The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates is an extensive, persuasive collection of stories and examples that are meant to show the reality of racism throughout the 1900’s and why that should lead to proper reparations. Many of these stories are told through the story of the life of Clyde Ross, who was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1923. His life ran parallel to so many of the racist oppressive, trends that were prevalent in the United States prior to 1970 such as sharecropping and the illegitimate methods used to prevent blacks from obtaining mortgages. This account begins with stories from Clyde’s youth, growing up on a large farm outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi. His family made their living on this farm, and they even had a horse …show more content…
The author opens with this story because it immediately creates a pathos appeal; any reader can’t help but feel the pain of Clyde Ross and sympathize with the authors point. The simplistic manner is exemplified in this quote about Clyde’s inability to attend a better school, “it was too far for Ross to walk and get back in time to work in the fields. Local white children had a school bus. Clyde Ross did not, and thus lost the chance to better his education” . His muted anger is very easily felt without the usage of angry words, the purposeful omission speaks surprisingly loud. This was a very traumatic experience for …show more content…
This is a painful example of how the African American community has struggled to recover from the urbanization through limitation of their ability to get legitimate mortgages. The author does have a few points comparing and contrasting situations between black people in the present, as opposed to the 1960’s and some are quite positive, but there are also a lot of red flags. There are many more compound-complex and complex sentences present in this area then most of the essay. The next major section began with the story of Belinda Royall, a woman who won reparations of 15 pounds and 12 shillings in 1783 from the Massachusetts government, representing one of the earliest successful attempts at reparations in the United States. As a point of interest, the author switches up the sentence structure she had been using to describe actions in Clyde Ross’s