Shirin Vossoughi Vossoughi is a
third-year history and American literature and culture student.
Speak your mind and e-mail her at shirinv@ucla.edu.
Angry students steal newspapers at Brown University, college
kids at UC Berkeley demand an apology for a supposed exercise in
“freedom of speech” and conservatives are up in arms.
Sounds like perfect media bait to me.
Right-wing publicist David Horowitz recently placed a full-page
advertisement in college newspapers around the country titled
“Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea and
Racist Too.” Horowitz’s ad has caused a national
uproar, spurring students to take action against what they see as
racist propaganda. Students at Brown University went so far as to
steal 4,000 copies of the Daily Herald, attempting to prohibit the
circulation of an ad they see as a direct attack on African
Americans.
The debate surrounding Horowitz’s ad exists between those
who defend him, claiming the First Amendment right to free speech,
and those who find the ad’s contents violent, racist and,
therefore, unacceptable.
I denounce censorship and avidly support the right to
self-expression. But the discussion surrounding Horowitz’s ad
has been wrongfully twisted into a defense of the First Amendment
rather than an examination of exactly who it protects and a much
needed, honest discussion regarding the continued existence of
institutionalized racism.
First of all, who holds the loudspeaker in our society? If
Horowitz attempted to place his ad in 56 college newspapers at an
average of $700 per ad. That’s about $39,200 he has to burn
on so-called self-expression. Like many other
“freedoms,” access to ad space is gained by those who
can afford to propagate their ideologies.
Considering that what we see, read and listen to are currently
controlled by a handful of corporations with their own interests
(profit) in mind, the media’s attack on enraged students who
threaten some supposed universal freedom of speech is comical.
As Ben H. Baghikian, author of “Media Monopoly”
states, “The capacity to propagate information and ideas is
the root of political power, and political power is essential to
modern corporate ambitions. So is the power to suppress information
and ideas. If a nation has narrowly controlled information, it will
soon have narrowly controlled politics.”
 Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin While I do not
agree with stealing newspapers, sensationalizing this act rather
than examining a greater problem purposefully narrows an imperative
debate on racism to one that concentrates solely on free speech.
While the media has done a great job of chastising Brown University
students, the underlying causes of their drastic reaction are left
painfully unexamined.
What does it mean when students feel so personally threatened
that they would take such strong action? Surely if we did not live
in an environment continually hostile toward people of color, full
of individuals who might easily agree with the contents of
Horowitz’s ad, such racist ideas would not be so menacing.
The fact that latent white supremacism and racism exist and are
ready to be tapped into by the venomous words of conservatives is
the real issue. But for the media, an appendage of the current
system, an open admittance of institutionalized racism as a means
to have honest dialogue is a threat that all this free speech
hoopla unsuccessfully masks.
Furthermore, the recent depiction of Horowitz as a crusader of
the right to free speech is simply pathetic. When the Daily
Princetonian ran an editorial regarding slave reparations the same
day as the ad, Horowitz promptly refused to pay the $1007.50 bill
until the newspaper apologized.
As Horowitz’s spokesperson stated regarding the editorial,
“Its slanders contribute to the atmosphere of intolerance and
hate toward conservatives that already exists on the Princeton
campus.” Excuse me while I wipe away my tears of pity for the
poor conservatives who apparently feel a tinge of the intolerance
that faces people of color in this nation everyday.
Witness Horowitz’s second claim: “There Is No Single
Group That Benefited Exclusively From Slavery.” Please. As
Robert Chrisman, professor of African American studies at
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Ernest Allen, publisher
and editor in chief of The Black Scholar point out that not only
some whites, but even “poor whites benefited from the legal
advantage they enjoyed over all blacks as well as the psychological
advantage of having a group beneath them.”
Such psychological power persists today. Take racial profiling:
although the state of New Jersey has instituted “tough”
anti-profiling measures, police on the turnpike continue to search
disproportionate numbers of motorists based on race. According to
the attorney general’s office, 80 percent of the motorists
searched were black or Latino. Meanwhile, whites constituted 20
percent of searches and were caught carrying drugs, weapons and
other contraband twice as often as blacks and 5 times as frequently
as Latinos.
Such racial profiling is not foreign to our campus. Last
quarter, posters warning against a sexual aggressor were posted
around every corner. Depicting three various African American
faces, the sign was a green light for the UCPD to search all black
men. Students, volunteers, professors and a mentor who has worked
here for 25 years were among those interrogated.
As second-year student Ryan Smith comments, “The UCPD
consistently stopped people and intimidated black men on campus,
but this is just a piece of the historical racial profiling at
UCLA.” Such racial profiling, an increase in hate crimes and
the sheer psychological effect of being one of the few people of
color in largely white classrooms brings home the continuing of
deep and often unconscious racism.
In a society continually plagued by such examples of racism,
Horowitz’s claim that slavery has no bearing on our current
state is clearly unfounded. As Chrisman and Allen said, the
criminal justice system today “operates in much the same way
it did under slavery, for the protection of white citizens against
black “˜outsiders.'”
Last March, Californians witnessed the passage of Proposition
21, which made it legal for youths to be tried as adults,
transferring decision-making power from the judge to the
prosecutor. While many feared the increased incarceration of youths
of color, a California appeals court struck down this piece of the
initiative in February, handing power back to judges. Why? To
protect white youth.
The judgment came only after eight white teenagers charged with
robbery, assault and the brutal beating of a 69-year-old migrant
farm worker suddenly made justice officials realize the wrongful
nature of Proposition 21, demonstrating once again exactly who the
law protects.
Finally, last week’s murder of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed,
19-year-old African American, at the hands of white Cincinnati
police spurred riots that continued for days. Fed up with a vicious
pattern of police brutality that has left four African American men
dead since November, Cincinnati’s citizens took to the
streets. Depicting protesters as violent troublemakers, a
discussion of the disenfranchisement and lack of political
representation that forces people to find new ways of exercising
free speech was conveniently ignored as police showered
demonstrators with chemical irritants and rubber bullets.
As racial profiling, police brutality and the criminal justice
system exhibit, the experiences of people of color and white people
in the United States continue to differ drastically. It is
unacceptable for Horowitz and the media to tout freedom of speech
while attacking youth frustrated by the daily experience of
racism.
Until we either personally experience racism or sincerely listen
to those who have, we have little right to judge its continued
existence and deny the need for fundamental change. But such change
will not occur until we are all willing to examine ourselves and
dialogue honestly about the racial tension and discrimination
present in a country that silences the voices of those who have the
most to say.