Summary Of The Case For Reparations

Reparations Slavery began in America when the first African slaves brought the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. Through 250 years of enslavement, African Americans feel like reparations, which are amends for a wrong doing, by paying money or helping those who have been wronged, should be in recognition.

“The Case for Reparations” by Ta- Nehisi Coates provides the malevolent, segregated history of the Negro population in the United States. Coates explains all the political and economic issues that Negroes have faced and still endure. White America has left the Negro population at an unfair advantage socially, economically, and politically. “The Case for Reparations” gives backgrounds of African American lives and the struggles

“The average per capita income of Chicago’s white neighborhoods is almost three times that of its black neighborhoods” (13). Coates also displays images to get the message across. The pictures along with the captions explain the types of suffrage Negroes went through, mostly all negative messages. Coates states, “Negro poverty is not white poverty,” (41) basically explaining that African Americans have a worse chance off in poverty than whites would. According to Coates, “Some black people always will be twice as good. But they generally find white predation to be thrice as fast” (44). Belinda Royall, suffering from the Middle Passage, petitioned for reparations and documents stated from Quaker Robert Pleasants that, “The doing of this justice to the injured Africans would be an acceptable offering to him who ‘Rules in the kingdom of men” (19). These sources were also very beneficial to Coates argument. Coates also claims that America began in African American plunder and white democracy. African slaves entered colonies as “aliens” and during next 250 years, Americans enforced to reduce black people to a class of untouchable and white men

Miller, “Reparations arguments demand that we account for and acknowledge the fact that our nation's institutions were founded upon discrimination”. There can be no amount of money that can be paid for the suffering slaves endured in the past. Could the African Americans who were actually enslaved be able to replace the amount of family members slaughtered, children lost, or replace the amount of lashings across their back? Coates states, “Reparations could not make up for the murder perpetrated by the Nazis” (54). Coates wants reparations, but understands the mistreatment and suffering between the Holocaust and slavery to be comparable. William Darity Jr. states, “Also a reparations payment in the absence of productive capacity owned by blacks is found to have no final positive impact on black income. There was even a promise that was broken back when slavery and segregation were still undergoing. William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 issued on Jan. 16, 1865 that former slaves were entitled “40 acres and a mule.” How could America go back on this promise? In the past, the reparations would have been appropriate, but now it is too late. Imagine that the promise was actually enforced and the former slaves received possession of the land. The slaves would have possessed the opportunity of self- sufficiency economically, to build and pass on wealth. Americans did not realize the severance of the promise, regarding the overwhelming 3.9 million