Liberal Outcry Over Bennett's Remarks Suggest Hypocrisy
by Jim Brown, Ed Thomas, and Jenni Parker
November 1, 2005
(AgapePress) - The mainstream media are being accused of a employing a racial double standard, particularly for the way they have apparently chosen not to report on a recent forum at Howard University that included a black activist's call for genocide against whites.Former North Carolina State visiting professor Dr. Kamau Kambon recently told a panel of black media groups at Howard Law School in Washington, DC, that the "problem on the planet is white people." He went on to express increasingly volatile sentiments, querying "how we are going to exterminate white people, because that in my estimation, is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off of the face of the planet to solve this problem."
Among several other explosive comments, Kambon claimed that blacks are in "an international prison" and every white person on Earth is a plantation master. He also told the panel members, "Everything that you do, every thought that you think, either you are supporting white world terror domination by your actions -- what you buy, what you wear, where you go, what you eat, how you use your time -- you are either supporting the white people in their process of death, or you're for African liberation. It's one or the other."
Howard University has issued a statement to American Family Radio News repudiating the speaker's comments. In addition, North Carolina State University says Kambon's statements "do not in any way represent the values and standards of the university." But while these institutions quietly distance themselves from the controversy, one reporter is wondering why the incident has not received more media attention.
John Sanders, research editor for the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation, notes that Kambon's C-SPAN televised speech has generated little criticism in the press, unlike recent remarks made by former Education Secretary William Bennett on abortion, blacks, and the crime rate during his syndicated radio talk show. The conservative spokesman has been under heavy media fire for those comments ever since.
Controversial Commentary; Lopsided Liberal Response
Author and pundit Bennett, who once held positions in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, has since become a prominent figure in the largely conservative alternative media. During a recent on-air discussion, he told a caller to his radio program, "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."
During that September 28 radio show, Bennett went on to say that to take that hypothetical course of action would be, of course, "impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible." Still, some conservatives feel he has been harangued ever since by the media and by outspoken liberals, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who denounced the radio host's comments as "alarming" and called on President George W. Bush to condemn them.
The White House did distance itself from Bennett's comments, stating through Press Secretary Scott McClellan that President Bush "believes the comments were not appropriate." However, Sanders feels the mainstream press have been like a dog with a bone over Bennett's remarks, continuing to give copious ink to the story and to liberal indignation.
Meanwhile, the John Locke Foundation editor feels the press have, for the most part, given Kamau Kambon a pass for saying things that were equally incendiary, if not far worse. Sanders initially reported the Kambon story on the Foundation's blog site; yet, he notes that most other media outlets have remained largely silent about the black speaker's blatantly anti-white rhetoric.
"Just look at the outcry over Bill Bennett's remarks," Sanders says. Those reactions are disproportional, he contends, when "basically Kambon said what everyone in the media wanted you to think Bill Bennett said."
Hunter Sees Hypocrisy in Pro-Abortion Moral Indignation
Dr. Johnny Hunter, director of the Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN), is also questioning the appropriateness of the response to Bennett's commentary. The leader of the largest African-American pro-life group in the U.S. feels many of the attacks against the conservative commentator were politically motivated and manipulated for gain -- in some instances by the same people who actually support unrestricted abortion.
Hunter notes that in addition to the mainstream media, some of those who took advantage of the opportunity to criticize Bennett for his off-hand remarks included Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress as well as Bruce Gordon, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
"Any kind of a person who's halfway conservative can say something that involves race in the least little bit," the black pro-life leader observes, "and if [the media] can find a way to get into it and turn it into an opportunity to get some political ground, they go for it."
As a 12-year veteran of LEARN and a foe of abortion for much longer, Hunter is quick to emphasize that he is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, so he can call hypocrisy the way he sees it. "And the thing that got in my craw the worst," he notes, was that "they had people like Nancy Pelosi out there criticizing -- a women who's been shoving abortion down the throats of the black American community for years."
The Christian minister and pro-life activist describes Pelosi as a woman who "has never seen an abortion she didn't like." He says what is hypocritical about her coming down on Bennett for his rhetorical statements on abortion is that the liberal congresswoman "doesn't think it's morally wrong. She sees nothing wrong with doing it."
When he first heard about the controversy in the national media, Hunter admits that he only heard a brief sound bite of the radio host saying something about aborting black children, which sounded very bad. "And when I heard the whole thing in context," he says, "I understood that [Bennett] was trying to tell somebody that it's not a good idea to have an abortion -- that there's not a good argument in favor of abortion."
The embattled Bill Bennett has stood by his widely reported remarks, explaining in an interview with CNN that, as he said on the air, it would be ridiculous as well as morally wrong to advocate genocide through the abortion of an entire group, even to address an important issue like crime. He says his entire point was that "this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means."
Bennett insists he is not racist and would put his record up against that of Nancy Pelosi or any of his other critics. In fact, the conservative spokesman says he has been a champion of equal educational opportunities for youth, which he calls "the real civil rights issue of our times."
