>Here we agree. Fuck Horowitz. Let's move on to more pressing issues.
>
>DP
yes. as far as I'm concerned, Horowitz's goal was to demonize blacks by singling out the reparations issue. he has purposefully chosen an issue that, while it may be a high speed train, wasn't an issue that most white people thought about and I'll bet that most blacks outside of academic and activist circles didn't know much about either.
ignoring him might have been best. HOWEVER, I know just how much I appreciate the advice to ignore idiots who engage in outrageously sexist speech. it's not an easy thing to do, to ignore this kind of crap and black people have to ignore it day in and day out. it's an everyday thing to have to ignore and to not fight back, to be polite so as not to come of as "one of those people who are 'always' on about the race issue". sure, maybe they could have done something else, but... what exactly?
one point, as far as I know, Horowitz tried to put the ad in papers that aren't official campus papers. this is so clearly evidence of a concerted effort since he probably likely knew that many official campus papers have statements in their charters that require that controversial ads go thru a vetting process and that refuse to print ads that are 1. contain lies (and here we can use DeLong's liable standard as a guide and 2. are racist. (that was Berk's and Wisc's policy. don't know about Brown).
By selecting off campus papers (if he did) he got relatively cheap rates that targeted the campus activist audience AND papers that are desperate for ad revenue. Wisconsin, Berkeley and Brown were all off campus papers that targeted the campus audience. as for the rest, does anyone know if he also targeted off campus papers?
I ask again what exactly constitutes racist speech, or hate speech? certainly, the views Horowitz expressed are considered racist by most of us here. but as I've already said, Horowitz isn't saying anything that many white USers don't alreadily say and think. learning to see those views as racist, though, isn't much different than my step mother learning to see that "some of my good friends have been black" is racist. or, perhaps, more problematically, the oft expressed view, "we're all the same" which some I've read and heard to claim to be racist in the sense that the "same" underneath is to, basically, be white. and, depending on who it's coming from, it can often mean, translated, "affirmative action is racist".
it takes time to learn to see these views as racist. it will surely take time for USers to see Horowitz's ad as racist. I don't see how calling it racist or hate speech without a clear explanation of how it is so will help. (and this has nothing to do with the BRC statement.) what I mean is this: a lot more dialoque is needed about how the ads and the ideas expressed therein are problematic. how to accomplish that is another question, but i suppose it has to happen in everyday interactions, in public forums, in debates, in countering ads.
but damn, I'll say this: it's up to white people who are sympathetic to the issues, even if they don't buy reparations, to defend the idea by talking aobut what is wrong with objections to reparations and what is even more wrong with Horowitz's "history" and "arguments" against reparations.
kelley