As a citizen of the United States, one not only enjoys the rights and privileges of citizenship but shares in the debts and liabilities of the nation. Americans of this generation cannot evade the country's debts by claiming they were incurred by, and only benefited, a prior generation. Nor can the United States evade a moral debt merely because the direct victims have died. The descendants of slavery have inherited a right to some meaningful form of restitution because they still endure its legacy. No government would make the descendants of each beneficiary pay the descendants of each victim for even an inhumane national policy whose effects remain.
Governments make restitution to victims as a group or class.
Horowitz was forced to admit after his March 15 speech that the First Amendment does not require any newspaper to accept a paid ad. But newspapers should have moral standards for rejection of any ad, especially an incendiary publicity stunt. The First Amendment does, however, allow a newspaper to express regret, upon reflection, for printing a self-promoting, morally obscene ad, as did the Daily Californian. It is shocking that the Daily Californian, Chancellor Berdahl and many students on campus didn't recognize how racist the ad was. Joseph Anderson, a Berkeley resident, is a member of the National Council for African American Men.