Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Case for Reparations

[DeacMan]

I'm only about halfway through the article, but it's a very fascinating piece of work and I'm enjoying reading it and learning something new.

One question that popped into my mind (and it's more of a comparison really) is what reparations, if any, were given to Native Americans?

None. And I'm part Cherokee. I had an ancestor who was thrown on the Trail of Tears and abandoned for dead in Tennessee. So pay up.

Nice historical article. The part about paying reparations is pure folly though. You'll never get people to agree on the scope of the problem much less creating a system of reparations that would be bought into by the majority of society.

 

[Biff Tannen]

Casinos.

 

[Deacon923]

Let's not get ahead of the article. There is nothing in that article that advocates the payment of cash reparations to anybody. The article lays out the history, and suggests that the study bill should move forward.

To me, "reparations" doesn't look like cash settlements like in a lawsuit. It looks like the country as a whole acknowledging and admitting that these things take place and that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and other de jure racism are major reasons why black people are disproportionately poor today. These weren't just crimes against human dignity, they were economic crimes. And the logical outcome of that is the nation should adopt policies to address these impacts. That could mean spending money to invest in black communities, in a way that benefits the black people who live there, not absentee landowners. It could mean increased investment in the education of poor black children. It could mean official apologies. It should mean enacting laws with real consequences when white people continue to victimize black people economically, not slaps on the wrist for big companies like Bank of America.

Perhaps most of all, it means recognizing that the rhetoric that poor black people are entirely to blame for their plight is an intentionally fraudulent recasting of American history, designed to retain and amplify white economic superiority. That rhetoric should be called out for what it is, and it would be if all Americans were aware of the economic realities of past and ongoing racism.

 

[DeacMan]

Good luck with all of that.

 

[PhDeac]

Look at how frosty people got over learning about the legacy of the ice cream truck song. Americans are very selective about the history they embrace.

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

Just to add-on here, redlining also meant facing sellers/landlords with more market power than people of other races faced. Contract sellers and slumlords were the option for decades. Direct transfer of wealth from black families to exploitative whites.

This was the policy of our country. For decades. I don't think it's outlandish to suggest it needs to be made right. I don't think that's some crazy attention-seeking stance I think it's banal.

But contract sellers and slumlords were (and still are) the option for decades for all poor people, not just poor blacks. And there are and have been a lot more poor whites+asians+latinos than blacks, by pure numbers. It was a direct transfer from poor to rich that encompassed black to white, but was not solely black to white. That's why I don't think you can base a reparations argument on a housing foundation (no pun intended), because you'd have to make reparations for every descendant of any poor person. That doesn't make sense. If you want to make a case for black reparations then do so on slavery itself and leave it at that, as it is unique to black American history and nobody can really argue with it. Obviously that should be horrible enough to support reparations on its own; once you start clouding the causation with things that plenty of other ethnicities faced, then you lose a lot of the support and you open the door for a lot of counterarguments.

 

[TuffaloDeac10]

Look at how frosty people got over learning about the legacy of the ice cream truck song. Americans are very selective about the history they embrace.

I never knew there were ice cream trucks that played something other than The Entertainer until yesterday. Mind blowing. What is wrong with people outside of Buffalo?

 

[Deacon923]

But contract sellers and slumlords were (and still are) the option for decades for all poor people, not just poor blacks. And there are and have been a lot more poor whites+asians+latinos than blacks, by pure numbers. It was a direct transfer from poor to rich that encompassed black to white, but was not solely black to white. That's why I don't think you can base a reparations argument on a housing foundation (no pun intended), because you'd have to make reparations for every descendant of any poor person. That doesn't make sense. If you want to make a case for black reparations then do so on slavery itself and leave it at that, as it is unique to black American history and nobody can really argue with it. Obviously that should be horrible enough to support reparations on its own; once you start clouding the causation with things that plenty of other ethnicities faced, then you lose a lot of the support and you open the door for a lot of counterarguments.

The difference is that poor whites didn't ALSO simultaneously suffer from discriminatory real estate practices, deed covenants, etc. A poor white in 1950 could work hard, save some money, go to school, and eventually buy his way out of the slum. A poor black would not be able to buy a house outside the slum, even after doing all the right things. The FHA knew this and intentionally promoted it - if black people started moving into a white neighborhood, that neighborhood became off limits to financing too, the block busters moved in, etc. That did not happen with poor whites.

These policies built a wall and kept black people, and only black people, on the inside of it.

 

[Strickland33]

But contract sellers and slumlords were (and still are) the option for decades for all poor people, not just poor blacks. And there are and have been a lot more poor whites+asians+latinos than blacks, by pure numbers. It was a direct transfer from poor to rich that encompassed black to white, but was not solely black to white. That's why I don't think you can base a reparations argument on a housing foundation (no pun intended), because you'd have to make reparations for every descendant of any poor person. That doesn't make sense. If you want to make a case for black reparations then do so on slavery itself and leave it at that, as it is unique to black American history and nobody can really argue with it. Obviously that should be horrible enough to support reparations on its own; once you start clouding the causation with things that plenty of other ethnicities faced, then you lose a lot of the support and you open the door for a lot of counterarguments.

This is patently untrue. Where are your sources for this being a fundamental experience for other ethnicities?

Coates cites Family Properties. I would recommend reading it.

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

The difference is that poor whites didn't ALSO simultaneously suffer from discriminatory real estate practices, deed covenants, etc. A poor white in 1950 could work hard, save some money, go to school, and eventually buy his way out of the slum. A poor black would not be able to buy a house outside the slum, even after doing all the right things. The FHA knew this and intentionally promoted it - if black people started moving into a white neighborhood, that neighborhood became off limits to financing too, the block busters moved in, etc. That did not happen with poor whites.

These policies built a wall and kept black people, and only black people, on the inside of it.

I agree with you on the history. My point is that not everybody does and most people don't care to learn it, so if you actually want to get somewhere with reparations, then keep the argument simple and focus solely on the things that nobody can really contest and by their own nature should be enough to support it.

 

[Junebug]

Let's not get ahead of the article. There is nothing in that article that advocates the payment of cash reparations to anybody. The article lays out the history, and suggests that the study bill should move forward.

To me, "reparations" doesn't look like cash settlements like in a lawsuit. It looks like the country as a whole acknowledging and admitting that these things take place and that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and other de jure racism are major reasons why black people are disproportionately poor today. These weren't just crimes against human dignity, they were economic crimes. And the logical outcome of that is the nation should adopt policies to address these impacts. That could mean spending money to invest in black communities, in a way that benefits the black people who live there, not absentee landowners. It could mean increased investment in the education of poor black children. It could mean official apologies. It should mean enacting laws with real consequences when white people continue to victimize black people economically, not slaps on the wrist for big companies like Bank of America.

Perhaps most of all, it means recognizing that the rhetoric that poor black people are entirely to blame for their plight is an intentionally fraudulent recasting of American history, designed to retain and amplify white economic superiority. That rhetoric should be called out for what it is, and it would be if all Americans were aware of the economic realities of past and ongoing racism.

You mean like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968?

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

This is patently untrue. Where are your sources for this being a fundamental experience for other ethnicities?

Coates cites Family Properties. I would recommend reading it.

What the hell are you talking about? Are you saying that non-blacks have never used contracts for deeds to buy property or had to deal with slumlords? Google "contract for deed". Here is the first article that comes up, in the hotbed of black culture that is Minneapolis - St. Paul. I'm sure that Vadym Klyatskyy will be excited to know that his kids are now eligible for the United Negro Scholarship Fund thanks to your classification of him. http://www.startribune.com/local/185756982.html

 

[Strickland33]

None. And I'm part Cherokee. I had an ancestor who was thrown on the Trail of Tears and abandoned for dead in Tennessee. So pay up.

Nice historical article. The part about paying reparations is pure folly though. You'll never get people to agree on the scope of the problem much less creating a system of reparations that would be bought into by the majority of society.

If the article does one thing, then I hope that it sensitizes the white population (not to mention the capitalist class more generally) to the fact that this country's foundation is built on genocide, terrorism, systematic exploitation and theft, racial discrimination and racialized violence.

If you're cool with that (as some seem to be), then that's fine. But call it what it is and own it.

 

[DistrictDeacon]

If the article does one thing, then I hope that it sensitizes the white population (not to mention the capitalist class more generally) to the fact that this country's foundation is built on genocide, terrorism, systematic exploitation and theft, racial discrimination and racialized violence.

If you're cool with that (as some seem to be), then that's fine. But call it what it is and own it.

Aren't most countries built on those things?

 

[Strickland33]

What the hell are you talking about? Are you saying that non-blacks have never used contracts for deeds to buy property or had to deal with slumlords? Google "contract for deed". Here is the first article that comes up, in the hotbed of black culture that is Minneapolis - St. Paul. I'm sure that Vadym Klyatskyy will be excited to know that his kids are now eligible for the United Negro Scholarship Fund thanks to your classification of him. http://www.startribune.com/local/185756982.html

That's not the point that Coates is making. New Deal legislation smoothed over distinctions between white ethnic populations in securing mortgages and homeownership. My grandfather, a Russian Jew returned from WWII and secured a mortgage to live in Levittown, PA. He had previously lived in the Jewish ghetto of Brownsville, Brooklyn. As sociologist William Julius Wilson noted and as Robert Sampson more recently pointed out, new immigrants from the period after World War II to the present have never experienced the same degree of segregation and state-supported stunted mobility as the experience of both toxic policy and institutionalized sabotage that black people have endured over the course of 250 years.

The point that Coates is making is a powerful one. The confluence of racialized exploitation and violence experienced by black people in this country is not only deplorable, but has triggered a path dependent process through which systematic dispossession continues in different forms (foreclosure crisis, payday loans, sabotage of public schools, dismantling of the welfare state, etc.) that have recast the same processes in increasingly innovative and durable forms.

 

[Strickland33]

Aren't most countries built on those things?

One could argue, and many have, that it's a shared feature of the nation state more generally.

I live here, though. So do most of us posting on here. And given the rhetoric from both right and left wing posters on here, we have a lot of work to do before we ever become a more perfect nation.

ETA: For instance, there's actually a tag on this thread that says "ph to escape poverty." What the hell, people.

 

[Junebug]

One could argue, and many have, that it's a shared feature of the nation state more generally.

I live here, though. So do most of us posting on here. And given the rhetoric from both right and left wing posters on here, we have a lot of work to do before we ever become a more perfect nation.

ETA: For instance, there's actually a tag on this thread that says "ph to escape poverty." What the hell, people.

Not it.

(I felt I should clarify that since there is also one that calls me a racist.)

 

[Milhouse]

the tag (not mine) is funny.

i think the moral of the story of history is that the english were (are?) a bunch of dicks.

 

[Deacon923]

I agree with you on the history. My point is that not everybody does and most people don't care to learn it, so if you actually want to get somewhere with reparations, then keep the argument simple and focus solely on the things that nobody can really contest and by their own nature should be enough to support it.

OK, I get your point and I understand it. Just for the sake of discussion though - part of the problem with this approach is the historical distance. "It's not my fault that my great great great grandfather owned slaves!" People need to understand that this stuff was going on not just in 1865, but in 1965, and that real people living today benefited from exploiting black people well within living memory, and are still exploiting black people today. I think anyone talking about race issues in this country, reparations or otherwise, has to try and make people understand this. It's really important.

That's why I mentioned rhetoric in a prior post. So much of the rhetoric around race and poverty in this country has a strong underlying theme of "if those lazy black people would just work/stop having babies/stop slinging crack, everything would be fine". More Americans need to understand that the ills affecting poor communities, and especially poor black communities, are strongly rooted in very recent policy decisions imposed by white people.

 

[jhmd2000]

If the article does one thing, then I hope that it sensitizes the white population (not to mention the capitalist class more generally) to the fact that this country's foundation is built on genocide, terrorism, systematic exploitation and theft, racial discrimination and racialized violence.

If you're cool with that (as some seem to be), then that's fine. But call it what it is and own it.

Wrong. We built this city on rock and roll.