> Letter: Horowitz's diatribe contains historical >inaccuracies > > By John Hope Franklin > > Here are a few things to bear in mind when reading the > diatribe on slavery and reparations that appeared in The Chronicle a few > days ago. > > All whites and no slaves benefited from American slavery. > All blacks had no rights that they could claim as their own. All whites, > including the vast majority who had no slaves, were not >only encouraged but authorized to exercise dominion over all slaves, > thereby adding strength to >the system of control. > > If David Horowitz had read James D. DeBow's The Interest > in Slavery of the Southern on-slaveholder, he would not have blundered into >the fantasy of claiming > that no single group benefited from slavery. Planters did, of course. New >York merchants did, of > course. Even poor whites benefited from the legal advantage they enjoyed >over all blacks as > well as from the psychological advantage of having a group beneath them. > Meanwhile, laws enacted by states forbade the teaching of > blacks any means of acquiring knowledge-including the alphabet-which is the > legacy of disadvantage of educational privitization and discrimination > experienced by African Americans in 2001. > > Most living Americans do have a connection with slavery. > They have inherited the preferential advantage, if they are white, or the > loathsome disadvantage, if they are black; and those positions are > virtually as alive today as they were in the 19th century. The pattern of > housing, the discrimination in employment, the resistance to equal > opportunity in education, the racial profiling, the inequities in the > administration of justice, the low expectation of blacks in the >discharge of duties assigned to them, the widespread belief that blacks > have physical prowess but little intellectual capacities and the widespread >opposition to > affirmative action, as if that had not been enjoyed by whites for three >centuries, all indicate that the >vestiges of slavery are still with us. > > And as long as there are pro-slavery protagonists among > us, hiding behind such absurdities as "we are all in this together" or "it > hurts me as much as it hurts you" or "slavery benefited you as much as it > benefited me," we will suffer from the inability to confront the tragic > legacies of slavery and deal with them in a forthright and constructive > manner. > > Most important, we must never fall victim to some scheme > designed to create a controversy among potential allies in order to divide > them and, at the same time, exploit them for its own special purpose. > > John Hope Franklin > James B. Duke Professor Emeritus, > John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and > > >