Race.

Bill Clinton's rant the other day is classic blame-the-victim rhetoric of privilege.

Redline black communities, implement racial real estate covenants as a matter of public policy, underfund schools in black neighborhoods, site polluting industries in and around them, segregate them from communities at large with freeways, provide inadequate public transportation and recreational facilities, flood the neighborhood with liquor stores . . . in a word create slums and blame their creation on the people who are stuck living in them; then send in a sadistic, racist police force to brutalize kids with no education, no jobs, no sense of belonging to a society that cares about them, and blame all of this and more (by which I mean flooding black neighborhoods with guns and drugs) on the product of precisely the policies that created such a violent, hopeless, environment.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when you block every avenue to participation in the mainstream economy, an underground economy based on violence and crime takes its place.

It's all about framing, Mr. Bill Clinton. You can argue from the 13-year-old kids shooting people, or you can argue from the blatant racism that created the world they inhabit. One is cynical politics fueled by money. The other is compassion for your fellow human beings. Every person is free to choose between them.