ad info

 
CNN.comTranscripts
 
Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback  

 

  Search
 
 

 

TOP STORIES

Bush signs order opening 'faith-based' charity office for business

Rescues continue 4 days after devastating India earthquake

DaimlerChrysler employees join rapidly swelling ranks of laid-off U.S. workers

Disney's GO.com is a goner

(MORE)

MARKETS
4:30pm ET, 4/16
144.70
8257.60
3.71
1394.72
10.90
879.91
 


WORLD

U.S.

POLITICS

LAW

TECHNOLOGY

ENTERTAINMENT

 
TRAVEL

ARTS & STYLE



(MORE HEADLINES)
 
CNN Websites
Networks image


TalkBack Live

Reparations for Slavery: Is There Open Debate?

Aired March 26, 2001 - 3:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Are David Horowitz's ideas not fit to print?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It just seemed just totally unreasonable that it could never actually run in the "Brown Daily Herald."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: This ad, "10 Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea" can't get published in several college newspapers and it's provoked protests on many campuses that did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I sure didn't expect to open that up and see that in there, you know. It's not our job. What politics go in the paper, we don't tend to viewpoint.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID HOROWITZ, CENTER FOR STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE: This is not about what's good for African-Americans. This is an attack on America: America is built on genocide, it's built on theft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Protesters at Brown University confiscated the paper from newsstands around campus. Some papers it appeared in have been trashed, and Horowitz has been forced off a podium.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOROWITZ: But we have a very serious problem in this country, and particularly on our campuses, what I would call racial McCarthyism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Some call it hate speech -- others, free speech. Where do you draw the line? Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. Whether reparations are a good or a bad idea, something that we will talk about in just a moment. But first, there is the matter of free expression on college campuses. What is the problem with David Horowitz's ten reasons?

David Horowitz, by the way, had planned to be with us at the top of the show, however, he's been delayed, and he will join us a little later this hour.

With us first today, John Leo, a syndicated columnists for "U.S. News & World Report" and Janus Adams, a visiting professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Welcome to both of you.

JANUS ADAMS, COLUMNIST: Hi, Bobbie.

BATTISTA: There are a number of issues that we are going to try to touch on in this hour, as we mentioned. The first was whether or not this is an issue of free speech.

John, what do you think?

JOHN LEO, "U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT": Well, I think it is. It's an ad, and no newspaper is morally or legally bound to print an ad. But I think you should offend in the area of free speech. You should let all viewpoints be held. The problem as I see it is the campus is not a place where much dissent is tolerated on anything to do with race and gender. The culture is pretty adamant about what you say and what you should think. So when someone comes from the outside and says, "No, I'm suggesting the opposite," a great intolerance is forced to the surface and that's what David Horowitz did.

BATTISTA: Did you have a problem with David Horowitz submitting this as an ad as opposed to an op-ed piece?

LEO: No. Political ads are important, too. That's the way we elect most of our candidates these days. It's entirely possible that they would be willing to print it as editorial matter. The "Harvard Crimson," in fact, did go out of its way to print it free just to show people what the argument was about. But I think ads are not substantially different from op-eds. I think if you want to air the opinion, if you want students to hear all sides of an issue, you'd have to be ready to print ads on all sides of all issues and not just stand there and knock them down when they don't agree with your previous convictions.

BATTISTA: Janus, some college newspaper editors said they ran this ad because they thought they had to under the First Amendment, and that is not correct, right?

ADAMS: It's absolutely not correct. And the real problem, Bobbie, isn't so much a matter of free speech regarding this particular ad. In order to have dissent, you must first have information. And the information has not really been out there in any serious way regarding reparations. I mean, if we took a poll of your audience right now, how many people even know that there really was a promise of reparations to African-American people? Do we believe in keeping our word? I mean, if -- I'm sure if I asked, most of your audience would say, yes, they believe people should keep their word, especially when word is given to a people as oppressed as those refugees at the end of the Civil War really were.

So here what we have is, instead of a serious consideration of what is going on here, we have a person who, my goodness, if he was chased off the platform, at least he could get on the platform. We have people who are able to get on the platform to speak against something when people who can't even get on the platform to give the information in the background.

BATTISTA: Well, but doesn't he have the right to be there to express his opinions? I mean, we've had discussions in our office about the issue of reparations.

ADAMS: I think part of the problem in our country is that we have, as I said, insufficient information. I ask the question: How many people even know that there was a promise of reparations to African-Americans? And therefore, if you don't know that, what is your opinion based on?

January 12th, 1865, there was a field order issued that promised reparations to African-Americans. In the waning months of the Civil War, that was the offer that many African-Americans know about this so-called 40 acres and a mule. Shortly after the war, reparations indeed were paid. But the obnoxious way that they were paid is not to those people who so suffered under the lash of slavery, but to these southern planters for the loss of their, quote, "property," that property being these African-Americans. I mean...

BATTISTA: John -- let me get John back in here. Does she -- is she making a point here? Does she have history on her side?

LEO: Well, sure. I mean, there should have been 40 acres and a mule given, as the federal government had promised. But the issue here is, I think, first of all, I insist that it's free speech. Horowitz sent this ad to 51 papers and I think something like 12 or 13 accepted it. If he had sent the same kind of ad with the same tone of voice on the other side asking for reparations, I predict -- in fact, I guarantee you all 51 would have printed it in a moment without a minute's reflection.

ADAMS: The difference is...

LEO: What that indicates is that we're willing to have one side of the issue that agrees with the campus culture but not the other side.

ADAMS: It is easy to say if he had or if someone else did, but as an African-American, we know the extent to which our views are not fully represented in the press. We know that there has been a systematic period across our history where our voices are silenced. So, therefore, to say if he had, as though this particular playing field is truly level, that African-Americans basically have the ad dollars to go out and put ads in a whole or offer ads to a whole span of newspapers. It is not accurate. And let us stick really to what this is about. To some extent, maybe who knows. People should thank David Horowitz for putting it on the front pages when we've had such a hard time getting it to the front pages.

But sarcasm aside, I think the audiences, they really deserve a serious inspection and look at the topic. And indeed, an African- American would have been forced to give that before they could have gotten that ad in that paper.

BATTISTA: Let me do a couple of e-mails that have come in here. Ken says, "How could it not be racism for the world to not take serious issue with claims of reparations for black people? Non-black people on four continents have been compensated and the enormous wickedness they were subjected to revealed. The African holocaust lasted probably longer than any of the human suffering in human history. This comprehensibly chronicle genocide must be atoned and should be paid for in order to heal this nation, this people and this world."

I still want to say on the issue, I know for you, Janus, the issue is more reparations itself, but I still want to debate the First Amendment issue, because I don't think we can just blow pass that either.

ADAMS: I'm not blowing past it, Bobbie. As a journalist, I know full well that I have to put out my sources and I have to thoroughly research something. I have to be responsible.

One of the things that we get by doing the ad, which is why I don't agree with it as a free speech platform, is that we get to bypass those facts. Mr. Horowitz was not particularly interested in what the legal precedence for reparations were. He was not particularly interested in establishing the foundation of what has happened since then.

I mean, for heaven's sakes, if things had been resolved in this country in an equitable, in a moral way -- forget equitable -- in a moral way, people wouldn't be talking about reparations.

BATTISTA: So what you're talking about is a truth in advertising issue basically, John. Is there a problem with that?

ADAMS: Exactly. We give more weight to soap than we give to human lives. And our lives are at stake with this.

BATTISTA: John, doesn't David Horowitz have an obligation to be truthful or is he basing his opinion on non-fact?

LEO: He's paying for it. He's giving his side of the argument. And if you don't like it, yell and scream at him. These newspapers are certainly open not only to ads from the pro-reparation side, but they open their pages for letters and op-ed things. What is missing in a modern college campus is open, honest debate about race. Horowitz has shown this to be the major issue on many college campuses. They raid the offices. They try to break down the doors on a couple of campuses. They steal newspapers. This happens all the time. They shout down and cancel speakers. This is what's wrong with the modern American campus. It's not really open to different arguments on race and gender. It's a closed culture.

ADAMS: I beg to differ with you. I beg to differ with you. Yes, some people did get very angry about the fact that perhaps when they may have submitted letters in the past, when they may have tried to get on op-ed pages, they may not have had the same access. There is a problem when you can buy access when other people cannot. And when that access, as I say, is less responsible than we would give to soap, there is a problem. You cannot advertise cigarettes because it is hazardous.

What about the kind of atmosphere that this assault on African- Americans creates? Is it not equally hazardous if not more so?

BATTISTA: Let me jump in here, because I want to read a couple of the 10 reasons so that our at-home audience who are not familiar with what David Horowitz published has some idea of what he was talking about. Here's a couple of them: There is no one group that benefited exclusively from the fruits of slavery. Remember, these are 10 reasons why reparations for blacks is a bad idea. Only a tiny minority of white Americans ever owned slaves and others gave their lives to free them.

Another reason: Reparations to African-Americans have already been paid. And what about the debt blacks owe to America?

ADAMS: Bobbie, the -- we're dealing with a whole handful of fallacious things. Let's start with the very first one that you listed right up at the top. What was it?

BATTISTA: The first one is: There's no one group that benefited exclusively from slavery.

ADAMS: He is saying essentially in the subtext of that one, he puts out the familiar assertion that other Africans and Arabs were part of the slave trade. What he does not put out is that in the 15th century, the pope issued an encyclical that divided up the world among European powers. Of course, no one else mattered. But it divided up access to the world. And therefore, he sent them instead of arguing fighting with themselves, he said, "OK, I'll assign the world to you." That issue of slavery comes after European ships go to conquer the rest of the world. If that were not so, then tell me the name of the African ship that boarded black people on, that sailed it to the European shore and said, "Here's my cousin. Would you like to buy him?" You will not find such a ship because it does not exist.

BATTISTA: I have to take...

ADAMS: But we have to look at it in the context of the incursion of colonization moving inward towards the coast and what then happened. BATTISTA: John, I'll let you address this.

LEO: Well, I mean, she's certainly right -- there are no black ships, but the blacks sold the blacks in Africa to whites.

ADAMS: This is fallacious.

BATTISTA: I have to take a break at this time. We'll continue here in just a moment. The question today: If you were a college newspaper editor, would you publish the ad? Take the TALKBACK LIVE online viewer vote at cnn.com/talkback. AOL keyword: CNN.

In just a moment, the editor of the "Brown Daily Herald" will join us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: In 1985, a student paper at Los Angeles Harbor College faced censure by trustees of the Los Angeles Community College district after printing a series of stories denying the Holocaust.

BATTISTA: All right, let's bring Jahred Adelman into this discussion. He's the executive editor of the "Brown Daily Herald."

Gerald, good to see you. Jahred, rather, sorry. Tell me why it is that the newspaper, "Brown," decided to go with this ad.

JAHRED ADELMAN, "BROWN DAILY HERALD": Well, if you look at the ad, there's nothing in the ad that's blatantly racist. There's no way at all that you could call it pure hate speech. It's very controversial. And when we got the ad, we realized that it was not up to us to decide what opinions our campus was looking at. It was not up to us to decide what our readers should be thinking. And we printed the ad with the hope that it would create open dialogue and discussion on our campus on these issues. And if there people on our campus who disagreed what the ad was saying, then it was up to them to provide the opposing viewpoint.

And we open our paper up to guest columns. We open our paper up to letters to the editor attacking the ad, whatever people on campus wanted to say about it. And amazingly enough, instead of people writing attacking the ad, people wrote in columns -- guest columns, letters attacking us as a newspaper for printing it.

BATTISTA: You know what? Some people might say where would you draw the line, for example? Like would you print an ad that -- from a group that denied the Holocaust happened or...

ADELMAN: Right. I mean, it's a tough issue. We look at every ad on a case-by-case basis. And we reserve the right not to print an ad. But Horowitz's ad is pure political opinion. Whether people disagree with it, that's one of the reasons for running it. If people disagree with it, then they can get their dissenting viewpoints out there. It's opinion, it's not hate speech, it's not racist.

BATTISTA: So what happened after you printed this ad? ADELMAN: When we printed the ad, the next day or rather the day after, a group of students showed up at our newsroom demanding that we give them a full page ad for free to refute Horowitz's ad, and also that we donate the money that we received it to the minority community.

The day after, we met with them again, and we told them we couldn't meet their demands. And a few days later, our newspapers, our entire press room was stolen by a bunch of students who decided that they wanted to have the right to say what our readers could see and what our readers couldn't see.

BATTISTA: By the way...

ADAMS: Bobbie...

BATTISTA: Let me ask him first, who were these protesters?

ADELMAN: Who were they?

BATTISTA: Regular students or were they an organized group?

ADELMAN: It was students. It was a coalition of several groups on campus. I think there were at end towards 15 to 20 different organizations.

BATTISTA: Let me get Janus and John back in here. You know, you might look at this and go, "What's wrong with this picture?"

ADAMS: Yeah, Bobbie, there's something very wrong with the way these days we're defining racism. When this young man says it was not racist, that was a blatantly racist ad. And we have to go to the core of what racism is. Racism has to do with power. It has to do with a fundamental disrespect for people that is just so pervasive it has to be stopped. When you put in an ad -- if I had put in an ad that, gee, let's have Japanese executives really owe a debt of thanks to those people -- those Japanese-Americans whose lands were taken away and all their property during World War II by an American displacement act, and when they were put in prison here or really concentration camps here. We should really say that the Japanese executives owe them a debt of thanks, because and after all, it reduced competition.

If we say, that Jews -- that banks in Switzerland owe Jews really a debt of thanks, you know, because it lowered their tax burden for the year that they paid it back, nobody would be considering this nonsense. But when you have...

BATTISTA: Jahred, would you consider those viewpoints in your newspaper?

ADELMAN: We might. The correct response to all of these arguments is not to stifle these views but to print them and then let everybody refute them out in the public in open discussion and dialogue and discourse.

ADAMS: You should not refute nonsense. Nonsense should be known, seen for what it is.

ADELMAN: It's his opinion.

ADAMS: And look, there are many opinions and that's exactly what I'm saying. If his opinion had been informed, and if you had been informed, you would have seen that it goes beyond opinion. I can have an opinion of dogs or cats, but you're not going to publish it. So, therefore, we really need to -- one of the problems here is that Americans don't look at the cost of these things.

BATTISTA: But aren't you -- you're talking about a subjective line, though, John, isn't she? I mean, how do you decide?

LEO: Well, what I'm hearing here is -- I'm hearing the voice of the censor here. Whenever you go against the common opinion on a college campus, you are likely going to be shot down on some grounds, usually hate speech, sometimes sexual harassment. Whatever opinion doesn't comport turns out to be hate speech or something, a very amorphous term used to avoid debate. Here we have an open issue, it's out on the table. Debate it. Don't say that it's racist. Don't try to hide behind the word hate speech. Debate the issue.

ADAMS: I didn't use the word hate speech. I used the world racism.

LEO: You used racism, which is even worse.

ADAMS: Because that is what it is.

LEO: No, it isn't.

ADAMS: And it is ignorance. It is perpetuating ignorance. It is playing on the lack of information of people who, as I said, may not have known that there was even a precedent for reparations. So if you don't know that and you just start spewing opinions all over the place, what have you served?

Right now, I'm on a college campus. I'm at the campus of James Madison University. And I mention that right now because it's significance, since Mr. Madison is the author and architect of the Constitution. I am there actually to use my history expertise to teach a course on radio drama. And we have been, as a result, with the majority white class, we have been looking at certain issues that comport towards getting towards understanding the characters in our drama. We don't elevate one above the other. We say what's motivating this character? It's been phenomenal for the discussion.

BATTISTA: I'm going to try to get -- John, there is some truth to the fact that even you had problems with some of the points that David Horowitz was trying to make, correct?

LEO: It's a provocative ad. David thinks that there's a cultural war going on, and I think he's right. And he's fighting in it. So fine.

ADAMS: Oh, for heaven's sakes... LEO: The tone was aggressive.

ADAMS: I am sorry.

LEO: But you can be aggressive back. It's just a debatable issue. It isn't racism. No serious person thinks this is racism.

ADAMS: On Mr. Horowitz' site, there's a slaphillary.com. Is that appropriate? Is it a cultural war? When we have every eight minutes a woman being slapped around, abused, knocked around in this country, is that an appropriate metaphor?

ADELMAN: What does it have to do with his opinion?

ADAMS: No, it doesn't have anything to do with it if you don't see that it has something to do with you. But for all of these people out here who do see that it has something to do with them -- I do feel the 41 bullets pumped into Amadou Diallo because I'm a black woman with a son. It is not an objective line that you're holding.

BATTISTA: I have to take a break here at this time.

And Jahred Adelman, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate you coming on today. And John Leo, we thank you for joining us. I appreciate your insight into this.

LEO: Sure.

BATTISTA: We'll be back right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: Commencement activities at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 1999 included taped comments from Mumia Abu- Jamal, in prison for killing a police officer. Supporters say he is innocent. Some students protested by walking out or by standing and turning their backs to the podium.

BATTISTA: Let me do a couple of e-mails here quickly. Ronald says, "If the ad promotes a legitimate discussion of race relations, and in particular, the issue of reparations, I don't see any harm in printing it. There's not enough money on earth to pay for the damage caused by slavery. However, the American people and government need to more formally acknowledge how terrible slavery was.

Jeff in Dallas says, "I'm white. I'm a life member of the NAACP. I support reparations. Rather than censoring the ad, run it, then use the money obtained to run an ad opposing Horowitz's position on the opposite page or donate the profits from the ad to the NAACP. It is much more effective to retaliate by using Mr. Horowitz's own money against him rather than to censor him.

All right, the man who is at the center of this controversy is on the phone with us now. David Horowitz is the president of the Center for Popular Culture.

David, are you there?

HOROWITZ: I am, Bobbie.

BATTISTA: OK, when you placed this ad and you sent it out there, what was your point?

HOROWITZ: Well, my main point was that on American campuses today, there are some issues, reparations is one, affirmative action or race preferences would be another, where only one side of the debate is ever heard, and that's because people are intimidated. We have a phenomenon in this country that I would call racial McCarthyism.

It used to be that it was a suspicion that there was a communist under every bed, now it's a racist. Every one of us is somehow hiding a racist. So that if you get on an issue that's at all controversial, you always have to worry that somebody on the opposing side might falsely accuse you of being a racist. And that would be a career- wrecker or a reputation-ruiner. This is a very, very bad situation, and it causes people not speak up and to walk around on egg shells.

BATTISTA: Well, I know you hate political correctness, and I know that you surely must believe in the 10 reasons that you wrote, but at the same time, can you not see at all how some of them might be downright offensive to a lot of African-Americans?

HOROWITZ: Well, I can see how people would misread them and draw conclusions. Some people have said that this is -- that slavery was a good thing, which is ridiculous.

But it's no more ridiculous than people who say that the United States government has never apologized for slavery. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address called slavery an offense to God, and said that the southern states were being punished in blood for the terrible crimes that they had committed. I don't see how you can get more direct than that.

The ads -- people misread the ad also as saying, you know, that blacks have benefited from slavery. I didn't say that. What I said was that black people who live in America -- let's remember, reparations is not going to be paid by the slave owners. Slave owners get all of their property confiscated and all of their wealth destroyed by the northern armies and by the northern government. I would understand reparations against the Confederate government, but not against the government that freed the slaves.

All I'm saying is that we have -- people living today are going to have to pay those reparations. How are you going to tell Jose Martinez, who may have come here within the last 10 years and is struggling to put bread on the table for his family, that he has to pay reparations for an institution that was dead 136 years ago? And he's going to have to pay those reparations to Johnnie Cochran and Jesse Jackson, who are multimillionaires?

BATTISTA: Let me ask Janus to respond to that here before I have to go to break again. ADAMS: There is more important stuff to discuss, like people's lives. When Mr. Horowitz puts out this kind of -- it's just ridiculous. Jose Martinez, I think once he realizes that this will lay the precedent for him to go against Spain for what was done to the indigenous Americans in Mexico, will understand. So will the person who comes from Ecuador, understand what happened to him when the United States foisted its Banana Republics.

I am sure they'll appreciate it, once they understand the information that they need to have. As far as Mr. Cochran is concerned -- Mr. Cochran, oh, heavens, oh my goodness, Mr. Cochran -- but what about Mr. Cochran's neighbors? Now, we both know it's very easy to identify two people and put them above the rest.

You know, I am telling you right now, as the descendant of people who are Afro-Caribbean, I probably would not be remunerated. But my former husband and my children would be. And I do believe, as an African-Caribbean American, who was one of four children who desegregated New York City's elementary schools -- who had grown mothers spitting on me and tearing at my clothes, which was not reported at the time -- that I think that an inaugural speech from March 4th, 1865 is long overdue when we count the continued abuses against African-Americans.

BATTISTA: I've got to interrupt. I'm sorry, I am pushing the break. But, Janus Adams, thank you very much for joining us today, appreciate your views on this.

ADAMS: Bobbie, thank you for having me.

BATTISTA: And we'll continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Welcome back. Joining us now is Manning Marable, founding director of African-American studies at Columbia University, and author of "Black Leadership and Black Liberation in Conservative America".

Welcome to the program.

MANNING MARABLE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Thank you.

BATTISTA: As I understand, I don't believe Columbia chose to publish this ad, did they?

MARABLE: No, it didn't, thank goodness. It used common sense. You know, I think that stress that Mr. Horowitz has done a terrible disservice, not just to African-Americans, but to all Americans through this racially divisive infomercial.

Two points, very quickly: First, I think that clearly, this was a publicity stunt designed to provoke racial confrontation rather than racial dialogue. Here I have an e-mail from David Horowitz that was sent to me -- dated the 12th of March, saying that the Columbia spectator had not run his advertisement. And he says -- quote -- "Can you set up a debate at Columbia between you and me on this issue?"

I think that, second, it's important to show that there is a fundamental difference between free speech versus commercial speech. Public speech is designed to inform. Commercial speech, or advertising, is designed to sell. Now, even though I find odious and objectionable Mr. Horowitz' argument, he would have the right, according to public speech, to make his case about why reparations are racist. But in commercial speech, in advertising, publications routinely censor ads. Why is that? That's because that advertisers routinely provide misinformation to the public in order to sell their product.

What's Mr. Horowitz' product? Clearly an effort to generate interest, to provoke tensions, and to really destroy the concept of a civil discussion.

BATTISTA: Well, let me ask him...

(CROSSTALK)

BATTISTA: He's on the phone with us, so let me ask him why he didn't submit it as op-ed piece, for example.

HOROWITZ: Well, because they wouldn't have printed it. And it's not -- obviously, I'm not selling...

BATTISTA: Well, they're not obligated either way.

HOROWITZ: It's not commercial speech. Look at this...

MARABLE: It absolutely is.

HOROWITZ: He's a professor. I offered to come to a campus and share a platform with him so we could have two sides of an issue, and he accuses me of being divisive. He supports censorship. He has mischaracterized the ad. It is not at -- the ad was written in part to -- out of concern for the African-American community. You heard the previous lady. These people are out to get every group and every disgruntled person in every group to sue the government, which means all of us taxpayers, over issues that happened hundreds of years ago.

I think that the African-American community is badly served by a leadership that wants to focus people's attention on the past, only see what's negative in everything. The reality is that if you are black in this country, you 20 to 50 times richer than the average black in the west part of Africa, which is where the slaves came from.

America, in the last 100 years, has given opportunity to black Americans who had absolutely nothing in 1865, and has made black America, or helped black Americans, to make themselves the 10th richest nation on Earth. There ought to be some gratitude, as there are from all other groups. And for many, many black people, it's just like black leftists like Professor Marables, who can't bring themselves to do this. Gratitude to American for providing all of us with these freedoms, and all of us...

BATTISTA: Let me have Professor Marable respond to the gratitude point.

MARABLE: Right. Last week I spoke at Duke University, where I saw hundreds of not only African-Americans, but white students, who were outraged by the racist diatribe that this so-called 10-point statement represents. I think that so far in our discussion, we've been focusing too exclusively on what happened during the 19th century.

Let's bring it up to the 21st century. There are two real challenges that all Americans need to discuss when we focus on issues of a conversation about race. First, African-Americans suffer an equity inequity. That is, accumulated disadvantage over many generations, in which blacks work harder but are unable to succeed in economic life. And for all kinds of reasons, such as red-lining by banks, denying credit and capital to African-American communities.

The fact that African-Americans receive substandard health care. This is why African-Americans represent 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, but only are 7 percent of the recipients of Social Security. Why? Because we die sooner than white Americans because of substandard health care.

And secondly, I think it's important for us to interrogate issue of white privilege, not only based on race, but class. People talk about affirmative action scholarships. What about the kinds of policies that preference the alumni -- the children of alumni, so that they gain advantage and access to colleges and universities?

BATTISTA: Professor, forgive me for interrupting. This, unfortunately, is a topic that's really hard to discuss within the confines of commercial television. I do have take this break here, and we'll continue right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: I'm going to have to try to get the audience in here toward the end of the show, but let me do these e-mails.

"I am on a staff of a collegiate political newspaper that printed the Horowitz ad. Whether or not the entire staff agreed with Mr. Horowitz, we would have been cowards to refuse this advertisement. Since when does the first amendment cover only speech that does not offend? We chose to print the ad to suport Mr. Horowitz' right to freedom of speech.

Pat in St. Louis says, "My ancestors were native American. If we're going to talk about keeping our word and repairing wrongs, let's start with the written treaties that were always broken. I don't even hear this in a conversation. Who did the 40 acres belong to in the first place?

Professor, it does open a Pandora's box, here.

MARABLE: Only if we look at the issues and instead of in an effort to have racial divisiveness, to bring different Americans of different backgrounds and different ethnicities into a common purpose of making democracy real, not only as a political relationship, but an economic one as well. I think that we need to really interrogate the role of the media here. That the media has played into this commercial -- this infomercial that Mr. Horowitz has put forward, without looking, for example, at the link between black inequality in the U.S., and the dynamics of structural adjustment of the impact of globalization on the Third world.

In a few months there's going to be a world conference against racism in South Africa. I would raise the question of CNN -- are you going to have the same kind of extensive coverage of Durbin and the conference on world racism that you did back in 1995 at the Beijing meeting of the year on women?

It seems unlikely, and the reason for that is that Americans really don't want to have yet an honest conversation about the equity,-inequity within the African-American community that, not just in the past, but in the present, perpetuates racial divisiveness, economic inequality, the disparities of justice in the criminal justice system, that's what we need to talk about. But in a constructive, positive way, seeking resolutions rather than divisiveness.

BATTISTA: David?

HOROWITZ: Yeah, Bobbie. I think we've had a display here which ought to be distressing to everybody. But it shows -- it just proves the point I made earlier: my ad said, and we have discussed some of the points, that blacks who are alive today are richer than any blacks and freer than any blacks on the face of earth, and that that needs to be part of the thought process and dialogue from the African-American community.

And I have pointed out that this will pit Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, as well as European-Americans and all other Americans against the African-American community, because they had nothing to do with slavery, and this is an unhealthy thing.

This professor, who is a member of the far left, has characterized both statements as "racist diatribe." What he is trying to do is to intimidate -- he can't intimidate me but he can intimidate an awful lot of people. This is the way he intimidates his students, and this is the way he intimidates his campus community, by calling perfectly reasonable arguments -- shared by 70 percent of the American people -- calling them racist.

On his campus, he is very powerful and he has shown how he will use that power which is to shut down reasonable dialogue on this issue and he does it in name of democracy. This is what George Orwell wrote about.

BATTISTA: I have to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment to talk to the audience.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: I have to get the audience in. I have been extremely remissful of that in this hour. Let me go first to -- well, Stephen, you're an editor of the school paper at Georgia State, right? You didn't get the ad, correct?

STEPHEN: No. My point is really, you have to consider an important thing, it is actually an issue of free speech and secondly, the issue is whether the advertisement is truthful and then you have to decide, if it is truthful, you should really publish it. But that's the first question you have to figure out, whether that advertisement is or is not truthful.

BATTISTA: And, the professor at Georgia State; you are a professor of...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: African-American studies.

I think this is a tremendous amount of misinformation. It's representative in that ad and a lot of comments I have heard today also. It's a tremendous amount of education that needs to be done on this issue. We talk about reparation, you're not just talking about slavery. There were thousands of lynchings that occurred after slavery.

The United States government is now acknowledging racial profiling against black people in this country. It didn't just benefit a small amount of people, even during slavery. The whole economy was based around cotton; that's how you get the textile industry even in places like Massachusetts and New York.

It's not as narrow as Mr. Horowitz is presenting it, and there's a tremendous amount of education. You do need a dialog, which is why you need a situation where hostility is not initiated in terms of this discussion.

BATTISTA: So, Professor Manning, what you are basically saying, you think we have set dialog back, or do you think...

MARABLE: I think that we have done a real disservice to American society over the last several weeks. What is very clear, is that Mr. Horowitz represents not free public speech, but commercial speech. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, African-Americans owned 1/2 of 1 percent of the total net wealth of the United States. Today, it is only 1 percent.

Mr. Horowitz want to us thankful and grateful for 1/2 of 1 percent increase over 150 years. I'm sorry, Mr. Horowitz, I'm not that grateful; we have a long way to go.

BATTISTA: We have to continue this debate. We're out of time. I'm sorry.

HOROWITZ: Can I give my Web site? It's frontpagemagazine.com; it has all the information, both sides, unlike Columbia University, all the sides of this issue at frontpagemagazine.com.

BATTISTA: Professor Marable, thank you for joining us as well this afternoon. We'll see you tomorrow at 3:00. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

 Search   


Back to the top