Diogo Miguel Pires

March 1, 2017
English C2 | Student n. 52055

The case for reparations

Ta-Nehisi Coates

According to Oxford dictionary, reparation means The action of making

amends for a wrong one has done, by providing payment or other assistance to those
who have been wronged. If 250 years of slavery and many more of segregation,
racism and social injustice could be compensated, questions would still persist Who
will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay? Coates asks. The author
defends the idea that the basis of Americas democracy and economy is slavery and the
exploitation of the black body. That exploitation, in different ways, still exists today.
The segregation of the black people into ghettos, the idea that a black person should be
twice as good to get the same job as a white person, is still very present. Todays
America was founded by white supremacy and black slavery. Part of the problem is the
unawareness of that. I share the same thoughts as Coates in this one. Should we forget?
No. Can we erase? No. Should we talk about it? Of course. And we should always try to
built a fairer society.
Coates does not defend economic reparation or any other kind of reparation, like
what happened with the Germans and the state of Israel after the Holocaust. His goal is
to have people thinking about that idea - how can white people pay for what they have
done for centuries? Is it possible to even pay for something like that? The truth is, it is
not the country can never fully repay African Americans, says Coates. The idea,
however, is worth discussing.
In his article, Coates explains the economic and social reasons for the racial
segregation in todays America and the existence of the ghettos full of black people (and
other minorities) overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated. His focus is in
Chicago, one of the cities in America with more percentage of ghettos. He explains how
economic and social reasons brought to existence the concept of ghettos black people
were running from slavery in the south and, because of the real estates wish to divide
blacks and whites, they were only able to afford some neighborhoods. Those
neighborhoods became the well-known ghettos. He gives the example of Bill and Daisy
Myers, the first black family to move to Pennsylvania. When they arrived, the propriety
values in the neighborhood instantly declined. Americas prosperity in recent centuries
was due to a slaver economy as Coates puts it. Enslaving the majority of the working
class and benefiting from a cheap working force (not always cheap but one that would,
unfairly and forcibly, work more than any other), opened the way to the countrys top
position in the international scenario. The consequence of that way of dealing with the
market (and, of course, with people), was the main reason of todays ghettos and black
people poverty. They cheated us the chance of being human beings in a society. Clyde
Ross sums it up pretty clear.
The real estate example really shows something I always insist the
institutionalized racism in Americas society and law. By keeping black people out of
the white people neighborhoods, the Federal Government was stating something very
clear some people do not belong in the same position, can not have the same
privileges and quality of life as others. Protected by the law, contract sellers probably
Pires 2

the ones with less guilty in this process (an analogy can be made with todays police
brutality) were only acting like they were supposed to. That was how they made money.
The big problem here was the Federal Government policy, dividing the ugly, dirty and
bad1 from the all-good white neighborhoods. The institutionalized racism is something
that America never really got rid of. In a society ruled by laws, a society that follows
principles of human rights, everyone should count on the protection of the State and not
getting offended by it. Coates explains it in one sentence: the black family in America
is working without a safety net. Contracts that were a scam, houses and neighborhoods
that were not meant for people painted with red, laws that do not work. All summed in a
divided society, today as it was decades ago.

1 Scola, Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (1976)