...Garland Beasley Critical Analysis Essay https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/05/22/culture-change-and-ta-nehisi-coatess-the-case-for-reparations/ http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/22/314881767/how-to-tell-if-someones-actually-read-ta-nehisi-coates-essay http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117834/ta-nehisi-coates-atlantic-magazine-slavery-reparations-essay Tai-Nehisi Coates’ shows the history of disadvantages accrued by African Americans over the last several generations and argues that it's time for Americans to answer for this history. When I first read the title “A Case For Reparations” thought that the article was going to be talking about slavery, but Coates dose not really talk about slavery specifically but he does talk about a formerly enslaved woman named Bellinda Royal who sued her former owner for recompense for her labors. But much of the focus of the article falls on American housing policy from nearly a century later, to get his point across he uses the story of Clyde Ross, whose journey from Mississippi to Chicago is a living example of the trajectory Coates is describing. Ross who was the son of a Mississippi sharecropper saw the little wealth and land his father could attain forcibly stripped from him by local white authorities. Then, when Ross moved to Chicago after World War II, he was essentially shut out from buying a home by federal law through the legitimate means available to whites. He spent years paying for...
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...A Consideration for Reparations Harriet Bailey had just given birth to her son, the product of a rape committed by her white master, when she was separated from him at birth. Harriet had to travel 12 miles at night to see her infant son and spend a a few hours with him, only to journey back early the following morning to her reality as a slave. This woman, the mother of Frederick Douglass, represented many of the victims of a common slave practice: Separation, arranged by slave owners in order to “hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child” (Douglass 2). Douglass presents such inhumane treatments done to him, his family, and others in his autobiography,...
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...Between the World and Me has solidified the empathy needed for White Americans to “ultimately stop themselves.” What the book doesn’t do, however, is give us the tools to do this, the tools needed to spread the message to unbelievers and recreate the empathy that Coates displays so well. Of course, this was not the purpose of the book; it’s the purpose of Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations,” where he uses historical research and evidence to make the argument for American slave restitution. In the piece, Coates provides the necessary tools for White Americans to believe and push the progressive notions warranted in order to make a difference in the African American community, and it accomplishes this with little visceral empathy—just research, history, and logic—differing from Between the World and Me. And so, wherever “The Case for Reparations” falls, Between the World and Me rises in its place, and vice versa, making them perfect companions for each other, a companionship key for white readers,...
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