REBUTTING DAVID HOROWITZ

One People’s Project

David Horowitz of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture is a former left-wing writer and editor that has now made it his mission in life to discredit everything and anything to do with minorities, gays, and women. Recently he fired another shot in his war against African Americans. His latest stunt has been to place an ad in college newspapers across the country attacking the reparation s for slavery campaign. The ad goes beyond that, however, almost rationalizing slavery and, in typical Horowitz form, blames blacks for the practice!

Some newspapers refused the ad, some accepted, and in the case of Brown University, where the ad was accepted, it was reported that all 4,000 copies of its newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, were stolen from the newsstands.

We at the One People’s Coalition believe in free speech, and it is to that end we reproduce the text of that ad. We had one stipulation, however. We included our responses to each point, so that the reader can have a better perspective on the issue. We figured this is the best way to deal with it, to be honest. Horowitz abhors dissension from his world view, and will always meet that dissension with snide remarks insults and, in regards to television and radio appearances, will cut off or, if possible silence those that do. We have no time for such juvenile tactics. Below is why we believe Horowitz is wrong–and full of it. Our responses are in red.

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks – and Racist Too

By David Horowitz

We can’t even get past the title without a comment. On March 24, 2001, David Horowitz was on CSPAN and declared that charging racism was hate speech. If this is true, that would mean, given his charge that reparations is racist, he is engaging in hate speech, right?

Get used to this. Horowitz has a knack for pushing double standards like this so much that for him decrying double standards is in itself a double standard!

One

There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery

Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

Yes, and here’s why. It is the United States of America, not a particular racial group that is being held accountable for slavery.

This part brings us to a current routine among racists and other assorted conservatives that has to be the most insulting and telling regarding their ideals and intentions. Horowitz has routinely discounted what African American teachers and historians have been teaching about black culture as “mythology” and “twisted facts” The one exception to this is when those teachers note the dark spots in that culture. Horowitz has seized upon African Americans addressing the fact that Africans had participated in the slave trade and twisted this into making blacks responsible for slavery. He conveniently omits Whites in the passage as if they are not, and that is distorting the truth.

In her book, Verbal Healing, author Ruby Shivers points out how much of a distortion of the facts this is:

“…some Jews betrayed each other during their Holocaust. We know, though that those who participated in betrayal were the exception. We also know that those acts of betrayal, in some instances were minimal and explainable, given the circumstances and time. To characterize such as involvement is a real disservice to the Jewish people as a whole. Likewise, to characterize our experience with our enslavement as involvement is a disservices to the African people. Reputable African scholars suggest that our participation in slavery was so miniscule as to be negligible.”

Horowitz is also known for an anti-Arab bias, and the inclusion of them in this passage is particularly questionable. For a better account than the one Horowitz gives, refer to writings by John Henrik Clarke and the book Black Men of the Nile by Yosef ben-Jochannan.

Two

There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits

The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption
that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous “nation” in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.

We are going to sound like a broken record quite a bit, but again it is the USA that is being held accountable.

We should however deal with this issue of how “prosperous” African Americans are. A greater prosperity in relation to the rest of the world is true about anyone who lives in America, but this does not mean we should discount the impoverished condidtions that many African Americans see themselves in. Horowitz will later try to suggest here that reparations have already been paid to black people in the form of welfare benefits. That stupid line will be addressed when we get to it, but we find here yet another hypocritical line coming from him. Welfare benefits are not a sign of “prosperity”. Those who are on welfare are there because of a poor economic stability on the part of that individual. Horowitz will use this line a few more times here, but it is an attempt to mislead the reader.

Three

Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them

Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?

Now this part is funny. The Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery, and it is conservatives like Horowitz that have constantly reminded us of this. In fact, Abraham Lincoln has been quoted that if he could keep the Union intact without freeing slaves he would. This is Horowitz being dodgy, yet on the aforementioned CSPAN appearance, when a caller called him on this, he accused the caller of changing his position. We would love to know how Horowitz could determine this about an individual he never heard from before, and whose prior position he has never heard.

As for the “tiny minority”, if the US did not allow them to own slaves, they would not, hence the culpability of the US. We could however hold accountable those companies that still operate today which used slaves at that time, and force them to pay reparations too. We are sure Horowitz would loooooove that!

Four

America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery

The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?

The rationale, now repeated for the fourth time, that the US as a country, not its individual racial groups, is responsible. The line about no connection to slavery however, is a lie. A number of today’s major corporations, particularly those in the tobacco and cotton industry were built on slave labor. That is just one out of many connections to slavery.

Five

The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury

The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson’s book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled “What America Owes To Blacks.” If this is not racism, what is?

As it has also been pointed out, African Americans were the ones to first note the roles blacks played, so Horowitz is now attempting to mislead folks here. And why would it be racist to ask what America owes blacks? Horowitz never calls out in this fashion those who suggests things that can be done to blacks, but again, double standards is his M.O.

Hey, did you notice that? Robinson asked what America owes to Blacks, not White America, not even affluent America. Even Horowitz knows the reparaitions question does not focus on what race is culpable, yet how many times does he suggest otherwise?

Six

The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination

No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites (and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective – and yet so critical – to the case?

There has been many evidence-based attempts and succeses to prove that the black community today has been adversely affected by slavery, especially since right after slavery, former slaveowners worked to supress the newfound rights of their former slaves, and what they did was sucessful for the next 150 years. Imagine how much of a role African Americans would have had in this country were it not for the Ku Klux Klan, the “black codes”, segregation, and the denial of voting rights, freedom of movement, right to own property, etc. That was all based on those old Southerners that felt the freedman should not be allowed to coexist with whites.

A perfect example of this is the West-Indian Blacks that Horowitz mentioned. Yes, they decended from slaves, but in their countries, they were allowed to participate and maintain their own governments and businesses, unlike those who were native to the US. They come to this country with a advantage in that regard–but can still be shot dead in the street by a racially profiling cop. Go figure, Horowitz.

Seven

The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.

The renewed sense of grievance — which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create — is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can’t seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others — many less privileged than themselves?

Never take seriously any conservative bellyaching about so-called “victim-hood”. They don’t want anyone to discuss how this country victimized groups of people because in many cases it was and is conservatives that were responsible for it! What people like Horowitz have feared even more than this is when they hear African Americans talk in these terms, it is always with the notion to do something about the problem in question. “By admitting the truth does not mean that you will not try to rise above the victimization,” Ruby Shivers wrote in her second book Victims of Confusion.

If African Americans were simply sitting around feeling sorry for themselves, Horowitz would never write about them and he would have to get a real job.

Eight

Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) – all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a “healing,” what will?

“…in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences?” Sorry, Horowitz. Welfare benefits are not for one race over another, and racial preferences are and always have been illegial, something that conserva
tives cannot bring themselves to admit because it doesn’t help their propaganda.

Nine

What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?

Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians – Englishmen and Americans — created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

How this for an insult? Earlier we saw Horowitz charge Africans for their own slavery. Now we are being told it was Whites that saved us! This is not to suggest that they did not have a hand in the abolitionist movement, but what about Josiah Henson, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vessey, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and other blacks, many of them slaves themselves who were also on the front lines? The anti-slavery movement was created when the first slave ran away. That slave was embraced by the Native Americans! Furthermore, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slave, it merely allowed runaway slaves to come to the Union without being sent back. They were war booty! And for Pete’s sake, Abraham Lincoln did not “give his life” to sign it!

Also earlier, didn’t Horowitz declare racist Randall Robinson’s question of what America Owes to Blacks? Now he puts himself on the fire by asking what blacks owe America. Again with the double standards!

Finally to say that African Americans enjoy a prosperity unmatched in other countries is true as we noted before, but to ignore the fact that they had to fight and still do for the right to enjoy that prosperity, is not being honest with the reader. Can Horowitz explain why many African Americans emigrated to Canada and Europe in the years after Word War I if America was so dedicated to equality?

This passage is a clear example as to how uneducated Horowitz is in approaching this entire issue. It is obvious here, that in this entire ad he was not looking to resolve a question, but rather trying to further his own hatemongering.

Ten

The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom

Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America’s social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.

We need to cut in here to take note of something. For Horowitz to attack the African American community for its “long-running” flirtation with seperatists and nationalists, while telling them to “reject this temptation” is particularly hypocritical, since he himself has been flrting with well known white seperatists and has used them as sources of information. His website has often included statistics from reports commissioned by a white seperatist group called the New Century Foundation, and has featured articles by its members, notably Jared Taylor and James Lubinskas. Both these men have been in the company of and have worked with the National Alliance and David Duke.

For all America’s faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans — especially African-Americans.

America’s African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive — a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans – and all of us — free.

What happens in regards to reparations is still to be debated, but whatever happens resolutions will come with better arguements and suggestions than the ones David Horowitz offered.

Seldom will you hear African-Americans talk of Horowitz, yet over and over again by default they have proven wrong every anti-black argument he has made. Horowitz is nothing more than a propagandist. His arguments are not rooted in fact, and are often esoteric. They also are geared to hit on right-wing talking points. Horowitz’s essay was not for African-Americans, it was for conservatives, and African Americans really could care less. They don’t have time to waste on a whiny little right-winger who makes a name (and a few dollars) for himself with conservatives by showing how tough he can be on blacks. African Americans know that sooner or later, as history has shown, thos
e same conservatives will be supporting the things they attack blacks for supporting today, so African Americans must be doing something right.

We addressed Horowitz here so it does not come as a suprise when a year from now the only ones giving this essay of his any credence, or even paying attention to it, will be fellow right-wingers. When they ask why, send them this rebuttal. Then tell them it is they, not African Americans, who need to get over themselves.