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American blacks still feel effects of slavery

I am responding to the first argument of David Horowitz’s “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea-and Racist, Too,” a full-page ad that appeared in the March 12 issue of The Daily Free Press.

Horowitz claims that “there is no single group responsible for the crime of slavery,” citing Africans and Arabs who aided in the enslavement of the descendants of African-Americans. The fact that whites received help does not by any means negate their personal and direct role in the enslavement process. German Nazis were not the only group responsible for the crimes against Jews that took place in Europe during that time, so does that mean they should not be held accountable for their actions?

Even if other groups contributed to the horrors that slave-trading caused in Africans’ native lands, there is, by and large, one single group responsible for the unspeakable treatment of African slaves here on American soil.

I would also like to provide some historical clarification. Horowitz writes, “There were white slaves in colonial America. Are their descendants going to receive payments?” as if to have the audacity to suggest that slavery caused whites to suffer at a level remotely comparable to that of blacks.

No slave ship ever arrived on the shores of Europe to chain and shackle white people, abducting them from their homes to make them into property. Whites who could not immediately afford their way to America were held as indentured servants and were always able to earn their freedom after a specified period of time.

Many blacks lived under similar conditions as indentured servants until laws were passed beginning in 1660 that decreed blacks, along with any children born to them, were to be slaves for life. After that evolved the deplorable form of slavery in our country based solely on skin color, and the belief in the inferiority of blacks. This belief sank deeply into the fabric of our nation and African-Americans continue to bear its scars today.

Horowitz’s arguments are ignorant and offensive attempts to dodge and displace the blame that falls squarely on the shoulders of white America for these scars.

Paul Joyal COM ’00

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