Dinesh D'Souza

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Dinesh D'Souza is a conservative author.

D'Souza's Wealth

D'Souza's handful of conservative books, combined with his conservative-sponsored business and campus lectures, have generated extensive liberal criticism. They also have made him fabulously wealthy.

According to an April 2005 issue of The San Diego Reader:

"Since Dartmouth, the conservative fray has been quite remunerative for D'Souza. Six years ago, he and his wife bought their home in Fairbanks Ranch (California). The nearly 8000-square-foot house has six bedrooms, seven and a half baths, and a four-car garage, where they keep their maroon 1992 Jaguar XJS. A circular drive fronts the French country stone house. The cathedral-like front room, with its full-length mirrors and tapestries, has an 18th-century French decor of (veneered) golden maple burl furniture. The slick floors echo like a museum as one walks through. In his office, there's wall-to-wall leopard-print carpet; floor-to-ceiling bookcases are stocked with titles in history, politics, and philosophy. The view out back features a bright blue pool and the arboretum-like landscape."[1].

On Race Politics

  • Dartmouth Review

Under D'Souza's editorship, the Dartmouth Review became notorious both for its attacks on alleged liberal bias at the university and for its provocative articles on racial topics. It published a parody titled "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive Bro," which mocked the way African-American students supposedly speak. ("Dese boys be sayin' that we be comin' here to Dartmut an' not takin' the classics. You know, Homa, Shakesphere; but I hea' dey all be co'd in da ground, six feet unda, and whatchu be askin' us to learn from dem?") Also during his tenure as editor, according to a September 22, 1995, article in The Washington Post, the Review "published an interview with a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, using a mock photograph of a black man hanging from a campus tree."

  • The End of Racism

D'Souza's key work is the 700-page The End of Racism, a book that managed to offend even conservative blacks with its declaration that black culture is pathologically inferior to white culture and that "the criminal and irresponsible black underclass represents a revival of barbarism in the midst of Western civilization" (p. 527). D'Souza's history of southern segregation characterized it as merely misguided paternalism, "based on the code of the Christian and the gentleman" and intended to protect blacks: "Segregation was intended to assure that blacks, like the handicapped, would be insulated from the radical racists and - in the paternalist view - permitted to perform to the capacity of their arrested development" (p. 179). The book's declarations were so extreme that two prominent African-American conservatives, Robert Woodson, Sr. and Glenn Loury, renounced their affiliation with the American Enterprise Institute to protest AEI's sponsorship of the book. According to Loury, AEI marketed The End of Racism extensively in business circles, and "Republican staffers on Capitol Hill are said to have eagerly anticipated how the book might move the affirmative action debate in the 'right direction.'"

Like many modern race-baiters, D'Souza hedges his inflammatory language with just enough caveats to justify apologetics. His reference to the "criminal and irresponsible black underclass" is preceded by the phrase "for many whites." After this passage was criticized by Glenn Loury, D'Souza responded that Loury had "completely lost" this "distinction" between his own views and those of "many whites" (The End of Racism, p. xx). In the original passage on page 527, however, D'Souza goes on to declare his essential agreement with the views that he attributes to whites. "If this is true," the passage continues, "the best way to eradicate beliefs in black inferiority is to remove their empirical basis. ... [I]f blacks as a group can show that they are capable of performing competitively in schools and the work force, and exercising both the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship, then racism will be deprived of its foundation in experience."

The End of Racism also suggests that laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act should be repealed on the grounds that they are often misused as political weapons rather than for the the actual protection of civil rights. D'Souza's website declares that "the American obsession with race is fueled by a civil rights establishment that has a vested interest in perpetuating black dependency." [2]

  • Quotes from The End of Racism:
[The Civil Rights Movement] sought to undermine white racism through a protest strategy that emphasized the recognition of basic rights for blacks, without considering that racism might be fortified if blacks were unable to exercise their rights effectively and responsibly.
Most African American scholars simply refuse to acknowledge the pathology of violence in the black underclass, apparently convinced that black criminals as well as their targets are both victims: the real culprit is societal racism. Activists recommend federal jobs programs and recruitment into the private sector. Yet it seems unrealistic, bordering on the surreal, to imagine underclass blacks with their gold chains, limping walk, obscene language, and arsenal of weapons doing nine-to-five jobs at Procter and Gamble or the State Department.
Increasingly it appears that it is liberal antiracism that is based on ignorance and fear: ignorance of the true nature of racism, and fear that the racist point of view better explains the world than its liberal counterpart.
The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.
The popular conception seems to be that American slavery as an institution involved white slaveowners and black slaves. Consequently, it is easy to view slavery as a racist institution. But this image is complicated when we discover that most whites did not own slaves, even in the South; that not all blacks were slaves; that several thousand free blacks and American Indians owned black slaves. An examination of these frequently obscured aspects of American slavery calls into question the facile equation of racism and slavery.
If America as a nation owes blacks as a group reparations for slavery, what do blacks as a group owe America for the abolition of slavery?
How did Martin Luther King succeed, almost single-handedly, in winning support for his agenda? Why was his Southern opposition virtually silent in making counterarguments?
  • Comments on Reagan

In a live chat with washingtonpost.com on Ronald Reagan, D'Souza wrote that blacks rejected Reagan because Reagan felt that what you could do was important, not your race, and blacks disagreed.

Dryden, N.Y.: A difficult question. Watching the SIMI viewing I have been struck by the overwhelming whiteness of the crowd. This to me is one dark facet of the Reagan legacy, a man who chose to start his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss. (where three civil rights workers were murdered). Why do you think he was so tone deaf on the vital American issue of race?
Dinesh D'Souza: Reagan had an unfailingly inclusive vision of America. His view was that it didn't matter where you came from or who you were. What mattered was what you could do. Immigrants found this appealing. Blacks in general didn't. Blacks are at a peculiar point in their history where many of them believe that "race does matter" and "race should matter." A different vision from what Martin Luther King held in his "I Have a Dream" speech. So Reagan didn't reject blacks, blacks rejected Reagan. It's unfortunate, but I don't think it tells against Reagan. Maybe there will be some reconsideration of Reagan now by African Americans.

Outing gays at Dartmouth

As editor of the Dartmouth Review, D'Souza stole correspondence from the school's Gay Student Alliance and published it, outing several gay students to friends and family and driving one to consider suicide. When The Nation published an article claiming that D'Souza had stolen the correspondence, D'Souza wrote asking for a retraction, calling the piece "lies from the loony left", and sending articles which he said would clear his name. But bizarrely, the articles he included showed that the claim was true - they included a piece written under his byline that featured excerpts from gay students' correspondence.

Movie appearances

Dinesh D'Souza is set to appear in the forthcoming documentary, Michael Moore Hates America.

Books

  • Dinesh D'Souza, "Catholic Classics," Our Sunday Visitor, March 1, 1980, ISBN 0879735252
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "Falwell: Before the Millennium," Regnery Publishing, August 1, 1984, ISBN 0895266075
  • Dinesh D'Souza, Gregory Fossedal, "My Dear Alex: Letters from the KGB," Regnery Publishing, June 1, 1987, ISBN 0895265761
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "Illiberal Education: Political Correctness and the College Experience," John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, June 1, 1992, ISBN 1878802089
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "L'éducation contre les libertés," Gallimard, January 5, 1993, ISBN 2070727696
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "The End Of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society," Free Press, September 30, 1996, ISBN 0684825244
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus," Free Press, October 1, 1998, ISBN 0684863847
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader," Free Press, February 23, 1999, ISBN 0684848236
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence," Free Press, October 30, 2001, ISBN 0684868156
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "What's So Great About America," Regnery Publishing, April 24, 2002, ISBN 0895261537
  • Dinesh D'Souza, "Letters to a Young Conservative," Basic Books, October 1, 2002, ISBN 0465017339

References

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