Appendix 3: Reparations in the Popular Media

“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,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 2014.  (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/)

“My President was Black,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 2016. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/my-president-was-black/508793/)

This is an excerpt from the article about President Obama’s feelings on reparations:

“Obama had been on the record as opposing reparations. But now, late in his presidency, he seemed more open to the idea—in theory, at least, if not in practice.

“‘Theoretically, you can make obviously a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps,’ Obama said, referencing the gulf in education, wealth, and employment that separates black and white America. ‘That those were wrongs to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks but in the form of a Marshall Plan.’

“The political problems with turning the argument for reparations into reality are manifold, Obama said. ‘If you look at countries like South Africa, where you had a black majority, there have been efforts to tax and help that black majority, but it hasn’t come in the form of a formal reparations program. You have countries like India that have tried to help untouchables, with essentially affirmative-action programs, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed the structure of their societies. So the bottom line is that it’s hard to find a model in which you can practically administer and sustain political support for those kinds of efforts.’

“Obama went on to say that it would be better, and more realistic, to get the country to rally behind a robust liberal agenda and build on the enormous progress that’s been made toward getting white Americans to accept nondiscrimination as a basic operating premise. But the progress toward nondiscrimination did not appear overnight. It was achieved by people willing to make an unpopular argument and live on the frontier of public opinion. I asked him whether it wasn’t—despite the practical obstacles—worth arguing that the state has a collective responsibility not only for its achievements but for its sins.

“‘I want my children—I want Malia and Sasha—to understand that they’ve got responsibilities beyond just what they themselves have done,’ Obama said. “That they have a responsibility to the larger community and the larger nation, that they should be sensitive to and extra thoughtful about the plight of people who have been oppressed in the past, are oppressed currently. So that’s a wisdom that I want to transmit to my kids … But I would say that’s a high level of enlightenment that you’re looking to have from a majority of the society. And it may be something that future generations are more open to, but I am pretty confident that for the foreseeable future, using the argument of nondiscrimination, and “Let’s get it right for the kids who are here right now,” and giving them the best chance possible, is going to be a more persuasive argument.’

“Obama is unfailingly optimistic about the empathy and capabilities of the American people. His job necessitates this: ‘At some level what the people want to feel is that the person leading them sees the best in them,’ he told me. But I found it interesting that that optimism does not extend to the possibility of the public’s accepting wisdoms—such as the moral logic of reparations—that the president, by his own account, has accepted for himself and is willing to teach his children. Obama says he always tells his staff that ‘better is good.’ The notion that a president would attempt to achieve change within the boundaries of the accepted consensus is appropriate. But Obama is almost constitutionally skeptical of those who seek to achieve change outside that consensus.”