Ta Nehisi Coates’ article, The Case for Reparations in the Atlantic.
Bill Moyers & Ta Nehisi Coates
SG2: “This ISH is EMBARRASSING! white income in 2011 was 72% higher than blacks. Where’s the outrage? When women were making 77 cents on a man’s dollar, there was OUTRAGE! Folks were running to address the issue. We’re talking 72% MORE than black income in 2011. It’s fucking embarrassing!
Post racial?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this article and the interview above.
The ‘Case for Reparations’ is solid, and it’s long past time to make them
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/23/the-case-for-reparations
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s piece reveals the conversation that Americans need to start about our history of racial oppression.
Even before its online debut on Thursday, social media was ablaze for days in anticipation of this month’s Atlantic cover story arguing in favor of reparative payments to African-Americans for state-sanctioned slavery and segregation. To add to the hype, the magazine publicized “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates with a rare trailer promoting the story (which hits newsstands on 27 May).
Reaction to the piece has been mixed (to say the least) but it appears to be having at least part of the author’s intended effect: to get people’s attention, and to begin a national conversation about the lingering effects of racism and oppression in America.
Coates lays out his argument over 17 pages, spanning – as the cover boldly declares in black, white and red – “250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of separate but equal and 35 years of state-sanctioned redlining”. He admits that he is not starting a new argument, but he does attempt a new approach by framing reparations not just as a financial debt to be paid, but as an emotional and psychological one necessary to begin healing the entire nation (and not just black Americans).
I still haven’t been able to find the full movie of this documentary. Any suggestions where I can find or buy it?
There is nothing just in Coates’ piece that is new to me, because I know the history of the African in America. I am also from Chicago, so I know the history of how Chicago became the most segregated city in America. I appreciate his article, because it will be added to my files of Black history. I was for reparations in theory, because of the 200+
years of slave labor.
But, we live in a country that does not want to
deal with the actuality of American chattel slavery.
We live in a country where people actually criticized 12 Years A Slave, for not having “happy slaves”.
We live in a country where people are STILL trying to deny Sally Hemings.
We live in a country where huge swaths of White people seem to want to believe that the Black community came to these shores looking like West Africans, and somehow, the rainbow of shades that we are now came through osmosis.
We live in a country where when faced with the actual surviving victims of the Tulsa Race Riots,
they couldn’t be bothered to give them reparations. That’s been their hook-nobody today experienced slavery….always a bullshyt argument, proven by their response to the Tulsa victims.
I do appreciate Coates for focusing as much of his work as possible on American Apartheid as he
does. Even when I disagree with him, I truly enjoy that he focuses so well on American Apartheid and it’s ramifications. Part of the reparations thing is the lazy term from White folks about ‘ I was never a slave owner’. Coates’ intense focus on American Apartheid and its victims and beneficiaries, brings it to the 20th and 21st century, and makes plain about When Affirmative Action Was White.
Speak on it, Rikyrah. “American APARTHEID” Folks think because blacks aren’t physically chained and shackled that all’s well.
With all do respect to Coates reparations, the whole idea is captivating and does deserve thoughtful, careful, well-planned considerations, if it where to actually become a REALITY.
We’re talking consciousness-changing here. You can’t drop a gazillion $$$ on folks without any background, knowledge, or savvy about FINANCES.
Give a poor, uneducated man a million $ or an educated one for that matter without the financial background or consciousness to handle it, and they’ll go broke in a hot minute.
Changing the structures that where put in place is fine and NEEDED, but the consciousness of the people needs an overhaul too.
There is work to be done. But the REAL healing cannot take place until the white American denial is overcome, and Black Americans start building wealth.
Some of my solution is to buy only food, shelter, and clothing. Keep our money in our neighborhoods, and stop over consuming goods that do not benefit us physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and financially.
This:
“To ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend that the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism, is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying. The lie ignores the fact that reducing Americn poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same.”
Coates explains very well this (which I transcribed):
“I am not asking you to as a White person to see yourself as an enslaver. I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things, the country that you belong to, condoned or actively participated in in the past.
“And that covers everything from enslavement to the era of lynching when we effectively decided we weren’t going to afford African Americans the same level of protection of the law. It applies to sharecropping when we decided we were going to (hold ?) whole swaths of the country allow people to be effectively re-enslaved. It applies to red-lining when we decided effectively that people who lived in certain places would get the largess of the government, and people who were not. It applies today in terms of mass incarceration…when we decided we were going to be harder on crimes committed by certain people or the same crime committed by certain people and not be that hard when it’s committed by other people.
This is heritage. It is with us. It is with all of us. It is not with you because you are White. It is with you because you are in America. Just like it is with me because I live in America.”
He is making excellent, valid points.
I am halfway through the video and will come back later to finish watching it.
This is fucking EMBARRASSING as a Nation!
Totally embarrassing and a crime, really. Not to mention the continued DOMESTIC assault on black Americans. And for white folks to try and use ANY justification to be FEARFUL of black people. *LOOKING@YOUMARKCUBAN* is another CRIME against blacks, when they are the ones roaming our country DEMORALIZING & terrorizing its citizens.
*LOOKING@CLIVEBUNDY&DONALDSTERLING-TEAPARTY-GOP.KOCHBROS.*
MEMO: There is no COLORBLIND AMERICA!