Coates The Case Against Reparations Summary

Kevin D. Williamson “The Case against Reparations” is more of an attack rather than a response to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations,” a piece that discusses the possibility of investigating possible American reparations to African Americans for the white supremacy imposed on the race in the topic of redlining. Williamson’s last sentence of his piece reads “The people to whom reparations were owed are long dead; our duty is to the living, and to generations yet to come, and their interests are best served by liberty and prosperity, not by moral theater.” Williamson believes that our focus is on the future, not the past, whereas Coates believes in the existence of reparations for the past that have created the problems that still affect …show more content…
He acknowledges the use of Clyde Ross from Coates, but retorts with the claim that blacks have been plagued by similar issues for many years now and points to either a lack of education or disuse of financial instruments. “Upwardly mobile blacks were fleeced by similar schemes for many years, and blacks remain to a disproportionate extent outside the traditional financial institutions…”(paragraph 3) Coates makes the argument that the ‘reparations’ are due for the white supremacy existing in the housing market during the 1960’s, not the present. Williamson tries to keep the focus on the present and doesn’t use facts from the time period in which redlining was rampant in american households. Therefore, his argument is invalidated because the problems of today are the result of the past, especially in the case of African …show more content…
But they’ve won by being twice as good-and enduring twice as much.”(Coates pg. 8) While Williamson does bring attention to the fact that Coates excluded the population of people to whom the Obamas are being compared to, it is certainly implied from “the Case for Reparations” that Coates makes the relation between the Obamas and other African Americans families who lived through the pain and suffering of redlining. Of course other circumstances such as ‘a white immigrant escaping the Third Reich’ or ‘a white woman born into horrific poverty in Appalachia’, are horrible instances, although they don’t pertain the the subject of the paper because they were not affected by white supremacy or cheated of our their houses. The argument for Williamson gets weak as the paragraph progresses. “Mr. Coates himself comes from a fairly modest background, but he, a man without an undergraduate degree, is a visiting scholar at MIT”(Williamson paragraph 9). He strays from the course just slightly, as he rips on Coates for not having the proper education for writing the paper and attacks him for being a part of a program that excludes whites. Williamson doesn’t understand that Coates never asked for reparations nor did he explain how his history has to do his argument. Coming from a modest background does not translate to say ‘you cannot write this paper about