Symbolic Reparations Essay

Racism and hate have played a major role in United States history. These words have been the fuel behind slavery, inhuman treatment, and genocides. The Kosovo, Native Americans, Japanese, and African Americans are some of the prominent races that have been affected by racism and hate. The U.S. have given reparations to the victims of Kosovo, Native American, and Japanese, but no reparation have been given to African Americans. For five hundred years, the U.S. forced African Americans into slavery. As an African American woman in 2013, the question “ What ever happen to reparations for African Americans?” lingers in my mind. Don’t we deserve reparation just as the Native

Slavery and racism was the plague of the United States. It followed on the heals of government policy and trickled down the social ladder for many years. Racial discrimination is still existent today, though people are afraid to talk about it, for fear of admitting ancestral sin and current stereotypes. Ta-Nehisi Coates expresses these ideas in his article “The Case for Reparations”, and focuses on the issue of home ownership in Chicago. The bottom line of his article is that one must not forget and discard of the past, rather they must acknowledge and own what has happened. With Coates focus on American oppression, one doesn’t glean an exceptional take on the United States, from his perspective. He describes the U.S. as too timid to own its mistakes. In the middle of the 20th century, Chicago, discrimination was rampant. Blacks were targeted by “real-estate speculators” when trying to own a house, they were put “on contract.” In response to the issues brought about by the contracts, the Contract Buyers League was founded. This was an attempt to reverse the damage that was being done. Discrimination still occurs today. Racial discrimination has long plagued the U.S., but it is possible to change.

Reparation is a term defined as “the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.” How does this exactly apply when we’re talking about discrimination and segregation? Ta-Nehisi Coates presents “The Case for Reparations” to illustrate the need of a reparation to African- American citizens. Coates explains three major concepts in his paper. He emphasizes how African- American citizens have helped create wealth, displays how the government has actually restricted African- American citizens from owning homes in history, and presents a series of compelling stories from people still suffering discrimination and segregation today. In this paper, I will defend “The Case for Reparations” in agreement with Ta-Nahisi Coates.

The United States government should pay reparations to African Americans as a means of admitting their wrong-doing and making amends. The damages African Americans have sustained from White America’s policy of slavery have been agonizing and inhumane. Therefore, I am in favor of reparations for African Americans. The effect of slavery has been an enduring issue within the African American community. Many of us are cognizant of the harm racism brought to the African American race, conveyed through slavery, racial segregation and discrimination. African Americans suffered many atrocities, but the greatest damage done to them was the destruction of they’re original identity. African

"If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father's estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of white Americans are in a position of economic strength...is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay...We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat...All that money...is what gives the present generation of American whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out...like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn't here to pay. My father isn't

Of those was the whole idea of reparations for blacks, which is great, but honestly the past should just be the past. I personally think to bring up the past is to hurt those in the future. Don’t get me wrong; I see the benefits that could arise from the case like closing the wealth gap. However, getting society on board would be much harder now than it was in the early economy. There is nothing that could fully repay the African Americans, not even the land in which they are owed. You can’t bring back what they really want, which are the family and friends that have been lost. You can’t heal the pain that they have endured along the way. So there is no need to bring up all the memories that would most likely lead to riots and for everyone to show their true colors for something that will probably never happen. Like Coates said, “The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.” (Coates, 2014) You cannot correct what has already been done all you can do is move forward even if it means moving forward without the idea of

Although all this documents stress voices from the Slave Trade, each document sheds a unique light on the much-debated question about who should be held responsible for the tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade. For example, Document 15.1 sheds light on the role of both European and African merchants in the trafficking of slaves as well as the human suffering of the slave trade. However Document 15.2 reveals the cooperation between local African rulers and European and African traders in the slave trade. Moreover, Documents 15.3 focus on how disruptive European traders could be to established African governments, even those that actively opposed the slave trade. And finally, Document 15.4 shows how some African leaders were attached to the slave trade and promoted it even when European were moving to end it. Nonetheless, all the documents do shed a clear and a full light on what should be held responsible for the

For many years the United States has committed atrocious and discriminatory acts against African Americans. In a seemingly more “equal” society today many are wondering what debt is owed to the descendants of African Americans. According to Alfred Brophy of University of North Carolina, reparations are defined as, “programs that are justified on the basis of past harm and that are also designated to assess and correct that harm and improve the lives of victims in the future.” Throughout this paper I will be discussing whether reparations should be paid to African Americans. I will evaluate the question through legal, moral, and political lenses. I will evaluate the start of the movement of reparations while also taking into consideration how reparations have been given in the past. I will also explore new forms/types of reparations that can be given to African Americans. I will also determine the short and long term impacts the implementation of reparations would have on African American society and the society in its entirety.

“By our unpaid labor and suffering, we have earned the right to the soil, many times over and over, and now we are determined to have it” (Coates).

As David Blight says in his novel, Race and Reunion, after the Civil War and emancipation, Americans were faced with the overwhelming task of trying to understand the relationship between “two profound ideas—healing and justice.” While he admits that both had to occur on some level, healing from the war was not the same “proposition” for many whites, especially veterans, as doing justice for the millions of emancipated slaves and their descendants (Blight 3). Blight claims that African Americans did not want an apology for slavery, but instead a helping hand. Thus, after the Civil War, two visions of Civil War memory arose and combined: the reconciliationist vison, which focused on the issue of dealing with the dead from the battlefields, hospitals, and prisons, and the emancipationist vision, which focused on African Americans’ remembrance of their own freedom and in conceptions of the war as the “liberation of [African Americans] to citizenship and Constitutional equality” (Blight 2).

In the Atlantic article by Ta-Nehisi Coates titled “The Case for Reparations, Coates argues that the reason why the United States was able to grow and acquire most of its wealth can be directly tied to the enormous losses people of the African-American community have suffered since the use of slave labor in America. Historically, African-Americans have always been discriminated against. Even today, African-Americans continue to be excluded from the system, while the nation, primarily non-blacks, continues to reap the benefits. Moreover, Coates affirms that the nation needs to acknowledge these truths and should provide reparations for the African-American people. Merriam-Webster defines reparations as “the act of making amends, offering expiation,

The article, “The Case for Reparations”, presents itself with a commendable representation on how the need for reparations is essential when combined with the brutal history of slavery and progression of blacks in American Society after slavery. Ta- Nehisi Coates argues that the relationship between racial identity and reparations is based upon America’s debt to blacks for the countless years of injustice. With this he demonstrates how white supremacy has ultimately used impractical measures to maintain what they consider social stability for those who were not African American.

Slavery has been entwined with American history ever since Dutch traders brought twenty captive Africans to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Slavery in America is a subject with minimal truths and stories rarely told. The public school system excludes the fact that eight of the first twelve American presidents were major slaveholders. Emancipation brought freedom, but not approximation. The civil rights movement killed Jim Crow, but shadows remained. Affirmative Action created opportunities, but racism continues.

To this date, the erstwhile colonised peoples are still calling for reparations to be paid to them, citing moral obligations of the colonisers and/or settlers, and this call is mostly being made to the white governments in Canada and the United States and to the British government in India. Let us look at three recent cases of such demands and examine how the governments in question have consistently failed to provide “adequate reparations” (as understood by the victimised populations) to the peoples they have wronged. This failure of “adequate compensations” can be ascribed to a guilt that either stems from an inherent moral high ground of the people in power, or because, as Hannah Arendt insists, “[...] guilt is strictly personal.” In that case, what the current generation of white settlers and British population feels is not guilt but simply a tedious sense of obligation for the mistakes of their ancestors.

John, Jeninne Lee-St. “Should States Apologize For Slavery?” Time. Time Inc., 2007. Web. 11 Dec.