Week 7 Response: Black People Deserve Reparation

WEEK 7 RESPONSE
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I agree with the article that black people deserve reparation. First, they had to endure robbery of their property through illegal means, terrorism through beatings, incarcerations or killings and discrimination through denial of various services. It resulted in The Great Migration in search of a better place where the law would protect them. Secondly, instead of finding reprieve in towns like Chicago, the blacks among them Clyde Ross suffered another kind of segregation through the sale of houses on a contract basis and at a high cost to exploit them. Additionally, redlining whereby despite their economic status, they were only allowed to own homes in various parts of the city affected them.[. Ta-Nehisi, Coates, “The Case for Reparations: Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole,” The Atlantic, June 2014.]
The article’s premise that the American economy was built on the back of slavery is accurate. An economy is driven primarily by the presence of labor. The article has documented how various businesses such as farming of cotton, running of industries, trade, building for example of the White House developed through the presence of slaves to offer the labor. Also, the illegal grabbing of lands owned by blacks especially in Mississippi has resulted in the building of various income generating activities that relied on the black people.
I disagree with the notion that blacks face different issues due to lack of fatherhood. Instead, according to Coates, achieving the middle-class norms by black people made them more of targets than the poor. First, white speculators who knew they worked hard enough to afford housing on contract targeted them. Secondly, Clyde Ross’s family lo...