Though I think the protestors’ cause would be better served by not attempting to quash Horowitz’s ad or demanding apologies for it, I can see why they would find his biased and disingenuous arguments annoying. There are numerous valid arguments against slavery reparations, but Horowitz seems willing to use just about any otherargument he can think of too. From a longer version of his “Ten Reasons”:
*1. Assuming there is actually a debt, it is not at all clear who owes it. *
Disingenuous. Reparations advocates are quite clear about saying that the debt is owed by the U.S. government for its complicity in and promotion of slavery, just as it was decided that the U.S. owed a debt to Japanese-Americans whom it put in internment camps. If there are to be reparations, they’ll come from public monies, just as the Japanese-American reparations did.
*2. The idea that only whites benefited from slavery is factually wrong and attitudinally racist. *
Disingenuous. Reparations advocates are not saying that “only whites benefited from slavery”. On the whole, of course, the benefits of slavery went to whites and the burdens went to blacks, but there need be no racial calculus involved in saying that the U.S. government did something wrong and so the U.S. government should pay.
*3. In terms of lineal responsibility for slavery, only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. *
Irrelevant. Only a tiny minority of Americans ever got any direct benefit out of having Japanese-Americans carted off to internment camps, either. Nonetheless, the government did wrong and the government had to pay.
*4. Most Americans living today (white and otherwise) are the descendants of post-Civil War immigrants, who have no lineal connection to slavery at all. *
Irrelevant to the question of whether the government should pay for the wrong it did. When post-Civil War immigrants became citizens of this country, they accepted a share in the burdens of its institutional history just as they accepted a share in the burden of its national debt. I don’t hear any advocates for this year’s immigrants defending their right to be released from the part of their tax burden that funds debt interest payments on the grounds that they “have no lineal connection” to the WWII and post-WWII ballooning of the debt.
*5. The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim – that Jews and Japanese-Americans received reparations from Germany and the United States, respectively – are spurious. *
This, I think, has some validity. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that it invalidates the concept of slavery reparations, but there is definitely a difference between paying reparations to those who were direct victims of an injury and paying their descendants (and others who aren’t their descendants) who suffered from various difficult-to-quantify consequences of that injury. One for five so far, Mr. Horowitz.
*6. Behind the reparations arguments lies the unfounded claim that all blacks in America suffer economically from the consequences of slavery and discrimination. *
Also a reasonable point, IMHO.
*7. 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. *
Not entirely without merit, but weak. If reparations are a matter of justice—and I’m not convinced that they are, but there are some strong arguments in favor of them—then it’s a little bit lame to respond to a demand for justice by moaning “Oh, but your whining about oppression just sounds so tacky! It would make such a better impression if you just put up with this historical injustice in a quiet and dignified manner!” Sorry, Mr. Horowitz: no justice, no peace.
*8. This raises a point that has previously remained off the radar screen, but will surely be part of the debate to come: What about the “reparations” to blacks that have already been paid? *
This is the “but we’ve already given you trillions of dollars in welfare” argument, and it’s disingenuous. If welfare assistance to blacks counts as “reparations”, then what do we call the welfare assistance that’s been given to whites, who have been the majority of welfare recipients? If we call racial preferences for blacks “reparations”, what do we call the racial preferences that have been given to non-blacks? I think Horowitz is on very shaky ground here in claiming that welfare or racial preferences count as “slavery reparations”, but only when the recipients are black.
*9. And this raises another question that black leaders might do well to reflect on: What about the debt blacks owe to America – to white Americans – for liberating them from slavery? *
Yeah, right! “So okay, I kidnapped and abused you, but eventually I let you go, so you should be grateful to me!” I can’t understand how anyone could think that the benefit of being released from slavery somehow makes up for the wrong of having been enslaved in the first place. In any case, the heroism of individual abolitionist whites is not relevant to the question of whether the U.S. government should be held financially liable for the wrongs of legalized slavery. It also ignores, as other posters have pointed out, the significant role played by American blacks in liberating themselves.
*10. The final and summary reason for rejecting any reparations claim is recognition of the enormous privileges black Americans enjoy as Americans, and therefore of their own stake in America’s history, slavery and all. *
Horowitz has two arguments here: the first is that blacks in America are actually very well off compared to blacks in Africa (which ignores the question of how much of Africa’s current troubles are due to its history of colonial exploitation by whites, btw), and the second is that blacks should not reject America as a mere exploiter and oppressor instead of taking their rightful place in its multicultural heritage. The first point is, again, irrelevant to the question of whether justice demands that the U.S. make reparation for its acts. The second is well worth bearing in mind, but I don’t think it automatically excludes the possibility of reparations. It’s perfectly possible to treasure your rightful place in your country’s multicultural heritage while at the same time feeling that your government owes you something; in fact, there’s probably not an American taxpayer in existence who hasn’t felt that way.
So I kind of sympathize with the people who found the ad so intolerably irritating, although I personally would not have demanded its withdrawal. If I were still a hotheaded college student and read something in the campus paper as asininely, patronizingly distorted as Horowitz’s Point #9, I’d probably be storming the editorial office too.
Let me just respond by saying the when I was in (Catholic) college, an entire run of one of the school’s newspaper was similarly stolen because it ran an ad from Planned Parenthood. Do ya think it was the leftists who did that? Student activists, of all stripes, have a depressing tendency towards thuggishness.