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Swathed in black, the mostly African-American students filed through South
Building in silence. All carried cards with two words screaming for
attention.
"Thank you," the cards said.
They had marched to South Building from Saunders Hall where they had assembled
to take note of Col. William Lawrence Saunders, the man for whom the building
had been named. Saunders had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. (He had also
been N.C. Secretary of State and co-founder of The News & Observer.)
At Saunders, too, the marchers held up their satirical thank-you cards to show
their gratitude to the University for honoring such a man.
They also carried a list of demands they wanted to discuss with the
administration. Within 10 days, they said.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Richard Shelton emerged on the steps
within a few minutes, or about as long as it took to get a heavy equipment
operator to shut down his machine so that everyone could hear what Shelton had
to say. "First let me say I'm pleased you are here and I appreciate the way in
which you provided me the concrete examples of your concern," Shelton said.
The march was triggered by David Horowitz, the conservative provocateur who has
ignited both anger and debate at college campuses across the country by placing
ads in college newspapers listing arguments against paying reparations to the
descendents of slaves. The Daily Tar Heel chose against running the ad,
choosing instead to run a series of columns on its op-ed page, including a lead
column by Horowitz himself.
Three other columns filled out the page: by Chancellor James Moeser, by DTH
Editor Matt Dees, and by two African-American students, Tyra Moore and Doug
Taylor, who both challenged Horowitz's arguments against reparations and the
DTH's insistence on publishing them.
The two students represent the newly formed student campaign "On the Wake of
Emancipation" that organized the march. Their campaign was not about debating
Horowitz, they wrote, but about fighting hate. "The Daily Tar Heel's
decision to publish Horowitz is only one expression of racism among many at
UNC," Moore and Taylor said in the April 2 column.
Moore, in an interview after the march, said the argument in the Horowitz ad
that offends her the most is the idea that black people owed a debt to white
Americans who fought to bring slavery to an end. It was this outrageous
assertion by Horowitz that inspired the satirical "thank-you cards," Moore
said.
Four days after the columns ran and the protesters marched, Shelton sat down
with five of the students to discuss their concerns. Sue Kitchen, vice
chancellor for student affairs, and Archie Ervin, director of the Office of
Minority Affairs, attended as well.
Debate part of campus tradition
The questions raised about Horowitz's views and whether his views should
be heard at all have got people thinking and talking on this campus, which some
argue is not such a bad thing to have happened.
As Moeser suggested in his April 2 DTH column, such rigorous debate is
in step with what this University has always stood for. Moeser wrote in his
column that Horowitz's ideas were offensive to him personally. But Moeser
argued the role of a great University is not to silence offensive ideas but to
challenge them.
The Monday before his column ran, Moeser said, a pro-life group called the
Genocide Awareness Project ignited debate when they set up graphic photos of
aborted fetuses. The same day as the pro-life display, Moeser witnessed events
across campus commemorating Women's Week, Human Rights Week and Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Celebration Week.
"Our campus community is not afraid to discuss issues that divide us, and we
often look at such opportunities as a chance to broaden our horizons and define
- and sometimes redefine - our personal beliefs," Moeser wrote.
Jim Leloudis, a Carolina history professor who has studied race relations in
the South, gave the DTH high marks for seeking to begin the discussion
on such a divisive issue.
"Whatever one's thoughts are on the issue, it's a debate the country needs to
have - a debate that might make us come face to face with issues we have
managed to dodge and ignore since Emancipation," Leloudis said.
One of the student marchers, Michael Woods, sees the DTH as a good
publication that made a bad mistake. He is also a member of the DTH
staff, he said.
"As we began discussing what should be done about this, we all decided that our
issue was not with the DTH, or with David Horowitz, it was with the
overall environment," Woods said. "David Horowitz can't address the day-to-day
conditions on UNC's campus, nor can The Daily Tar Heel. The only people
who can do that are within this building."
In his April 2 column, DTH Editor Dees explained that the decision to
present Horowitz's views and include other points of view was done in the name
of fostering a free exchange of ideas and said he felt betrayed that the DTH
had been labeled as racist on the basis of that decision.
It may be a widely held opinion around campus that Horowitz is a racist
hatemonger, Dees wrote, "But it is just that, an opinion." As for his own views
on the subject, Dees wrote, "Others, myself included, think he actually made
some good points, however caustically and insensitively worded."
Ruth Walden, a journalism professor and First Amendment scholar who has studied
repressive press laws around the world, said the DTH controversy has
nothing to do with the legal protections in the First Amendment. "The First
Amendment only restricts government action," Walden said. "If you don't have a
government actor, you can't have a question of violation of the First
Amendment."
What the controversy touches on instead are the underlying values inherent to
the First Amendment. "The foundation of our system of freedom of expression is
a belief that all ideas are entitled to be heard, and yes, even those ideas I
won't like," Walden said.
Freedom of speech gives rise to a free marketplace of ideas that allows all
information and opinion to circulate and flow so ultimately "truth" will
emerge, Walden said. That marketplace is the same whether it is a political
truth being sought or a scientific truth or a religious truth.
"If we silence a speaker or an argument because we believe it is false or it is
harmful, we do wrong in several ways, but one of those ways is that you
diminish the strength of the true or right argument because a true or right
argument grows in value and persuasive power by being forced to defend itself
against a false or wrong argument. At the same time, the argument we're
silencing might be true."
Walden said she is sensitive to the frustration that minority students must
feel "when they look around a campus and still feel like tokens." But at the
same time, silencing an argument in the name of "political correctness" is no
less of a danger or any better of an excuse for stifling the exchange. "If we
fall into the political correctness mode, of saying, `We can't let that be
said,' what happens is that what we hold as truth becomes weak and shabby
because that truth is never forced to be tested."
That notion, Walden said, was best expressed by 19th century English
philosopher John Stuart Mill when he wrote: "If all mankind minus one, were of
one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be
no more justified in silencing that one opinion, than he, if he had the power,
would be justified in silencing mankind."
Leloudis said a flaw he saw in Horowitz's arguments is his failure to
acknowledge that the remnants of slavery remained once the institution was
abolished.
"Slaves were set free to a world that continued to exploit them," Leloudis
said. "The country couldn't really deal well with the question of what
resources, what opportunities, what guarantees had to be put in place to give
freedom real meaning and substance in everyday life - to make it not just a
word but a lived reality."
The word "freedom" rang hollow for African- Americans who for decades after the
Civil War were denied the freedoms to vote, or to get a good job, or even to
sit in the same space as a white person in a church or a movie house or a
classroom or a lunch counter, or to sip from the same water fountain.
"What we've not had is a very deep conversation about what that history means
in the present for race relations in this country," Leloudis said. "Even after
the Civil Rights movement, the issues of economic opportunity and cultural
inclusion are still out there and unresolved."
A living history lesson
At 76, Carolina journalism professor Chuck Stone has lived through many
of the changes that students one-quarter his age now study in history books.
In junior high school, he was the only black kid in honors class and one black
classmate beat him up because of it. A white kid used racial slurs that stung
as bad as the other kid's fists. "I couldn't win either way," Stone said.
Years later, Stone was set to attend Harvard until a friend suggested he
consider Wesleyan University, a private institution in Connecticut. "Wesleyan
needs you," the friend said. "There are no Negroes at Wesleyan." That fall,
Stone enrolled at Wesleyan and became the first.
As a White House correspondent during the Kennedy administration, Stone
remembers sitting across from Bobby Kennedy, who was then serving as attorney
general under his brother John. "Listen," Kennedy told him. "You talk about
racism, but when my ancestors came here, there were signs in the windows in
Boston that read, `No Irish need apply.'"
That may be, Stone told him, but the Irish began arriving in this country only
100 years ago - and now one of them is sitting in the Oval Office of the White
House.
As for Horowitz and his arguments against reparations, Stone said he doubts
Horowitz's sincerity and doubts even more the eagerness of Congress to take up
the issue. "I don't oppose it, but I'm not crusading for it, either," Stone
said. "If it develops a groundswell of support, OK, I'll support it."
In all his arguments, Stone said, Horowitz fails to acknowledge one critical
difference between African-Americans and the other people who have arrived in
this country over the centuries. "The African-Americans are the only group
brought here forcibly," Stone said. "No other group was brought here in chains.
That is a sharp distinction."
After the chains were removed, came all the beatings and lynchings and the
church bombings and all the rest of the things that amounted to one big foot
pressed against their backs to keep them down. And they rose up despite of it,
Stone said.
"It's much better today than it was 50 years ago but we want it to be better so
the color of your skin doesn't become a defining characteristic."
It is the same way he has tried to live his own life. Today, he is one of only
135 African- Americans to hold a chaired professorship in the country. "I've
lived under the crippling disease of segregation, but I have not let it cripple
me."
Mary Fuller has been a secretary within the Office of Minority Affairs since
1980. She arrived at a time when everybody was paying serious attention to
desegregating the campuses through affirmative action and other programs.
Fuller thinks the students' activism may help revive some of that same
intensity.
"I always find a good protest exciting," Fuller said. "It's like an adrenalin
boost. It tells me to work harder. And it forces me to ask myself, `Am I doing
all I can to help these students?'"
Ervin, the minority affairs director, agreed. Fifty years ago, this campus did
not have any African-American students or faculty, he said. "As a result of
that, institutional change has to occur. What I think the students are saying
is that it has to remain a focus and a priority of the University to make these
changes and adaptations happen."
DTH staffer Woods said he and the other marchers all love being at
Carolina and care about the campus. If they didn't care, they would "sit idly
by and say `Oh, that's just the way things are,'" he said.
"We want this to be the best place possible."
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