> No one but media junkies (which most Americans -- unlike LBO-talkers
> -- are not) will remember the Horowitz incident, the Dartmouth
> affair, etc. "Playing into the hands of conservatives" doesn't seem
> to be worth worrying about.
>
> According to Andrew Brownstein, "Some coalition members said the ad
> fit a pattern of poor coverage of minority students by The Herald. A
> sore point is that no black or Latino students serve on the paper's
> board or work on its staff." So, even before the Horowitz ad,
> students of color at Brown had legitimate grievances; the ad that
> "suggests that despite the horrors of slavery, black Americans are
> better off economically today that black Africans" and "calls
> reparations 'one more attempt to turn African-Americans into victims'
> and explains the 'debt blacks owe to America' for helping end the
> slave trade" was just the last straw, it seems.
>
> Yoshie
But surely, Yoshie, this does not excuse what the Brown students did. How does this advance their cause? If there are racist policies at the paper, then certainly these bright young things can think of better ways to confront them than to destroy every copy of the paper they can grab. Or is the campus left at Brown utterly devoid of ideas save authoritarian ones?
DP