Horowitz, MLK, and the "Reparations Buffoons"

Well, the shoe finally dropped and David Horowitz has lashed out against the reparations rally.

I'm always amused when conservatives of his ilk drop approving references to Martin Luther King, Jr. when, in all likelihood, Dr. King would be fighting tooth-and-nail against the contemporary color-blinded conservative approach to race (as he fought the conservative "you're demanding too much, too quickly" stance back in the 50s/60s, as well as the Old Right's blatant bigotry). Anyway, Horowitz writes:

When Martin Luther King gave his speech in Washington, he was disenfranchised; he could not eat at lunch counters reserved for whites or sit in buses when whites were standing; or use facilities other than those designated "for colored only." What exactly are Charles Ogletree and Randall Robinson, two men of Harvard, two counselors to presidents, and both the recipients of six-figure incomes owed by America? What are they owed by the ordinary Americans who must pay the taxes for reparations and who in their vast majority had ancestors who either had nothing to do with slavery, or gave their lives to end it? Or dedicated themselves to fighting segregation and discrimination?

If Horowitz knew anything about the civil rights movement, he would concede that, after having won substantial victories with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Acts of 1964/65, King made an explicit turn towards addressing the economic inequalities coded by race within America. Of course, this is a no-no in American politics, which is why every time his birthday rolls around the general applause for the "I Have a Dream" man stops at the year 1965. Still, in many ways, the issues King began to champion towards the end of his life resonate with those that the reparations movement is trying to raise, however clumsily.

It’s also absurd that Horowitz uses Charles Ogletree and Randall Robinson as “stand ins” for the black community. This is just done to turn attention away from the core issue: the very real racial “disparities” in income, housing, health, education, etc. that Horowitz briefly mentions, and tries to whitewash, earlier in the article. He also erroneously states that these “Reparations Buffoons” are going after “ordinary Americans” when it is very explicit that their legal grievance is with the US government, which was complicit in the promotion and protection of slavery – as encoded by law. In his 1964 book, Why We Can't Wait, King himself put the grievance this way:

No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed upon unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of one human being by another. The law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures, which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a GI Bill of rights to war veterans, America launch a broad based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.

So, please, David, if you’re going to discuss race, leave King out of it. You’re probably making the man roll over in his grave.

Other sources: Tim Wise, in an excellent article on the “True MLK,” has addressed similar Horowitzian claims. Michael Eric Dyson has also explained how today's conservative take on race runs contrary to the very things King stood for.