The latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly just went live, and the feature story by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a monster. It’s about making the moral case for reparations, but it expands the conversation surrounding this topic in two ways. The first way it does this is by pointing out, in vivid detail, the way that the exploitation and mistreatment of blacks in the US is an inextricable part of our history and that it continues to this present day. The second way is by redefining just what reparations would require from us as a nation.
And so we must imagine a new country. 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. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is—the work of fallible humans….
What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
Go read the whole thing. It’s worth your time.
5 responses
Well, I’m convinced! Just kidding. Humans are fallible. Doesn’t need to be “accepted”. It is just a simple fact. Let’s move on. I have a drum in my basement I am dying to beat.
Perhaps you could be unlike the thousands of others on the internet who have dismissed the piece without reading it. Or, you know, perhaps not.
I grew up on the West Side of Chicago and spent two years with a guy from South Shore. I have a Countrywide mortgage story and my daughter has a Bank of America mortgage story complicated by a Wells Fargo story, so why can’t we get a VERY long story published in the Atlantic rehashing a bunch of stuff that has been said before? He is basically asking for the blue fairy to wave the wand over the wooden puppet and turn him into a real boy. Yeah. I dismiss it. Out of hand.
He’s asking for no such thing. It’s an important work of long-form journalism that stands on its own and asks a large portion of this country’s population to come to grips with its history. It’s more than just housing, though that’s the central story Coates used to illustrate his larger argument. If you want to look at the piece in just a limited way, that’s your right I suppose, but there’s way more going on in that piece.
I appreciate your respectful reply. I often feel like things are put into a
Political milieu and the cultural anthropology is not considered. I have seen and lived through so much of this. I saw a water fountain in a bus station that said “whites only”. Did you? Did he? I saw the city in flames (well, actually a wall of billowing smoke) from the balcony of my apartment.I feel my context is valid and should also be respected. In this case, words solve nothing. Certainly not mine. But is good that people try.
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