John Doggett! replies

John Dogget, responds:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22146


However, the most important thing that conservatives can do is to
finally admit that they erred in standing on the side of states'
rights instead of civil rights.

I'll never forget reading "Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry
Goldwater. The more I read, the more it excited me. Then I got to the
chapter that talked about states' rights and civil rights. Goldwater
lost me because he said that my people and I should be patient. He
said that it would take a long time for whites in the South to let go of
segregation. We should not, he recommended, demand that our
constitutional rights be immediately enforced. In that one chapter, he
told me that conservatives had a wonderful philosophy, if you were
white. And since I wasn't, I walked away from the conservative
movement.

Decades later, when they had dismantled the legal apparatus of
segregation, I revisited the conservative movement and decided that I
liked what I saw. However, many of my brothers and sisters haven't
forgotten that most conservatives did not join the fight for
our freedom. They will not let go of their disdain for our political
leaders until they see years, if not decades of consistent change in
the attitudes of conservatives toward blacks.

A perfect example of why most black Americans don't trust
conservatives can be found in the growing debate about black
reparations. Randall Robinson, Johnny Cochran and others
have launched a campaign to force the U.S. government to pay
reparations to all Americans of African descent to compensate them for
the slave trade. This is a controversial issue
and many oppose paying reparations to anybody for anything.

I have no problem with people opposing reparations. However, I have a
huge problem with people attacking the black reparations movement with
half-truths and breathtaking demonstrations of ignorance. And that is
exactly what a trench warrior in the conservative movement, David
Horowitz, has done.

Last month, David tried to publish an ad on college campuses called "
Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks -- and
Racist Too." It was part of a publicity effort for his current college
speaking tour. Most colleges, being institutions
of political correctness, refused to run his ad. They were wrong.

While David's ad is filled with half-truths and blinding mistakes of
fact and reasoning, it still raises important issues that we should
debate openly. Unfortunately, much of what he says shows a
breathtaking and dangerous ignorance of what it has been like to be black
in this country during the past 50 years. David's "work" reinforces
the suspicions of most blacks that conservatives just don't get what
it has been like to be black and live in America.