The Case for Reparations

The Case for Reparations is an article written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published in The Atlantic in 2014. The article focuses on redlining and housing discrimination through the eyes of people who have experienced it and the devastating effects it has had on the African-American community. "The Case for Reparations" received critical acclaim and was named the top work of journalism in the 2010s. It also skyrocketed Coates' career and led him to write Between the World and Me, a New York Times Bestseller and winner of numerous nonfiction awards. It took Coates two years to finish this 16,000 word essay. Coates never intended for his article to have an impact, stating that his goal was to get people to stop laughing at the idea of reparations.[1]

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Article Summary

In The Case For Reparations Ta-Nehisi Coates walks the reader through the hardships of African Americans starting through the eyes of Clyde Ross who was born in the 1920s in the Deep South. Ross endured severe racism as a result of the harsh Jim Crow laws. His parents were sharecroppers and were at the mercy of the owners as to whether they would have enough food to feed the whole family. Ross joined the military where he experienced what it was like to be treated equally. Following his service Ross moved to Chicago and bought a home “on contract”, meaning someone else owned the home until he had successfully paid off the contract. However, Ross and others ended up paying nearly double for the same house that the contract owners had bought months ago, and a missed payment meant forfeiting the house and all of the money and work that had gone into it. Unfortunately for most African Americans this was the only way they could become homeowners leading to a revolving door of poverty. To combat this Ross teamed up with neighbors forming the Contract Buyers League which fought against these predatory contracts and towards repaying victims for their struggles.

Coates goes on to show the huge discrepancy between White and Black families that occurs today, using shocking statistics such as how about 65% of Black children grew up in poor neighborhoods compared to 4% of White children. Coates continues to show how large cities like Chicago are still extremely segregated due to predatory contracts and redlining, or lowering home value where people of color live. These concepts have held African Americans down and not allowed them to grow their wealth the same way white families have.

The author then goes to show how the government systematically worked against African Americans. Examples of these are the G.I. Bill, New Deal, and founding of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The G.I. Bill gave veterans access to many benefits including reduced college and housing costs. The G.I. Bill is often credited with forming the middle class[2] but African Americans were exempt from it. The New Deal followed this precedent, giving unparalleled opportunity to white Americans but none to their black counterparts. The FHA extended a hand toward white families in the form of loans that only pushed black families down.

Coates rounds off his article by showing that reparations are not as radical of an idea as people believe, citing the Germany Israel agreement following the Holocaust and H.R. 40, a reparations bill that has been revised since the late 1900s.

Reparations in the Past

In The Case for Reparations Coates describes other notable instances of reparations, perhaps the most famous is that of Germany and Israel following the Holocaust. Germany paid the Israel Government 3 million marks over the course of fourteen years. However, the government merely acted as a central organization as all of the money went to survivors of the Holocaust whether they lived in Israel or not.[3] Germany was given monetary incentives to pay off the charge as fast as possible. This deal was only struck with West Germany which was under the control of Britain, the United States, and France. East Germany, under the control of the Soviet Union refused to give up and of the spoils they had won at the price of many of their countrymen.[4]

Other instances of reparations that Coates discusses are of Belina Royall who in 1783 successfully negotiated for 15 pounds and 12 shillings as payment for her 50 years of slavery, including being taken from her village in Ghana.[5]

Coates also shows an example of Quakers on the East Coast that required potential members to reimburse their past slaves in order to join.[5]

Suggestions for Reparations

Throughout the article, Coates outlines some of the next steps the United States could take to address reparations. He builds off of previous scholarly works, proposed policy, and community-based ideas to suggest a comprehensive national discussion regarding reparations. The Case for Reparations repeatedly underlines the concept of reparations as a collective reframing of the history of the United States to a perspective more in line with the truth. Furthermore, the author calls for reparations to create a stronger connection between the country’s practices of segregation, housing discrimination, white flight, and racist ideas with the current inequalities present across Black and white communities.

Drawing on Boris Bittker’s findings in The Case for Black Reparations,[6] Coates suggests incorporating the $34 billion racial income difference into a reparations program, disseminating that amount every year for a few decades. Coates’ point that reparations are not discussed in the national policy realm is demonstrated through this, as this amount was discovered in the 1970s. Coates details the longstanding push for reparations by many scholars, and if broadcast at a national stage, the reparations process could have been well under way today.

To suggest an option for bringing case for reparations to the legislature, Coates highlights former Representative John Conyers' H.R. 40. H.R. 40 is touted as a starting point for a national discussion on reparations and increased research on the topic.

Coates uses this article to approach reparations from a broad lens, demonstrating the wide variety of approaches scholars have provided. He encourages the shift in thinking of reparations as “a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe”,[5] reframing reparations as “a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history”.[5] Coates uses the ideas of Charles Ogletree to provide an example of reparations that is not direct monetary compensation, suggesting instead job training and public works to disenfranchised and impoverished individuals of all races.

Real Estate and Its Effect on Racial Inequality

One of the top forms of wealth accumulation is through housing and real estate ownership. Land and property are seen as capital that regularly accumulates value, thus making them incredibly dynamic investments and profitable for later generations.[7] The National Housing Act of 1934 was passed during the Great Depression in an attempt to make housing and home mortgages more affordable for low income families. It created the Federal Housing Administration, which provided mortgage insurance for those that could not afford or would not usually be approved for traditional home mortgage loans,[8] as well as the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. After years of the FHA refusing to approve loans for African-American families, Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Tamil Nadu), which was meant to make it easier for low-income people to be approved for housing loans and have access to purchasing real estate.[9] This act marked a shift with the government using private developers in the construction and development of public housing.

The privatization of these real estate developers combined with the failure of the FHA to enforce anti-discrimination laws created a predatory environment, in which low-income, African-American families would be targeted and approved for home ownership loans on a "for contract" basis, which meant they had to pay a monthly fee alongside their mortgage.[9] The contracts could be changed without knowledge of the families and with little government oversight. If a person could not make a contract payment, they would be evicted and forced into signing a new contract in order to have a home.[9] The houses that were being sold to low-income families were often times houses that had not been normally on the market due to poor shape, bad environment, and a number of other factors.[9] Private developers being able to put minimum repairs in them and sell them, on-contract, made it so once a family had bought the house, despite them having the pay monthly contract fees, any repairs or issues with the house was their responsibility and the financial burden of which often drove families further into debt, and not being able to make the monthly payments.[9]

The National Housing Act and Housing and Urban Development Act are both stated as ways to assist low-income families to be able to afford buying houses and property, however it has continuously lead to further debt and financial ruin for the families and communities that it was meant to help.

Aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation was given January 1, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln.[10] It states that all people previously held as slaves from this point on, are free, and that the government, including naval and military authorities will protect said freedom.[10] It specifies that freed people are eligible to join the army, that they should not be subject to violence, with the contingency of unless for self-defense, and that "in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully with fair wages".[10] This does not specify any rights or consequence to the invasion of their rights, past that the military will protect freed people somehow and that they should sometimes receive fair wages.

After the enslaved were freed, there became a question of compensation to the slaveholders, because they saw losing their slaves as a loss of personal property.[11] The newly freed were not given any form of compensation for their trauma or oppression, or anything to start off with, they were freed and that was seen as enough. The public did not agree with the idea of tax money compensating slave-holders, since they had believed that the tax-payers had lost enough money by freeing the slaves in the first place, rather they suggested that the previously enslaved should have to pay to compensate for the price of their freedom.[11] This began the practice of indentured servitude, in which African-Americans were made to work off their "debt", due to the fact that they did not have any form of capital to pay with.[11] Indentured servants were given a contract, generally around 10 years, in which they would work without wage, often times living on the farm or plantation that they were working on, until they had paid off the projected debt of their freedom. If they committed a crime or otherwise displeased their employer their contract could be extended.

In summation, after the Emancipation Proclamation legally ended slavery, African-American citizens were then submitted to indentured servitude in order to compensate the slaveholders for their loss in profit and capital, i.e. their slaves.

Reception

The Case for Reparations has been a journalistic breakthrough for the author, as the article gained an incredibly large audience after first published as the cover story of the June 2014 issue of the Atlantic. Coates’ article has been a part of a greater dialogue on reparations and the United States’ response to the legacy of slavery. The article has inspired a larger journalistic conversation[12] as well which frequently touches on the reckoning this article sparked in countless individuals who hadn’t previously understood the need for reparations. When writing this, it was not Coates’ idea that the article would result in reparations within his lifetime.

Due in part to the article’s widespread success, Coates was invited to testify in front of the United States House of Representatives on the issue of reparations five years after the article’s publication. In his testimony,[13] Coates returned to the major arguments of the article. He rebutted the idea that Americans shouldn’t be responsible for something of the past, by pointing out the continued pension payments to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. In his statement, he addressed the lack of research done into what reparations could look like in the United States by the country’s legislators.

Multiple pieces of legislation have been introduced since Coates’ Atlantic article, in the House by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s reintroduction of Rep. Conyer's H.R. 40 and the Senate companion, Senator Cory Booker’s S. 1083.[14] Coates revealed in an interview[15] with the New Yorker that he had been approached by Senator Elizabeth Warren in regard to the article, who he described as being “deeply serious” about the concept.

In an interview with NPR,[16] Coates stated that a main reason for writing The Case for Reparations was to get more people to acknowledge the argument for reparations.

The Case for Reparations received multiple awards, including being named the “Top Work of Journalism of the Decade” by New York University’s Carter School of Journalism Institute.[17]

A key part of the work was coverage of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in which about 150 blacks were killed by white residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event was virtually unknown prior to the article's publication. Damon Lindelof was inspired by The Case for Reparations and learning of the Tulsa massacre in developing the Watchmen television series which broadcast in 2019. The series uses the Tulsa massacre as a central part of the narrative.[18][19][20]

References

1. Capeheart, Jonathan (February 20, 2019). "How Ta-Nehisi Coates turned reparations from a punchline into a policy objective". Washington Post.
2. Mettler, Suzanne (January 1, 2012). "How the GI Bill Built the Middle Class and Enhanced Democracy". Scholars.
3. Honig, Frederick (October 1958). "The Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany". The American Journal of International Law. 48: 564–578 – via JSTOR.
4. Tovy, Jacob (2013). "All Quiet on the Eastern Front; Israel and the Issue of Reparations from East-Germany, 1951–1956". Israel Studies. 18: 77–100 – via JSTOR.
5. Coates, Story by Ta-Nehisi. "The Case for Reparations". The Atlantic. ISSN 1072-7825. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
6. Bittker, Boris (1973). The Case for Black Reparations. Random House. ISBN 0394480945.
7. Stewart, Story by Matthew. "The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy". The Atlantic. ISSN 1072-7825. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
8. Kagan, Julia. "Federal Housing Administration (FHA)". Investopedia. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
9. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta (2019). Race for Profit : How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. University of North Carolina Publishing. pp. 1–24.
10. "Transcript of the Proclamation". National Archives. October 6, 2015. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
11. Piketty, Thomas (2019). Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press. pp. 203–251.
12. Brooks, David (March 7, 2019). "The Case for Reparations". The New York Times Opinion.
13. "Here's What Ta-Nehisi Coates Told Congress About Reparations". The New York Times. June 19, 2019.
14. "Booker Reparations Bill Reaches 12 Senate Cosponsors". Cory Booker. June 14, 2019.
15. "Ta-Nehisi Coates Revisits The Case for Reparations". The New Yorker. June 10, 2019.
16. Cornish, Audie (May 23, 2014). "'The Atlantic's' Ta-Nehisi Coates Builds 'A Case For Reparations'". NPR.
17. "Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" Named Top Work of Journalism of the Last Decade". NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. October 14, 2020.
18. Arkin, Daniel (October 21, 2019). "'Watchmen' recreates the Tulsa massacre of 1921, exposing viewers to an ugly chapter". NBC News. Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
19. Cullera, Scott (October 21, 2019). "Why Watchmen's Damon Lindelof Used the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 as a Backdrop". IGN. Archived from the original on October 22, 2019. Retrieved October 21, 2019.
20. Lambe, Stacy (June 2, 2020). "Hollywood Is Finally Shining a Light on the Tulsa Race Massacre -- Right When We Need It Most". Entertainment Tonight. Archived from the original on June 9, 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2020.