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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 18, 2001)
Wednesday Editor in chief: Jack Clifford Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard Newsroom: (541) 346-5511 Room 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL J. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com Slavery reparations should be made — systemically The Oregon Daily Emerald ran a full-page advertise ment Tuesday, paid for by David Horowitz, listing 10 reasons why he opposes slavery reparations. The ad was also an at tempt to sell membership in his Los Angeles-based conservative think tank. Although the newsroom does n’t have the power to allow or re ject advertisements, the Emerald editorial board supports the newspaper’s decision to run the ad, as we think it brings an im portant issue to light to be dis cussed in an academic setting. We do think Horowitz is wrong — but in some small way he’s right. We’ll explain that below. Horowitz said he is running this ad in college newspapers be cause academia is supposedly a bastion of reason and rational thought. Let’s use reason and ra tional thought, then, to prove Horowitz wrong, if he is so wrong. Let’s embrace rationality to win the war of ideas in the world. Similar to guest columns or let ters to the editor printed on this page, the publication of an ad does not mean that the newspa per, as an organization, thinks the content is good or right. It simply means that it met our standards for publication. Espe cially in a college environment, more freedom should be given to more ideas. This does not mean that we would support printing hate speech or bigoted language that targeted any specific group of people. But Horowitz’s ad doesn’t rise to the level of hate speech or big oted language. It is examining, perhaps with some specious argu ments, an issue that is beginning to be discussed more openly on a public level nationwide. It is po- < litical speech, and it would have been unwarranted censorship for the Emerald to choose not to run it simply because some people will disagree with the content of that speech. In that spirit, then, we move to a discussion of the issue itself. We encourage everyone in the com munity to do likewise. The anger that publication of Horowitz’s ad has caused at a few other college campuses around the country should make us all realize that the battle isn’t over. Only 37 years have passed since blacks were legally given all the rights of whites. Change does not and cannot happen overnight. During our conversa tion, one of the editorial board members expressed frustration that it seems as if the playing field will never be level, that racism will never completely end. With a lot of work, Americans can ensure that someday all peo ple will be treated equally sim ply because they are human, and with no other considerations. Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese hu man rights advocate, perhaps said it best: “I see my life ... as part of a procession, a dynamic process, doing all that we can do to move toward good and justice ... And I do whatever I have to do along the path, whether it’s sowing seeds or reaping the har vest or tending the plants half grown.” The problem is, in regard to slavery and equality for blacks, we’re all still arguing about which seeds to plant. The wrongs done to blacks have not yet been made right; affirmative action was not handled properly and, as a result, it has not leveled the playing field or corrected the cascading effects of poverty and lack of opportunity that slavery instituted. This is the message that examination of the issue should provide, and we should acknowledge that Horowitz is helping to put this argument back on the table. So now to the issue of whether Horowitz is right or wrong. We think reparations do still need to be made. But individual pay ments handed out to individual members of society won’t work. That won’t fix the systemic prob lem that slavery caused. The government should be forced to make reparations — but in the form of fixing the social condi tions that were caused by slav ery. Poor city-based and rural schools need money now. There are elementary schools in Philadelphia that teach from text books predicting man will some day walk on the moon. How will the playing field ever be level when education is so backward? Businesses need further incen tive to invest in poor areas of the country and in primarily African-American areas of the country. Everyone isn’t on an equal footing until opportunities for jobs and entrepreneurship are extended to every neighbor hood. And college educations need to be affordable and available to any one and everyone who is willing to work to succeed at it. Some progress to this end has been made, but it isn’t complete, and the government should be forced to invest in new higher education opportunities for blacks. In short, the government can’t use wage payments to make repa rations for what was taken from slaves. Paying descendants back wages could be seen as an insult, because it says that all blacks lost was their labor. But it wasn’t. Among other things, opportunity was taken. Slaves were turned free, and what did they have? No marketable skills, no college edu cation, no equal chance at em ployment. In an environment where laws said they were still unequal to whites, what chance did newly freed slaves have? Another problem with the indi vidual reparations idea is the un certainty of opportunity. How can we know what the outcome of dif ferent opportunities for blacks would be? Would some of them be third-generation doctors, with in credible wealth? Do we take that away from other people now, who have genuinely achieved success on their own, even though the op portunities they received were unfair? Perhaps the biggest and most difficult question in individual reparation payments is, who would we charge for this? One estimate puts payments at sever al trillion dollars. On whom would the government levy such a tax? Horowitz is right that many immigrants and their fami lies had no part in slavery. Some of those immigrant families did n’t receive fair opportunities in building a new life. How does the government find the people who should pay, and how much should they pay? There are many other questions to explore in this issue. The idea of making systematic reparations for the injustices of slavery is not new. Affirmative action policies were designed to handle some of this reparation, but they didn’t complete the job. We need a new look at the problem and some new answers to consider publicly. Per haps putting affirmative action policies in the frame of repara tions can give them some added urgency. But handing an individual a check would simply be making up, in some sense, for the evil. Fixing the outcomes of that evil, fixing the cascading effect of so cial problems, would be making it right. We encourage you to exam ine the issue and think about solu tions. Feel free, as always, to send us letters or guest columns that address the idea of slavery repara tions. Let’s talk about it. We’ll all be better for it. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses can be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu. Letters to the editor Thanks for volunteering with Meals On Wheels This letter is a public “thank you” to the many residents of our community who volunteer their time with the Meals on Wheels Program during the year. We serve a. mid-day meal to our homebound older neighbors. Meals on Wheels in Lane County are provided by either Senior & Disabled Services or American Red Cross who work cooper atively to serve different areas. The Meals on Wheels has a bare bones budget which only provides for a skeleton staff. We would not be able to deliver these meals without the help of hundreds of volunteers who donate both their time and vehicle once a week to deliver Meals on Wheels to older neighbors. Others assist in our dispatch kitchens with the packaging of the food for delivery. In Eugene and Springfield, over 18,400 hours were contributed to the program last year by our good-heart ed volunteers. Many, many thanks to you all. Our volunteers are paid every day in smiles of gratitude from the people they help. People who would like to “light up their life” with smiles of apprecia tion can join our volunteer ranks any time. Please contact the United Way Volunteer Connection at 741-6000 for information about opportunities at the dispatch location nearest you. Sandy Karsten S&DS Meals on Wheels Linn Crooks Red Cross Meals on Wheels Turn to Letters, page 3 CLARIFICATION The Oregon Daily Emerald’s advertising policy simply states that we “reserve the right to accept or reject any advertising at anytime. ” In Tuesday’s “Letter from the editors” [ODE, April 17], we stated that part of the policy is to “decline to run adsthat needlessly offend a significant portion of our readers.” That is not a part of the policy; the comment was a paraphrase taken from an Emerald meeting to discuss publication of controversial ads. There was no intent to marginalize any individuals or groups. The Emerald regrets the error.
