Well, that blows my plans all to hell
I had it in mind to work on something entirely other than this tonight. I was going to write an essay about a long post I found at The Right Christians, taking into account the posts at The Raving Atheist that they were responding to. I'd actually be prime Bright material were it not for the impact I've seen various religions have had on people I've known. The essay I have in mind, and will still write, is something of a gift to the Right Christians in gratitude for their starting The TOE Project.
But that will have to wait
Like a fool, I check my referral logs and see I got my expected visit from one or more of the Volokhs. My invitation to review the series on reparations was accepted as well.
As I said at the beginning of the series, reparations is a subject that will generate enough shit and flames to easily last a week. That the topic has been taken up by such high-profile writers (relative to the BlogNet, of course) should guarantee a broad response. And since the Volokhs made it all the way uptown to review my humble efforts, I decided to take a look to see if and how one or more of the Conspiracy would respond to it all.
Well, they didn't respond. More accurately, their response was to refer it to The Dartmouth Observer.
Volokh discusses Sacerdote
Dartmouth economics professor Bruce Sacerdote '90 published a
paper not too long ago about the transgenerational effects of slavery, whereupon one student got
really, really mad and had to be
told off.
Tyler Cowen and
Jacob Levy at Volokh are now attempting to relate Sacerdote's study to the issue of slavery reparations. Cowen thinks the study weakens the case for reparations, but Levy doesn't. For a less technical discussion of reparations, try this
discussion between John McWhorter and Alfred Brophy on Uncommon Knowledge.
Again, I'm disappointed.
Not just because Mr. Levy just blows off the conversation after such a promising start, but to blow it off with this particular tripe, well…
You see, I
am one that follows links in a post I'm interested in. I don't like commenting in ignorance.
In the above quote, the word "paper" is linked to Sacerdote's paper, of course. But the link embedded in the phrase "whereupon one student got really, really mad" connects to an article in The Dartmouth Online titled "Study: Slavery's effects lasted just 2 generations." In this article, they have comments from, in order, Sacerdote himself, Conservative reactionary David Horowitz, national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America Dorothy Benton Lewis, Dartmouth economics professor Eric Edmonds, and Stanford University economics professor Gavin Wright. Nowhere in the article is there any reference to any student. Therefore the phrase is a bald-faced lie, as is the phrase in which the next link is embedded.
As for the "less technical" discussion, I find the suggestion to take John McWhorter seriously almost offensive. To see why, here's the beginning of the transcript the Dartmouth Observer linked to:
Title: You Say You Want a Reparation
Randall Robinson who led the movement to boycott South Africa a decade ago has now written a book entitled, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. Robinson's argument, I quote him, "Well before the birth of our country, Europe and the eventual United States perpetrated a heinous wrong against the peoples of Africa. It was only in 1965, after nearly three hundred and fifty years of legal, racial suppression that the United States enacted the Voting Rights Act. Contemporary America must shoulder responsibility for those wrongs." Closed quote. Should the federal government recognize and pay such reparations? Al?
Alfred Brophy: Absolutely.
Peter Robinson: Absolutely, no--not a shadow of hesitation or doubt?
Alfred Brophy: I don't think there's any question that reparations are due, both because of the centuries of unpaid labor, as well as the continuing effects of slavery.
Peter Robinson: John?
John McWhorter: Yes, they should and they already do and it's unclear to me exactly why we need more.
Peter Robinson: Already do in what form?
John McWhorter: Welfare expanded in the late 1960's for unwed Black mothers was a form of reparations. Affirmative action is reparations in every single contour of it that you could think of. Community development corporations, the Community Re-investment Act, all of these things are reparations. They simply haven't been titled reparations. We've already got them and they're working.
Peter Robinson: And it's enough?
John McWhorter: And frankly, yeah. It's enough.
Peter Robinson: You wish no lump sum transfer payment?
John McWhorter: We need no such thing
"Welfare expanded in the late 1960's for unwed Black mothers."
Mind you, no one else benefitted from this expansion of welfare but unwed Black mothers.
I'm going to go ad hominem for a minute. McWhorter is one of those Black people who desperately hopes the Revolution will never come because he's doomed no matter which side wins.
Okay, I'm done with that. Suffice to say that single statement puts McWhorter in the same sphere as Horowitz.
This terribly weak, terribly false post in the Dartmouth Observer is what The Volokh Conspiracy uses as a response to the reparations discussion they themselves invoked.
Sad. Terribly disappointing. They cannot possibly be the best the right side of the BlogNet has to offer on this subject. They simply can't be.
Can they?
posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/31/2003 09:31:15 PM |
Posted by P6 at July 31, 2003 09:31 PM
| Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1343
