Ragavi Rajkumar Mr.Banno AP U.S History 8th January 2018. Journal #4 Part 1: In “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates sets out a powerful argument for reparations to blacks for having to thrive through horrific inequity, including slavery, Jim Crowism, Northern violence and racist housing policies. By erecting a slave society, America erected the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy. And Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history. Paying such a moral debt is such a great matter of justice served rightfully to those who were suppressed from the fundamental roles, white supremacy played in American history. The article begins with the author narrating the story of Clyde Ross, whose journey from Mississippi to Chicago is a living example of the trajectory. Ross, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, saw the small portion of wealth and land his father could attain forcibly stripped from him by …show more content…
Ross previously asked not to question authorities, wouldn’t be quiet.He joined the Contract Buyers League, not just appealing to the government simply for equality and no longer fleeing in hopes of a better deal elsewhere. Instead, they were charging the society with a crime against their community. They wanted the crime publicly ruled as such. And they wanted restitution for the great injury brought upon them by offenders. In 1968, Clyde Ross and the Contract Buyers League were no longer simply seeking the protection of the law. They were seeking reparations.They wanted reparations not just to feed and house themselves. They wanted to prove that the struggle is really all because of the past and compensation would level them up to live through practicing freedom and
Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the article “The Case for Reparations” presents a powerful argument for reparations to black African American for a long time of horrendous injustice as slavery plus discrimination, violence, hosing policies, family incomes, hard work, education, and more took a place in black African American’s lives. He argues that paying such a right arrears is not only a matter of justice; however, it is important for American people to express how they treated black African Americans.
During the middle to late 1800's, thousands upon thousands of Americans, as well as foreigners, flocked to the mid-western part of the United States. They flocked to this area hoping to gain free or cheap land promised to them by the United States Government. Most of the "pioneers" left cities and factory jobs to venture out into the American prairies and become farmers. They left their homes, not only because the land was either free or cheap, but also because they wanted to leave the hardships of city life. However, as most would find out, prairie life had its' share of hardships, that far out-reached the hardships of city life. Among these hardships were the death of siblings and friends due to starvation and/or hard work. Pioneers also had to face the stresses and burdens of trying to make a living off of the land. Along with these stress's, they had to worry about how to make money off of the land. All of these hardships, as well as others,
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
In the early 1900's, strikes, riots, labor unions, and new political parties arose across the country. The government, with its laissez-faire attitude, allowed business to consolidate into trusts, and with lack of competition, into powerful monopolies. These multi-million dollar monopolies were able to exploit every opportunity to make greater fortunes regardless of human consequences. Sinclair illustrates the harsh conditions in Packingtown through a Lithuanian immigrant family and their struggles to survive. Ona, a young and frail woman, and Jurgis, a hardworking and strong man and the husband of Ona, come to America with some of their family to find work and to make a new and better life for themselves. With everyone finding employment right away, the family begins their lives in America with optimism, enthusiasm, and ignorance. Taking a huge risk, they purchase a small rickety house. Slowly, they awaken to the harsh realities of their surroundings. There's the mortg...
In The Promised Land, Nicholas Lehmann follows the stories of black migrants, politicians, and bureaucrats through the Great Migration, and attempts to explain the decline of northern cities, the constant liberty struggle of blacks across America, and government response to the issues surrounding the Great Migration. This work signalled a drastic change from the structured approach of Thomas Sugrue’s, The Origins Of The Urban Crisis, which observes the effects of institutions and human agency on postwar Detroit and its marginalized peoples. Both Sugrue and Lemann had (albeit slightly different) holistic views of the political climate of postwar cities, which helped provide context for prejudices towards blacks and the poor, and subsequently
Dorsett, Lyle W. Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 1991.
The United States, possibly more than any other country, was not very welcoming during the early 1900s. Foreigners, who were uneducated about America’s customs, were unable to find jobs or prevent swindlers from causing their already insufficient wealth to subside. Because of this, Jurgis and his family’s economic and social lives changed drastically. For insta...
Coates lived in the ghettos of West Baltimore with his siblings and parents. None of them could go to expensive private schools, they had to attend the public schools that were close by because of conditions back in the past such as poverty and oppression due to their skin color. Coates’ father also had to take charge of their family because he was aware of the fact that opportunities would not come easily to his children due to the way society was arranged. Similarly, a man by the name of Clyde Ross moved to the ghettos of Chicago during the Great Migration. Because he was African-American, he was charged an extremely high price for his home, and to keep up with the payments he “took a second job at the post office and then a third job delivering pizza”. The money Ross made could not continue to go into the making up and decorating of the house or taking the best possible care of his family, the money always ended up with the already rich white home sellers. This was the case for many black people so places such as these turned into the ghettos. The poverty and oppression that Coates had to endure was the exact same poverty and oppression that Ross had to endure. In his essay, “The Case for Reparations”, Coates sites Harvard historian, Walter Johnson, who claims that “slaves were the single largest
Reparations Although the talk of reparations of slavery has been in discussion for over a hundred years, it is beginning to heat up again. Within these discussions, the issue of the form of reparations has been evaluated and money has been an option several times. However, reparations in the form of money should not be obtained for several reasons. Firstly, it is not a solution to the problem, secondly monetary reparations have the ability to worsen discrimination, thirdly, who gets paid, and how is it regulated, and lastly, the money can be misused.
Imagine you’re young, and alone. If your family was taken from you and suffered horribly for your freedom, would you want to be repaid in some form? In the article “The Case for Reparations” Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses a great deal of information about reparations, and if they should be given. Reparations are when a person or people make amends for the wrong they have done. Ta-Nehisi believes that from two hundred years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow laws, sixty years of separate but equal, and thirty five years of racist housing policy, that America is shackled. Only if we face the compounding moral debt can America be free. Until we face the reality of what happened together, we will always be bound by the lies that have been told.
Presently, the federal government acts according to the public’s interest. Civil rights cases are still common within government, but will the issue of reparations of the descendants of slaves be substantial enough for government to want to give it attention. No matter what is done, African Americans will always be seen as the victims of slavery, and whites will be those always guilty of it. This guilt by association through skin color will never fade, no matter what type of reparation is made.
As a child I remember hearing stories about a lost family fortune from my father’s side of the family. I never put a lot of stock into those stories, but evidently they were true. My father’s side was comprised of farmers for many generations. The Owens family owned thousands of acres of land in Kentucky, on which they farmed tobacco and raised horses and cattle. My father, Leland, blames his grandfather’s generation for whittling away the family’s money. Even with the loss of prestige of owning such an abundance of land, the family continued to farm. I suppose it is all they knew. They became good, working class farmers and small business owners, working on their modest-sized farms. But they did own the land which separates them from the working poor. The sizes of the farms dwindled over the generations; my father’s father, Harlan, owned about 30 acres in northern Kentucky. Harlan’s brother Ralph has expanded his wealth over time and now owns about 600 acres of land in Kentucky.
In the article “The Case for Reparations”, the author Ta-Nehisi Coates utilized the technique of putting people into his writing to help strengthen his point. Starting from the beginning, Coates used the story of Clyde Ross to help introduce the main topic of the article: racial inequality is still prevalent in America today.
“How does it feel to be a problem in America (Du Bois 1)?” “What is the purpose of Reconstruction for the Negro race?” “How can African-Americans confront the problem of the color-line in 1904 (Du Bois 9)?” In The Souls of Black Folk (1904), W.E.B. Du Bois, a renowned sociologist, recounts the struggles and dogged resiliency of four-million newly emancipated African-American slaves during the Reconstruction Era. Throughout his seminal text, W.E.B. Du Bois advances an aspirational vision of self-determined political agency, economic organization, and full civil-equality for African-Americans. In contrast with Du Bois’ political perspective, Booker T. Washington articulates a vision of black leadership centered on African-Americans’ industrial education and economic advancement in the labor force. Nevertheless, historians must situate both contentious perspectives within the broader socio-political context of the early 20th