“Why should I be punished?”
The thought made sense at the time. Whenever the topic of reparations for the black race was brought up, it never seemed to click. I had never owned slaves, never whipped, manipulated, or sexually exploited another human for my self-interest. More importantly, being Asian-American, neither had any of my ancestors or anyone I knew, for that matter. It seemed to me that I was completely detached from the problem: it wasn’t my fault.
But as soon as I offered that question in the heated discussion that was unfolding amongst my speech and debate friends, my lack of political perspective was soon exposed.
“Read The Case for Reparations” was all that was shot back, leaving me in a confused yet speculative silence.
Just this past Monday night, I spent around two-and-a-half hours reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ work. Put simply, it has completely altered my outlook on the concept of reparations while also leaving me with some questions specific to my ethnic background.
Here’s how The Case for Reparations managed to repair my world perspective.
Although I had learned about the horrors of slave treatment in antebellum America in history class, I’ll be the first to admit that my broad understanding of America’s history of oppression was incomplete, at best. Of course I’d learned in my APUSH class about Sally Hemings, who was raped and abused by founding father Thomas Jefferson and bore six of his children. Sure, I had read about how slaves were beaten by their masters while forced to keep a smile on their face, and I was violently struck with emotion while watching 12 Years As A Slave in class. But I’d never truly felt the racism present during 1920s Jim Crow America, where one Mississippi senator had stated that the best way to prevent African Americans from voting was to “just [lynch them] the night before the election.”
While reading, I learned about how this racism continued into the recent past and persists in our present society. In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) based their private mortgage policies on hand drawn regional lines, segregating black communities into areas deemed “less stable” and “unfitting” for these opportunities. I read in shock about the 20th century use of “block-busting,” or hiring black actors to walk around white-dominated neighborhoods, where they’d “then cajole whites into selling [their homes] at low prices” on the premise that black families in their neighborhood would decrease the value of their homes.
Compounded with the recent shootings of people like Trayvon Martin and Atatiana Jefferson, I came to understand the piece that I was missing when I had asked my initial question: that the privilege we enjoy in America today came at the cost of oppressed groups of people in our recent past. While I may not have incited racism or been openly racist in my lifetime, the luxuries I enjoy today—my home, my belongings, my dog Patch—were largely paid for by the people of yesterday, and we are all subsequently indebted to them. Would America’s booming economy today have been realized if it had not been for the massive amounts of slave labor used to farm King Cotton? Clearly not. Reparations are not a punishment, but rather a necessary repayment to those who have suffered.
With this newfound mindset, I turned towards a topic Coates comments on and that is (frighteningly) related to many of our current coffee-driven, essay-writing lifestyles: affirmative action.
Now, this topic has been extremely controversial for decades, with recent college admission scandals only further exacerbating the severity of this inevitably imperfect system. However, a common rationale behind this institution of implicit advantage is one of reparations—that providing oppressed minority groups an edge for future further education is precisely the repayments needed and explained by Coates in his article. With this, I can wholeheartedly agree.
A short video detailing the rationale behind affirmative action in the college admissions process. (Source: American Civil Liberties Union)
My new question continues from Coates’ line of thought: then why are Asian American college applicants held to a higher standard of admission than white Americans?
By taking Coates’ side on his case for reparations, I can’t help but notice the disparity when applied to the relative positions of races other than the black-white dynamic explored in The Case for Reparations. Japanese Americans were forced to relocate into internment camps during World War II as a response to the Pearl Harbor attacks. All Chinese people were prohibited from immigrating to America and deemed ineligible for naturalization in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. While these actions are incomparable to the treatment of blacks in American history, and while I could not feel luckier to be born into a loving Chinese family enjoying the affluence of suburbian Naperville, the rationale behind this seemingly hypocritical philosophy intrigues me.
When it comes to affirmative action, it’s hardly arguable that Asian Americans statistically receive the least compensation. From the recent Harvard admissions case revealing that Harvard scores Asian Americans lower on their “personality” rankings, released admissions data revealed that Asian Americans were being accepted at rates noticeably less than their white counterparts. Yet, those same statistics showed that “Asian American applicants had academic credentials and extracurricular track records that were, on average, stronger than those of other racial and ethnic groups, including whites.”
Extrapolating my perspective on reparations for the black community to my own ethnicity, I can’t help but notice a small disparity that is not collinear with historical events and current evaluations. However, this question I pose is largely made in a theoretical and ill-informed nature. Regardless of its answer, The Case for Reparations managed to open my eyes to my surroundings, not only literally during that tiring Monday midnight but figuratively, as well. It has resonated with me as I now understand how reparations for blacks are necessary in the present to equally move into the future, as the powerhouse machine that America has come to be was paid for at a high price by those once pressed between her gears.
Coates couldn’t have put it better: “if Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body.”
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I did not intend to offend or insult anybody through this essay, but rather explore how my own naivety was transformed through this stunning piece that, once shared with me, I thought worth sharing with you. I strongly recommend you read the piece itself as well as pose further questions or responses in the comments to further explore this topic.
Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 24 Sept. 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
Gelman, Andrew, et al. “What Statistics Can’t Tell Us in the Fight over Affirmative Action at Harvard.” Boston Review, 15 Jan. 2019, bostonreview.net/law-justice/andrew-gelman-sharad-goel-daniel-e-ho-what-statistics-cant-tell-us-fight-over.
The African American Policy Forum. “Chinese Exclusion Act.” AAPF, aapf.org/chinese-exclusion-act.