The Case for Reparations

One of my favorite articles looking at race and racism in America today is “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In this article, Coates does an excellent job weaving together racial injustices of the past with those of the present. The article begins by looking at examples of land theft committed against African American property owners in the early 1900s. Through a combination of racial terrorism and deception, African Americans were routinely forced from their property. Though this occurred almost a century ago, the repercussions are still felt to this day. The land was never returned to the families that it was stolen from, nor did the families receive any sort of compensation. This systemic targeting of African American landowners and subsequent removal of property meant massive theft of familial and communal wealth, as property ownership has direct ties to socioeconomic status and the perpetuation of wealth from one generation to the next. This particular racial injustice was the foundation for Coates establishment of a “case for reparations.”

Coates next looks at racist housing policies in America and their impact, particularly in the field of redlining and access to home loans. Up until the Civil Rights Movement led to successful legislation forbidding racial discrimination in housing and bank loans, banks were able to, and often did, discriminate and deny loans from African Americans. Without a home loan from a bank, blacks were forced to turn to predatory lenders and property renting, resulting in detrimental economic outcomes and lack of wealth buildup that accompanies homeownership. In 1934, the Federal Housing Administration was set up to insure private mortgages, lowering interest rates and down payments for FHA eligible loans. Potential black homeowners were ineligible for these loans, as the FHA adopted a map system that ranked neighborhoods based on “perceived stability.” Unsurprisingly, the white-led FHA of the 1930s deemed communities of color as “unstable,” and white communities” stable.” This process, which became known as redlining, “went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage.”

Coates then drew direct parallels between the redlining of the 1930s-60s to the modern racial layout of American cities. One of these examples was in Chicago, where a previously redlined black community in North Lawndale is an epicenter for unemployment and crime. Coates also mentions racial targeting by financial institutions, highlighting a program by Wells Fargo in 2005 that “promoted a series of Wealth Building Strategies seminars” targeting black churches with predatory loans.

Though I initially read this article for a separate class, it remains important and relevant to understanding the racial landscape of modern and past America. It also helps to understand the landscape that King and his contemporaries were facing when they stood in the Washington Mall 55 years ago and addressed a quarter of a million people. Many people paint the Civil Rights Movement as a chapter in American history that is over and done with, but the works of people like Ta-Nehisi Coates show that we still have work to do.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/