David Horowitz is funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, among other wealthy native fascists, one of the earliest CIA propagandists responsible for the nazification of America. For those of you without a Cable subscription, Horowitz is as fat as Rush Limbaugh, but more visibly psychotic and outspokenly racist. � Alex ��� From: dana redding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 18:48:57 -0500 (EST) From: Joseph Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [BRC-NEWS] *Why* David Horowitz's Ad Was Racist April 3, 2001 *Why* David Horowitz's "Reparations" Ad Was Racist By Joseph Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> While most other college newspapers did not print the David Horowitz reparations ad, the reaction of many white students at those universities that did suggests that students, including those at Brown, have not been exposed to enough information about the kind of attitudes the ad expresses and why those attitudes are indeed racist. At UC Berkeley, on his latest anti-African American, racial-vendetta campaign, David Horowitz abruptly turned tail and bolted, after his speech at UC Berkeley on March 15. This after only the third questioner challenged him. People of color have rightly condemned his "reparations" ad and ranting speech as racist. David Horowitz is a `60's-era former left-wing advocate. But, Horowitz jumped ship with the shift in the prevailing political winds toward conservative Reaganism and son of Reaganism (Bush). Horowitz apparently decided that there was more money, a better life - and especially much more media attention, as something he craves - to be gained on the right-wing side. Unfortunately, there was always a handful of either loosely wrapped or intellectually thin leftists in the '60s (e.g., Clarence Thomas), who ultimately felt that the sails blowing to the right-wing were financially fuller - and decided to go with that. Horowitz has long been known as a professional gadfly huckster, who basically makes a living off of disparaging Black folks. But, the greater blame here goes to student newspapers that allowed themselves to become his tool. Horowitz runs his attack operations out of Los Angeles. His headquarters is the harmless-sounding "Center for the Study of Popular Culture." But Horowitz's activities and his recent book, "Hating Whitey," are anything but harmless. His book attacks African American civil rights activists as being anti-white racists. In the meantime, Horowitz raises to a fine political art the same "self-victimology" that he generally attacks African Americans as perpetrating. Here, Horowitz cloaks himself as the ultimate "free speech martyr." But, David Horowitz was not out to promote free speech. David Horowitz was out to promote himself - as usual. Many whites, including UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl, have tried to twist Horowitz's ad issue into a "free speech" issue. So, it is obvious that, even in the year 2001, many whites, including our chancellor, still don't recognize blatant racism, suitably couched. This is a despicable state of affairs in a so-called institution of "Higher Learning," to borrow from the title of Ice Cube's rap song on racism in college. In a format perverting the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, Horowitz claimed that reparations to African Americans have already been paid in the form of welfare. In a racist mindset at the foundation of all his arguments, Horowitz thus stereotypes most blacks as living on welfare. Apart from that being false, welfare is provided to people because they are poor, not because they are black. In a sick twist, Horowitz then claims that not only does America not owe Africn Americans reparations, but that, in fact, it is African Americans who owe America a greater debt - - for ending slavery. He further says that African Americans today have actually benefited from the national wealth that slavery helped to create. Would any newspaper publish an ad that said that the Jews actually benefited from the Jewish Holocaust, because that's how they got Israel? So, Horowitz believes that the nation that immorally accepted brutal slavery, then gave blacks a gift by eventually outlawing the practice - and replacing it with American "Jim Crow" apartheid practices. By the same perverted logic, a kidnap-beating-rape victim would owe a debt to her brutal rapist, if he finally let her go free. In another twisted claim, Horowitz said that there were thousands of blacks who also owned slaves. Actually, it was free blacks who, in many cases, purchased their own family members to protect them in and from slave-owning states. In his ad, Horowitz also claimed that most Americans have no connection to slavery. This is patently false: slavery has spawned a legacy of racial oppression that exists to this day. As a result of slavery, whites today have inherited preferential advantage. Southern post-Civil War laws like the "Black Codes" made it illegal for African Americans to work for themselves. From Tulsa, Okla., to Rosewood, Fla., African Americans were later told to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and when they did, successful African American business towns and districts were often destroyed by rioting whites or, even later, by "urban renewal." For an enlightening discourse on the reparations issue, Randal Robinson, head of TransAfrica, the organization that spearheaded the American divestment movement against then-apartheid South Africa, has written the book "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks." Horowitz's ad not only invokes racist stereotypes, but also relies on raising straw man arguments to justify his claims. Over and over, he asserts the usual specious argument that not all whites benefited from slavery. That is false: whites benefited as a nation. But, his argument is legally irrelevant. Many Americans don't directly benefit from all national policies. But the arguments for reparations aren't made on the basis of whether every white person directly gained from slavery (just as the debts of a corporation don't depend on who it comprises). The arguments are made on the basis that the United States itself institutionalized slavery and protected it by law. As the government is an entity that survives generations, its debts and obligations survive the lifespan of any particular individuals. As a citizen of the U.S., one not only enjoys the rights and privileges of citizenship, but also shares the debts and liabilities of the nation. Present-day Americans cannot evade national debts by claiming they were incurred by, and only benefited, a prior generation. Thus, the moral debt arising from 350 years of free, forced, brutal labor and practically free "Jim Crow" bitter labor from millions of blacks - barely ending in the 1960's - is an obligation the U.S. cannot ignore. Nor can the U.S. evade a moral debt merely because the direct victims have died. The descendents of slavery have inherited a right to some meaningful form of restitution, because they still greatly inherit its adverse legacy. No government would make the descendents of each beneficiary pay the descendents of each victim for even an inhumane national policy whose detriment still exists. Thus, governments make restitution to victims as a group or class. This is a debt that was once promised but soon abandoned by the U.S. Finally, Horowitz was forced to admit that the First Amendment does not require any newspaper to accept a paid ad. But newspapers should have moral standards below which they would reject any ad, especially an incendiary publicity stunt. The First Amendment does, however, allow a newspaper to express regret, upon reflection, for printing a self-promoting, morally obscene ad. The fact that the Daily Californian, Chancellor Berdahl, the Brown Daily Herald, Brown University President Blumstein, and many white students don't recognize just how racist the ad was is shocking. - -- Joseph Anderson is a resident of Berkeley, CA, and a member of the National Council for African American Men. ����� Alex Constantine's Political Conspiracy Research Bin: http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/
