THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: At the end of a Washington Times article on John Kerry’s campaign trek through Ohio, is this:
Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college.
“That’s unacceptable,” he said. “But it’s not their fault.”
Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and “all of us as adults not doing what we need to do.”
What do adults “need to do” to prevent youngsters from turning to crime? Surely, above all, instill in them a sense of personal responsibility. Kerry sends precisely the opposite message when he says of criminals–and, it would seem, only of those criminals who happen to be black–that “it’s not their fault.” There’s a tinge of racism, what President Bush aptly terms “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” in Kerry’s assumption that young blacks can’t be expected to do any better than end up in prison.
Another staggering Kerry gaffe that old media won’t comment on, for several reasons.
(Via Joanne Jacobs.)
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