The Case for Reparations
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.
[1] It also skyrocketed Coates' career and led him to write Between the World and Me, a New York Times Best Seller and winner of numerous nonfiction awards.
[3] 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.
Coates continues to show how large cities like Chicago are still extremely segregated due to predatory contracts and redlining, or lowering home values where people of color live.
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.
[7] Coates also cites the example of Quakers on the East Coast who required potential members to reimburse their past slaves in order to join.
He builds off of previous scholarly works, proposed policy, and community-based ideas to suggest a comprehensive national discussion regarding reparations.
[7] 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.
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 were targeted and approved for home ownership loans on a "for contract" basis, which meant they had to pay a monthly fee alongside their mortgage.
[12] It stated that all people previously held as slaves from that point on were free, and that the government, including naval and military authorities would protect said freedom.
[12] It specified that freed people were eligible to join the army, that they should not be subject to violence, unless for self-defense, and that "in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully with fair wages".
[13] 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.
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 of profit and capital, i.e. their slaves.
"The Case for Reparations" was a journalistic breakthrough for the author; it gained a large audience after first published as the cover story of the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic.
He rebutted the idea that Americans should not be responsible for grievances from the past, pointing out the continued pension payments to the heirs of Civil War soldiers.
Multiple pieces of legislation regarding reparations have been introduced since Coates' Atlantic article, in the House with Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s reintroduction of Rep. Conyer's H.R.
[16] Coates revealed in an interview[17] with The New Yorker that he had been approached in regard to the article by Senator Elizabeth Warren, whom he described as being "deeply serious" about the concept.
[19][20][21] Rania Khalek called out Ta-Nehisi Coates at a speaking event following the article's publication, criticizing a segment that praised the payments of the German government to the State of Israel after the Holocaust as a model for reparations.
[22][23] He later recalled of the incident, speaking after the publication of his 2024 book The Message in which he criticizes Zionism and Israel: "I remember there was a woman who got on the mic and yelled about the role of Palestinians in that article ...
'"[23] In response, Khalek wrote: "Wow, it turns out I played a role in pushing Ta-Nehisi Coates to look more deeply into Palestine," and asked anyone reading who knew him to say "thank you for listening and for his willingness to learn and speak out.
