Posted on 10/31/2014 5:45:52 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This year’s top The Root 100 honoree reflects on his groundbreaking article, “The Case for Reparations,” and his belief that African Americans have accomplished much, despite overwhelming obstacles.
This year we selected writer Ta-Nehisi Coates as the top honoree on The Root 100, our annual list of influential and high-achieving African Americans. It was June when The Atlantic published his widely read and highly acclaimed cover article, “The Case for Reparations,” which “lays bare a compelling argument for the pecuniary redress of Africans brought to this country in chains and continually terrorized—socially, politically and economically.”
Coates sat down with The Root’s managing editor, Lyne Pitts, to talk about the impact of his record-shattering article, which, he says, “way outdistanced my expectations.”
The Root: You called this article “The Case for Reparations.” So obviously you were making that case to someone. Who was it written for?
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Well, this is tough to say, because I don’t want this to come off the wrong way. In general, when I write something like that, I’m writing for black people. But that shouldn’t mean that I don’t want other people to read it, or I don’t expect other people to read it.
But I think for those of us who find ourselves in majority-white spaces, we feel this need to slow things down and dumb things down and speak to people in a certain way. And I just try to write as though I were in a room full of African Americans. I don’t want to cut anything back.
And I think in the long run that that actually shows more respect for my white readers....
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
“Comments?”
Yes. This story needs either a “satire” or “deranged” warning.
Reparations would be vindication and acceptance of “white” superiority.
“The Root” is a predominately black news source.
22 Trillion dollars since LBJ’s Great Society and three quarters of a million dead Americans in the Civil Wat is just not enough.
Or the Civil War.
To be fair, about 40% of those deaths were of men trying to keep slavery alive.
Nice poke in the eye to the white supremacists.
No reparations without repatriation.
When will black America at least offer thanks to the Union troops who fought for and secured their freedom? Hundreds of thousands of them died and were maimed. I never hear a whisper of gratitude for their sacrifice.
I agree. I had two great-grandfathers who served the Union in the Civil War. One was the wounded and suffered physical problems the rest of his life and the other was deafened by cannon fire. Not of word of thanks from anyone, not even our own government who denied either of them any kind of pension and refused to pay any medical bills due to service.
As the character named “Mr. o” on the walton and johnson radio show say:
“Itz all abou’ dah monee!”
Nice libel there. Many of the men who fought in the Confederate forces did so for states rights or to defend their homes, not for slavery. But you already knew that, didn’t you?
I think we are even if not paid well ahead for the future, these lazy a##es have been sucking us dry since LBJ, ENOUGH!
I think African-Americans DO struggle, living among a majority population so different from them. And I believe that the circumstances which placed their ancestors on this continent were the very definition of unjust.
And, as Jefferson observed so presciently, in Notes on the State of Virginia, " ...Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race."
So, I'm not exactly what you would call optimistic.
How to win whites to your cause. </sarcasm>
I’m with you there.
This would be any easier, to live in, society and culture would it come to that.
I’m very tired with the whiny b!tches.
——Well, this is tough to say, because I don’t want this to come off the wrong way-——
But speaking biologically, not racist, for many, reparations have already been paid in Genes.
Michael Jordan received such payments
‘But I think for those of us who find ourselves in majority-white spaces, we feel this need to slow things down and dumb things down and speak to people in a certain way.’
Forty acres and a mule - back in Africa.
Africa for Africans!
With very few exceptions (usually some sexual thing of late) though, they're all dead.
There is no guarantee that any of the estates of anyone deceased would yield any gain for someone today, generations later, and often those who had an ancestor who died without a will lost much, if not all of the estate to unscrupulous lawyers or in probate. Even granting even distribution through the generations, the fraction inherited might only amount to a pittance, provided it was maintained and not lost or squandered as so often is the case.
Certainly, taking from people who were not yet alive to 'compensate' those who were never slaves cannot be in any wise construed to be just.
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