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I'll be speaking at the teach-in tomorrow, mentioned by my friend Zakiyyah Jackson below.
At 7:45 AM -0400 4/18/01, OpenMinds9 at aol.com wrote:
>Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 07:45:39 EDT
>From: OpenMinds9 at aol.com
>Subject: Rubutting David Horowitz [A Network working for Justice]
>To: <columbusnetwork at listbot.com>, <cusas at listbot.com>,
> <serj at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
>
>Columbus Network
>
>(forwarded msg, apologies for cross-postings)
>
>I am organizing a student led teach-in on Thursday from 10am to 4pm
>on the steps of Bricker Hall in response to the David Horowitz
>anti-reparations ad (printed in today's issue of the Lantern)
>(displayed below). It's main objectives is to: inspire critical
>perspectives on the ad, open up a space for a fair and forthright
>discussion of the reparations issue, expand the conversation of
>reperations beyond the context of slavery into contemporary
>inequalities(think Cincinnati), and to link the cause of reparations
>for African American chattel slavery to issues of reparations for
>Japanese American internment, U.S.indigenous land loss, comfort
>women(essentially to facilitate conversation in non-African American
>contexts while foregrounding the offensive ad). Consequently, I am
>inviting all of you to show support. The info table needs volunteers
>etc. E-mail me if you are interested in helping out.
>ignite heart and mind
>zakiyyah jackson
>
>
>Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks -
>and Racist Too
>
>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?
>
>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.
>
>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?
>
>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?
>
>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?
>
>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 critica
>l - to the case?
>
>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?
>
>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?
>
>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?
>
>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.
>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.
>
>
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Yoshie