STREAM EXCLUSIVE ORIGINALS

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Black Progress Rests 'On a Shaky Foundation'

Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses Black progress and believes that distributing reparations is not what scares America — it's the idea that it threatens America's heritage, history and standing in the world.

Throughout history, Blacks have tried to obtain reparations from the government for enduring the 250 years of chattle slavery that built the early-American economy. During these conversations, the biggest questions have always been how much would be paid and who would get paid?

But Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in "The Case for Reparations" for The Atlantic that distributing reparations is not what scares America it's the idea that reparations "threatens America's heritage, history and standing in the world."
Coates's 10-chapter feature provides an overview of the history of individuals who pursued the case of obtaining reparations and says that slavery isn't the only injustice for which African-Americans should be compensated he highlights the 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of separate but equal and 35 years of racist housing policy that Blacks also faced.
He also adds that although life for Blacks in America is better today than in the past, the progress made "rests on a shaky" foundation. 

Coates writes
And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations — by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences — is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is — the work of fallible humans.

Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say — that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.
Read the full feature here.  
BET National News - Keep up to date with breaking news stories from around the nation, including headlines from the hip hop and entertainment world. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. 

Get ready for the BET Experience, featuring Mary J. Blige, Maxwell, Jill Scott, A$AP Rocky, Rick Ross and many more. Click here for more details and info on how to purchase tickets.

(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Latest News

Subscribe for BET Updates

Provide your email address to receive our newsletter.


By clicking Subscribe, you confirm that you have read and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You also agree to receive marketing communications, updates, special offers (including partner offers) and other information from BET and the Paramount family of companies. You understand that you can unsubscribe at any time.