Category: Blog 11/11

Coates talks about this quote and how although America would like to believe that slavery ended a while ago and we have moved on past that, it has just been upgraded every few years to torture African Americans over and over and over. He points out how even now, hundreds of years later after slavery started, some still have hatred in our hearts, such as those who believe in white supremacy. Although we were not alive when slavery was a thing, we are all alive witnessing the racism in this country and it is our responsibility now to work on it as a nation. I see this point when it comes to Native Americans and how America claims that the actions that took place originally in this country are not our responsibility. Although the people alive right now are not at fault for what happened in the beginning of when America was founded, and how millions of Natives died, it is our responsibility to try and fix this issue to the best of our ability. We should be making life easier for Natives and realizing that it is up to us to make up for what our country ruined.

To begin with I’d like to mention how Coates does infact adequately make his case through bringing up the group responsible, or in this case the nation of that is America. Then he backs up his argument from where it began with slavery all the way up until redlining and segregation and how that was 250 years of history that black people faced harsh and violent mistreatment.

Can something be not your fault, but still your responsibility? I don’t believe that a certain individual can be held accountable for something someone before them committed; however, they can do their best to uphold their responsibility to do what’s right in society as a true citizen. Furthermore, to answer this in the context of Coates’ argument, the problem lies within the government because as long as cops can continue to stay misinformed and act irrational with a system that creates unfair equity amongst races, those reparations the black community deserves will never be met. To this day we can see how the government disregards the mistreatment of black individuals and until that changes I don’t think the nation is doing it’s responsibility to settle the score. Just take a look at Germany and all the reparations they had to pay from the world wars, there were people born long after the war that had to help pay for that debt, so I believe the government can afford to provide equity to the black community and all races in America.

Throughout history, we learned that people hold each other responsible. For example, COVID-19 was a problem because it came from China. So who did people blame? Many held Chinese people responsible for this disease even if it wasn’t their fault. Is this fair? Not at all. However, knowing how it occurred and learning from it will reduce the chance of it happening again.

We shouldn’t put each other responsible for something, but instead, learn from it and make the world a peaceful place. Even though COVID-19 started in China and spread globally, we aren’t killing each other but trying to find a cure and work with each other to prevent it from happening again. If we spread hate, then more hatred will develop within each other. It’s essential to learn about the history of the past and learn not to repeat the mistake. Another example is slavery. We can use taxpayer money to help people of color facing financial issues based on their relatives. This is the same concept used when the U.S gave out pensions for Japanese people. Besides holding each other responsible, let’s help each other. We are all people who are seeking justice for the wrongs and fighting for what is right.

Finally, Coates adequately “makes his case,” and I find it interesting because he brings in history, proving my points that I’ve stated above. This is the right way to set amends for each other and to prevent it from happening again.

The question of whether generational issues and controversies should be passed down on us is a difficult one to answer, and one with no clear cut answer, either. However, the more important question to ask is: How do we react when presented with such a responsibility? Is it in our right to take charge and own it? Or to put it behind in the past?

With slavery, obviously, the blame can’t be passed on to later generations. But the effects do still linger, and that responsibility carries over. Perhaps it’s unfair that we are presented with such a large burden when we are born, one that we are unaccounted for. But there isn’t much we can do when the problem arises. The best we could do, though, is to react and act accordingly. Just because the issues of a generation carry over to another, doesn’t mean the chain should be broken. This issue is a state of morality. We have a liability to make it up to people of the past; it is only right.

I think that perhaps the most powerful point that Ta’Nehisi Coates makes in  “The Case for Reparations” is that reparations have been successfully made in the past. His example came from German reparations being paid to Israel as a way of making amends after the Second World War. Not only does the case show that reparations can be used efficiently to make lasting economic change for a people group, but it shows something else that is important as well: the reason that reparations are so important. The German government chose to pay reparations because they massacred a people with explicit intent to target their ethnic group. Reparations were not just an apology, but a way of trying to keep the past in the past. They recognized that for the past to truly remain there; for there to be any way to truly “move on” from the wrongs, there had to be some sort of repayment, because just saying sorry wasn’t enough. Now, the parallels between this instance and the case being made for reparations in the United States have an important distinction: the German reparations were paid 7 years after World War 2, meaning most of the people who directly experienced the war and the Holocaust would still be alive to accept the reparations; however, in the United States, there is a very common argument against reparations, saying that those affected by it died over a hundred years ago, and thus need not be paid back. While I could go off explaining the inherent falseness of this statement, I will take a different route. Rather than explaining how it is not in the past, I will explore why we are still responsible for wrongs made in the past that we did not commit. When I say we, like Ta’Nehisi Coates, I mean the American people. The American people must pay back the black community, not because the problems caused by racism and slavery still exist today (though they do), but because there is something important to be taken from the lesson from the German reparations. Reparations are an official way of making amends. They are a way of truly saying that “we are equal”. They are a way of putting things right. The American people must make amends, because whether they want to admit it or not, the racial tension in our country is not going anywhere, but the only possible way for it to do that is something that says, “we are equal”. Just saying sorry doesn’t cut it. We, the American people, must recognize that the problems of the past are our problems, because they have left deep rooted scars with a very slim option of cures.

Can something be not your fault, but still your responsibility? Germans still hold themselves accountable for the atrocities that were committed during WWII. They understand what they as a people, did wrong and they continue to teach it to students to prevent it from ever happening again. Teaching students about the Holocaust is a requirement in German schools. Most German students have been to a concentration camp or Holocaust museum. They came to terms with what their forefathers have done and accepted their history, so why doesn’t America?

Coates explains that America has a serious issue with not coming to terms with its history. Instead, we are taught that “America should not be liable for something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago since none of us currently alive are responsible”-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Throughout the years, since America’s birth as a nation, America had committed many atrocities all over the world, but we still continue to glorify our nation without looking at the bad. What does it mean to call our nation the best and the greatest if we don’t have the nerve to accept all the bad we’ve done. “The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world…reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely”. Coates says that’s the reparations that America needs to give, but we won’t because it threatens our internal belief that we are the best, we are the greatest nation in the world. America needs to come to terms with its racism and racial inequality or else it will continue to be plagued by the racial tension we continue to see in the current day. The reparations do not have to be monetary, in fact, it will most likely never be monetary. The reparations America needs is the acceptance of its past, to pave the way to a better, more united future.