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| Ta-Nehisi Coates |
“Two hundred fifty years of
slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our
compounding moral debts, America will never be whole”[1]
I’ve read my fair share of essays
from a great deal of writers from William George Orwell to Gore Vidal but Ta-Nehisi Coates
“The Case For Reparations” is easily one of the best I’ve read.
For good reason “The Case for
Reparations” has been lauded by his peers and beyond as it was powerfully
written and argued as it succeeded in portraying the horrors and injustice of
slavery and the shockingly racist and debilitating government policies
(including the much praised New Deal) that systemically thwarted the economic
and social progress of African-Americans for decades.
The power of the piece is
profound, thought provoking and, if you have morsel of affinity with human
race, horrifying as Coates unapologetically shines a light on a number of sins
that are well documented but notably not discussed in the public sphere or even
that much among black intellectuals.
While argument for reparations
are rarely heard or made in public sphere by black intellectuals, it’s even rarer
to read one of the fiercest and convincing cases for the measure yet penned by
someone who not too long ago was against it. In his piece “Inverse nationalism”,
Coates actually argued against reparations and had scathing but thought
provoking remarks regarding Henry Louis Gates, a prominent African American
scholar, who was ironically making and argument against reparations by citing
the role of Africans in the slave trade[2].
Coates, none too pleased with
Gates targeting the role of Africans in the slave trade and others who had “commit
the fallacy of judging the sins of the past via the racial tribalism of today”,
cited his distaste at Gates’ argument against Africans as he, like others, are guilty
of apportioning blame as he wrote:
“Gates is not interested in
ending "the blame-game," as much he's interested in fiddling with the
foul-count. The vocabulary of blame is key--instead of speciously blaming
white Americans for the crimes of their presumed ancestors, Gates
speciously blames Africans. The vocabulary of blame proceeds from a simplistic
morality play in which someone, by virtue of simple biology, must play the
villain and someone else must play the victim. Gates has no problem with the
play, he just wants new actors for the roles”[3]
Coates went on to address directly
the roots of his opposition against reparations by pointing at the element blame
attached to the measure that seems almost unavoidable but as we see in “The
Case for Reparations”, Coates makes it a point not to point the finger but
detail a number of actors, institutions and policies that cumulatively engaged in
the systematic degradation of African American promise, clearly a decision he
made when writing this piece and stands as one of the many strengths.
Even in “Inverse Nationalism”
where he stated his opposition to reparation, the roots to his change of heart
is present as he saw the element of blame he stated that the issue of blame
forces us to look backwards at past sins rather than address their consequences
when he wrote:
“From my perspective, the most interesting and
provocative modern questions around America's racial dilemma, like any societal
dilemma, do not necessitate blame. To put it differently, I am
not concerned about gender equality because I think I'm to blame thousands of
years of sexism, I'm concerned about gender equality because it matches
my moral center. Blame is irrelevant. In the context of race, the question
isn't "Who is to blame for the Middle Passage, slavery, and Jim
Crow?" it's "What, tangibly, can we do to counter its
generational effects?"“[4]
In sum, “The Case for
Reparations” is a brilliant piece of journalism and confirms Ta-Nehisi Coates as one of the better writers on the black and indeed the American experience.
Read the brilliant "The Case for Reparations" here.
connect with The Carnage Report on Twitter @TCRblogspot.
[1]
T.Coates, 2014, The Case For Reparations, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations
[2] T.
Coates, 2010, Inverse Nationalism, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/04/inverse-nationalism/39463/
[3]
Ibid
[4]
Ibid
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