Horowitz tries to hide institutional racism

All of us know that America has changed dramatically over the past five decades and is continuing to change. Besides the obvious technological innovations (affecting the ways we collect and process knowledge and construct interactions) there have also been shifts in ways we see the direction of contemporary culture heading. The cultural fabric of this nation is undergoing transformations that few of us can clearly see or articulate. One of the things that George Ritzer's theory of "McDonaldization," for example, suggests is that the quest for efficiency, calculability and control in business has created a trend in culture towards sameness, limited choices and dehumanizing robot-like work conditions in many other fields, including education. \nIn the courses I have taught at IU over the last two years, I have tried to emphasize the development of critical thinking skills. I believe it is vital for this country to develop the ability in students to think through complex issues and ideas. The lack of critical thinking quickly leads to emotionalism and conflict because people can easily become convinced that their feelings are in fact their ideas, and therefore choose to argue rather than reason.\nDavid Horowitz's ad "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea" is a dangerous, insidious writing for that very reason: It appeals to emotions under the guise of "a ten point argument." In reality, this so-called argument is a thinly veiled appeal to multiple emotions and stereotypes. It is sneaky, self-contradicting and so full of historical misrepresentation (dis-information) that I am amazed that the IDS, unlike many of the university newspapers that chose not to run this "ad," allowed itself, the student body and Bloomington community to be manipulated in this way.\nI will make only two critical points here but would welcome the opportunity to present a full critique of the Horowitz "advertisement."\nFirst of all, reparations -- as I understand it -- is not simply for "slavery" but for the institutional racism that has adversely impacted the lives of African Americans as well. Black people have been legally segregated and discriminated against in the United States until recent times. Indianapolis, for example, did not desegregate its schools until 1983. National, state and local laws enforced undemocratic conditions and sanctioned violence, economic disparity and social hardships for black Americans for generations. Once you take the one-to-one correspondence of reparations to "slavery" out of Horowitz's argument, many of his appeals to the idea -- why should we have to be held accountable for events that took place 150 years ago? -- can be thrown out of the window.\nSecondly, his shifting the responsibility is intellectually dishonest at best. If one carefully reads his argument (not between the lines but what is "on paper"), we should become convinced that:\n• Black Africans, Arabs and black slave owners (who typically purchased their families) are the real culprits, not the system that kept Africans in lifelong, brutal yet legal bondage in America.\n• Black people should be glad that their languages and cultural expression were systematically denied, their families disrupted and their freedom denied because it helped create a historical moment (today) wherein 47 percent of black children still live in poverty.\n• The Civil War was fought by whites alone to free blacks (in reality over 70,000 African Americans fought in it) and that Lincoln gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.\n• Welfare and social programs of the Great Society subsequently exclusively benefited black people. (In reality, the overwhelming recipients of the funds have been white Americans.)\nI could go on. This ad is so full of historical misrepresentations, red herrings and slippery slopes that it only succeeds in masking the real facts behind the reparations initiatives, which, by the way are not led by Johnnie Cochran (anybody smell a red herring?) but by numerous credible scholars, activists and elected officials. In fact, I hereby volunteer to write a full response to the Horowitz ad if the IDS will publish it as a full page response. \nTo me, it is reprehensible that the IDS chose to publish it in spite of the fact that most student newspapers to which it was submitted saw through its thin veneer of intellectual value. Reparations is a complex issue.