The bipartisan co-chairs of a presidential commission that was convened to cut the budget deficit recommended  on Wednesday raising the Social Security retirement age to 68 by 2050 and 69 by 2075. Certain physically taxing jobs would be given a "hardship exception," according to the commission's report, but if Congress enacts the retirement extensions, the majority of Americans can look forward to working until they're almost 70 within the next several decades.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, the American Human Development Project released a related report, though, if you weren't looking for it, the correlation between the two was subtle at first. According to the AHDP's research, African Americans living in Washington, D.C., have a lower life expectancy, at 71 years, than African Americans in any state. Whites in the District, on the other hand, have a longer life expectancy than whites in any state, at 83.1 years. The disparity is shocking, but it's nothing new: In 1999, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that the average American could expect to live 77.8 years, while the average African American could expect to live only 73.1 years.

In other words, regardless of where they live, blacks in America are dying much sooner than their white counterparts. This is troubling irrespective of context, but when we juxtapose this fact with the potentially higher retirement age, we're smacked with another hard truth: In another generation, it's very possible that blacks will receive Social Security for all of two or three years before they die, despite having paid as much as any other Americans into the system.

Back in 2005, conservative author Rich Lowry attempted to make the case in the National Review that Social Security is racist. Noting that the average rate of return from Social Security for young people in Charlie Rangel's heavily black New York district would be negative 8 percent less than they put in, Lowry concluded that Social Security was bigoted. "If young blacks were being fleeced in this way by, say, 'predatory lenders,' the likes of Rangel would scream racism and demand change," he wrote. "But if they are financially abused by a liberal sacred cow, the implicit message is: Don't get uppity."

Lowry's conclusion -- and it's a common conservative talking point -- is that Social Security should be privatized in order to fairly distribute the payouts among the races. "Private Social Security accounts would help address this deficit," he says. "[Democrats] should think of the accounts as financial affirmative action, or any other government initiative meant to benefit blacks. According to the ideology of black victimhood, blacks are apparently owed everything -- except a better opportunity to save and own their own retirement assets."

There is perhaps no greater example of tossing the baby out with the bathwater than this horrible line of thinking: Blacks die sooner than whites, so let's privatize Social Security in order to get them some more money before they die.