Reparations for African Americans over slavery and institutional racism has been debated in the United States for the past 150 years, ever since the end of the American Civil War. Since the war ended in 1865, African Americans have continued to still struggled through Jim Crow laws, the fight for civil rights, and President Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms. Many have called out for justice and demanded reparations be made to the African Americans whose lives were tarnished at the hands of these cruelties.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer and journalist considered well versed in the issue (MacArthur Association), wrote a popular piece in the Atlantic arguing for reparations. He wrote of the atrocities faced by African Americans in the housing market during Roosevelt’s New Deal and how reparations should be made. Reparations are a highly complex issue that has been debated frequently in the United States.
While some advocates have pushed towards reparations for the individuals or families, a variety of issues are brought up,this brings up a variety of issues, from the people that qualify for reparations, who qualifies for them to how much each person would should receive. Instead, the money should be invested in under-developed cities with large African American populations. It is the obligation of the United States to make amends for institutional racism of the past and community funding is the best way to do it.
Why Should We Have to Make Amends? A large part of the ongoing debate is whether reparations should be made at all. After all, no one alive today was a slave or owned slaves. While this is true, slavery was only part of the issue. There was also the long lasting Jim Crow laws, the psychological effects they had on African Americans, institutional racism in housing, and the oppression of civil rights. This moves the date of those affected from the mid 1800’s to the first half of the 1900’s and even modern day.
Kevin Williamson of the National Review wrote in response to Coates, saying of how, “[t]he people to whom reparations were owed are long dead,” (Williamson 5-6). Slavery to Jim Crow The enslavement of African Americans from the 15th to 19th centuries are thought of as some of the darkest times in American history. Slaves, to put it broadly, were treated inhumanly and had no human rights. Coates wrote in the Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations”, that during the 15th and 16 centuries, Africans were, “plundered of their bodies, plundered of their families, and plundered of their labor,” (Coates 13).
While these examples can illustrate how Africans were treated, the history of Slavery is far from unknown in the United States. From textbooks to film, slavery’s effects have been plastered into the modern United States. The major conflict in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered office during the Great Depression in 1933. Reparations for African Americans over slavery and institutional racism has been debated in the United States for the past 150 years, ever since the end of the American Civil War.
Since the war ended in 1865, African Americans have continued to still struggled through Jim Crow laws, the fight for civil rights, and President Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms. Many have called out for justice and demanded reparations be made to the African Americans whose lives were tarnished at the hands of these cruelties. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer and journalist considered well versed in the issue (MacArthur Association), wrote a popular piece in the Atlantic arguing for reparations.
Wrote of the atrocities faced by African Americans in the housing market during Roosevelt’s New Deal and how reparations should be made. Reparations are a highly complex issue that has been debated frequently in the United States. While some advocates have pushed towards reparations for the individuals or families, a variety of issues are brought up,this brings up a variety of issues, from the people that qualify for reparations, who qualifies for them to how much each person would should receive. Instead, the money should be invested in under-developed cities with large African American populations.
It is the obligation of the United States to make amends for institutional racism of the past and community funding is the best way to do it. Why Should We Have to Make Amends? A large part of the ongoing debate is whether reparations should be made at all. After all, no one alive today was a slave or owned slaves. While this is true, slavery was only part of the issue. There was also the long lasting Jim Crow laws, the psychological effects they had on African Americans, institutional racism in housing, and the oppression of civil rights.
This moves the date of those affected from the mid 1800’s to the first half of the 1900’s and even modern day. Kevin Williamson of the National Review wrote in response to Coates, saying of how, “[t]he people to whom reparations were owed are long dead,” (Williamson 5-6). Slavery to Jim Crow The enslavement of African Americans from the 15th to 19th centuries are thought of as some of the darkest times in American history. Slaves, to put it broadly, were treated inhumanly and had no human rights.
Coates wrote in the Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations”, that during the 15th and 16 centuries, Africans were, “plundered of their bodies, plundered of their families, and plundered of their labor,” (Coates 13). While these examples can illustrate how Africans were treated, the history of Slavery is far from unknown in the United States. From textbooks to film, slavery’s effects have been plastered into the modern United States. The major conflict in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered office during the Great Depression in 1933.
