of the inner city, and because of racism, are statistically more apt to be convicted for more crimes, and sometimes for more violent crimes. They'll get busted for a drug deal or a robbery, and be thought of as criminals while white executives from Enron will turn state's evidence and avoid such a rap. Sure. But let them grow up in a clean, middle class neighborhood with the same opportunity as anyone else, and blacks will be no more criminal than any other group.

And Bennett's remarks show a very disturbing blindness to this fact. In his mind, and possibly the minds of his target audience, "blacK' = "criminal" to the extent that, morally reprehensible or not, one can reduce the crime rate by aborting black (not inner city, not poor) pregnancies.

In short, his statement is racist implicitly racist more so than explicitly. After all the explicit point was to say that some things - ethnic cleansing through abortion - are really morally reprehensible. Understatement? Sure - but he counted on everyone agreeing with him that such a thing would be morally reprehensible. What matters is the subtext - that this would be an effective way to reduce the crime rate. It wouldn't - and the belief that it would is representative of an unacceptable form of racism - a slimy, moldy form that only dies when it is isolated and drenched in the sunlight of public scrutiny. Let's not let Bennett's weak defense obscure that issue... because it will still thrive in whatever obsurity we allow.

Via 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera