Position Paper #1
After reading this week’s articles, I have found that Ta-Nehisi Coates brings to light many facts about how being black in this country has been very hard since we go here in the 1600s. Not only does he talk about the hardships and basically terrorism of black slaves in the south, but he also talks about how blacks in the north also had to face terrible racism in ways that didn’t necessarily have to do with the then traditional field picking. Black Americans in the north were punished by whites in ways that not only affected the one generation but also the generations to come as they were put in debt and taken granted for everything they owned more than one time. The position that Coates makes for reparations is very well written and serves justice for all the bad that has been happening to blacks since we came to this country. One thing that I found interesting was when he was talking about the federal Housing Authority in Chicago in the mid 1930’s. The FHA created a map that was color coded with red and green. In the green areas of the map they were marked with an “A” meaning in demand, in other words a place where very little or no blacks lived at all. The other areas of the map were blacks were present were giving the letter ”D” and were colored red, which meant The FHA were not giving any help too whatsoever. The article said that black people were considered contagious. It is very disturbing to know that our federal government would do such oblivious things like this, but it’s true it happened and the next generation has been affected by this. Black people who wanted to buy a house in Chicago were being hustled by white homeowners who were portraying to be lenders of the property. They would come up with these ridiculous, and in my eyes, unlawful contracts that would corner blacks into not being able to pay the required amount each month