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Reparations ad contains unsupported and faulty arguments

In his reparations ad, David Horowitz claims that “Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans” and hints that Africans inflicted pains and hardships on their people. His racist outlook causes him to overlook that Africans did not treat slaves of any color as animals, nor did the rest of the slave-trading world. American slavery initiated a racially-driven slave trade. Racism became the overwhelming obstacle for black equality.

Former slaves were not paid, received no benefits and were hated everywhere because of their race; therefore, they obviously had no money or means of earning money. “Freed” slaves were denied equal job access. Despite being denied equal opportunities by whites, many blacks earned income.

Saying that only a few whites owned slaves does not help Horowitz’s argument. Why didn’t masses of righteous whites stand up against them? While many whites may have received no financial benefits from slavery, they definitely benefited from America’s “white power” ideology.

Horowitz is right in stating that it would be impossible to determine which blacks deserve reparations because of an influx of immigrants and for those blacks to distinguish themselves from others, causing turmoil among blacks.

Another issue is how to allot reparations. If we rely on our American justice system to provide them, we might as well not waste our time because it is influenced by race, and even today, it is hard to get justice as a minority.

Horowitz agrees with reparations for the Oklahoma City and Rosewood communities, while disagreeing with reparations for all blacks. If blacks could trace their connections to slavery or other past racial incidents, they would be able to argue aggressively for reparations. However, blacks were stolen, separated from their families, and denied education. To expect blacks to trace their history would be absurd, and to expect America to pay reparations with anything less than an overwhelming amount of evidence would be unrealistic. Reparations should have been paid to slaves once slavery ended.

No one has attempted to prove scientifically that living individuals have been adversely affected by slavery because there is no need. Since former slaves were denied equal education, health care and respect as human beings as well as profitable jobs after slavery, the reparations issue has lingered since then.

Though blacks have fought for equality in legal and civil rights, their oppressors hold on to all of the money, while blacks are told to stop whining and asking for handouts. Whether or not reparations will help black America, it is absurd for the country to deny any wrongdoing.

Asking for reparations does not turn blacks into victims; instead 400 years of slavery and 100 years of racial turmoil did. Why can everyone besides blacks forget that injustice? White America is not entirely at fault. Blacks’ request for equality has been treated as if they were asking for “black supremacy.”

The Civil Rights Acts represent a demand for equal treatment for minorities. Based on Horowitz’s anti-reparations arguments, he should argue that not only blacks should be getting reparations. In discussing reparation, why not include Native Americans? He fails to sufficiently support his objective arguments and racist ideology.

While slavery existed thousands of years before America’s founding, American slavery changed its entire nature because it was the first to be based on racial terms. The idea of “races” did not exist before the American slave trade. White Americans started the worldwide trend of viewing Africans as animals. African slaves no longer were called “Africans” but called “black” and still are today. The creation of this idea was a blatant and successful attempt to destroy cohesion and establish “white” elitism.

In labeling freedom as a “gift” from whites, Horowitz’s reveals his unfounded “white supremacist” attitude. In his fall-out with the Black Panther Party over a murder of a white woman in the 1970s, he assumes that blacks were to blame. In an interview, Horowitz said, “I knew at that moment that the Black Panthers had murdered her.” The party had no reason to kill her because she was helping the party along with Horowitz at the time. He reveals the unresolved superiority ideology that is appearing in the country’s college newspapers. He does rightly acknowledge “America’s faults” and states that “African-Americans have an enormous stake in this country and its heritage.”

While Horowitz wants to make an effort to embrace the American idea, he cannot relinquish his superiority complex. While stating that the “dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal,” he seems to separate himself from that society. If he really believed in equality, he could be a much more influential social activist.

Gregory Rogers CAS ’02

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