Let’s be frank: I’m not going to write anything better than this that merits your interest today. It would be a disservice to content and probably also reading were I to write anything in this particular time slot other than “Let’s all read this together,” unless you already read the print version last week.
Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that black lives, black bodies, and black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society. Now we have half-stepped away from our long centuries of despoilment, promising, “Never again.” But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.
Broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay? But if the practicalities, not the justice, of reparations are the true sticking point, there has for some time been the beginnings of a solution. For the past 25 years, Congressman John Conyers Jr., who represents the Detroit area, has marked every session of Congress by introducing a bill calling for a congressional study of slavery and its lingering effects as well as recommendations for “appropriate remedies.”
A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers’s bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. We would support this bill, submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested.
This paragraph in particular:
One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
I don’t have any useful commentary to add; this exists solely as a reminder for you to read the piece if you haven’t already, or to reread it if you have the time.
[Image via]
Tags: racism, reparations, segregation, ta-nehisi coates, the atlantic, white supremacy
As I said on Twitter last night, let’s burn America to the ground and start over.
I really wish I had more to say. As a non-American who has spent a few years living and working in the south, this article has explained so so much. Where has this article been all my life? I want more.
‘Warmth of Other Suns,’ which TNC mentions, probably counts as more along these lines, especially if you liked his interview parts.
Thank you!
Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon is another must read–about the chain gang/forced labor/peonage system that existed in the south after the civil war until about WWII.
If you’re interested in the question of reparations, James Hirsch’s Riot & Remembrance on the Tulsa race riot is well worth reading. He looks at the events and how interpretation has changed over time, and the long-term impact and memory of those events, and it’s just a great book for thinking about questions of race and memory.
Admit it: when word got out that he was writing this, you timed Alternatives to Apologizing article to come out just ahead of it, didn’t you?
” Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.”
Welp. I don’t know about you guys, but we could take a look at our criminal “justice” system and do a wholesale revamp of incarceration practices.. it’s not my area of expertise so I’m just going to put that forward and step away.
re. this: “One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. ” Ahhh! All of us who are not black have benefited from anti-blackness policies! I just want to shout that into the face of every socially conservative individual, particularly those who have post-1965 immigrant and refugee roots. I’ve just been thinking about “anti-blackness” a lot recently ever since seeing it pop up on Twitter.
ETA: I am kind of blurry from waking up awkwardly this morning, I had to fix a lot of grammar/punctuation things.
> Ahhh, all of us who are not black have benefited from anti-blackness policies–I just want to shout that into the face of every socially conservative individual, particularly those who have post-1965 immigrant and refugee roots.
Sadly, the ongoing (active and passive) ignorance of black history and racism is one of the few bipartisan things we have left. I’ve been fortunate enough to find this out while losing many a toxic “friend” on Facebook when they wanted to play devil’s bloviate.
Let me take this depressing thought one step further and say that it’s a good milestone of assimilating US culture!
::sighs::
God if you could penetrate the conservative first principle that the universe began at their birth and ends at the limits of their direct vision conservatism generally would just fold up and collapse.
So when do we release the mind virus?
Probably my greatest regret in this respect is that I’ll never know the level of complicity my own (mostly later-immigrating, all northern-state-residing) ancestors had in this system of inequality, which makes it that much harder to work out mine.
Hmm. Did they flee to the suburbs after WWII? (My own family left Baltimore for the suburbs as soon as they could in the 90s, so you know, I’m not castigating them for being evil people or anything.)
Seriously though, the creepy thing about all of this is that I can never shake the feeling that by simply paying taxes, you pretty much have been complicit in this, much less more overt action like protesting desegregation or terrorizing the first black family to move into a neighborhood. Compound that by generations of residency..
My dad’s family was already in the suburbs (although it was more rural than suburban back then) and my mom’s family lived in a small town. Part of the issue is that we live in Minnesota, which is pretty white now and was overwhelmingly white then; my mom tells me she hardly knew anyone growing up who wasn’t white. So it’s easy to think that the question of racism didn’t even touch them, that it just wasn’t relevant to their situation. But just because not many non-white people lived there doesn’t mean they didn’t try to live there, or live there briefly. And while I have trouble imagining my grandparents actively working to keep their neighborhoods white (although I don’t know, I wasn’t there), they certainly could have passively or unknowingly. And that’s not the sort of thing I think I’d have much luck investigating.
Re: second paragraph, ugh, I know. BRB, going to live off the grid.
Touche. I mean, when I read your reply I was initially thinking of the Northeast, but then again I’m an East Coaster with those biases, so my apologies!
On the second point: I feel you. I’m the person who overthinks everything and contemplates whether or not some internet activism and minor political wins can really stem the tide of larger structural inequities that I am complicit in because I am a law-abiding citizen and the thought-spiral leads me to end up doing nothing so.. yay. I’ve been in this headspace a bit because of #BringBackOurGirls. On the flipside, the Civil Rights Movement did happen so…?
I’ve just been thinking out loud about a lot of this. I do really like the idea of calling local legislators to voice support for HR 40 though–that would be a good call to action to go along with these conversations.
Oh, ha, I didn’t even realize you were assuming things, so no apology necessary, I guess!
And yesssss. Overthinking: enemy of progress.
As a fellow Minnesotan, don’t worry — we can all contemplate our complicity in the colonization of Minnesota. I highly recommend checking out the works of Dr. Waziyatawin to learn more.
The history of the destruction of Rondo neighborhood in St Paul, which this article contextualizes in the Central Corridor development, the isolation and environmental injustice over North in Minneapolis, and the toxic conservative politics in the suburbs of the Twin Cities all give us enough to work through.
Excellent, thank you. I will read all those things.
The link is broken; could you repost, please?
That’s what I get for tryna be fancy with my html. Here it is: http://www.mprnews.org/story/2010/04/20/centcorridor3-ro...
Thank you very much for this article. As someone who went to and grew up within a few blocks of Central High School, this is right in my childhood backyard. Now that I’ve moved out of MN, and think about how the residents of Philadelphia (my current home) successfully kept I95 from cutting through neighborhoods, thinking about the construction of I94 and the destruction of Rondo is that much more devastating.
As for the Central Corridor, I understand the fear, but I feel like (hopefully) having the light rail on University Avenue would get some people who travel between both downtowns out of their cars on I94 and into the neighborhoods via light rail. Because, let’s face it, no one takes the 16 bus who doesn’t need to do so.
I wonder if the creation of the light rail will lead to decreasing/ending service on the 94 bus route? That would get more people off of I94 as well.
This reminds me of my grandmother who immigrated to the U.S. after WWII telling me that she didn’t “get” the segregation and discrimination against blacks she saw when she arrived. Oma, I love you and I know you were young, but you came from Nazi Germany. I somehow doubt the idea was alien.
Oh, and on your point about criminal justice, have people seen the AP piece out today about the death of a mentally ill inmate at Rikers who was left in his cell and died of sepsis? This is some Nellie Bly-level shit and speaks very strongly to issues of race, prison and mental illness.
Thanks for that article! I just linked to it on my work twitter account ::looks around shiftily:: and I’ve bookmarked it for later reading.
One of the things that has been rolling around my head a lot after attending a conference on the impacts of incarceration in Baltimore (hosted by Hopkins, which, if you know Bmore politics: lololol) is the fact that for many young Black and Latino kids, their first prominent encounter with the State are cops trying to question or arrest them. (It occurs to me as I write this that the other prominent encounter is a failing public school system.) With that in mind, is it any surprise that they may not be so crazy about engaging with the larger political process?
I have, now and again, contemplated the systematic defunding of branch libraries in poor neighborhoods as an act of racial and class disenfranchisement.
My first brush with the State was story time at the local library when I was three. Other early experiences of the State included going to National parks and museums. I got my first library card when I was five or six. By the time I reached my high school civics class, I has had multiple positive experiences with civic life. I fondly believed that I had a stake in a civil society.
Why? Because as an upper middleclass white girl, nothing had suggested that this would not be the truth (as long as I paid my library fines, some of which were epic). I never had to worry about the big shiny library near me getting closed.
When I got older, I discovered that the experience of living in other neighborhoods in my city was very different.
It frustrates me SO much. Like, my family came here in the late 80s from fucking Viet Nam, and I’m for reparations — your argument that you shouldn’t be punished because you personally didn’t do it is not gonna cut it. Where is your sense of country? Do you feel no obligation to your fellow citizens? This isn’t just about blame; it’s about our duty as Americans.
YES. Yes. I feel you–I’m Vietnamese too. My family came over in the early 1980s. I also get similarly aggravated when discussions around immigration policy come up, as if we didn’t get any sort of favoritism when it came to naturalization. (And the system still fucked some of us over! Imagine if we didn’t have that..)
Hell yes; thank you! This right here is why I love this site. The piece takes about an hour to read and I cannot think of a better way to spend an hour. I spent all of yesterday just posting this everywhere I could on Facebook.
This should be a god damn high school and college class that everyone in America has to take. We cannot even begin to understand how to solve the deep inequalities present everywhere in America (and elsewhere) without truly facing the utterly horrifying past and present that got us here.
Theoretically this should be “US History class” but.. yeah. I started understanding this stuff in college, but I did major in American Studies so it all ties together.
It sorta feels like redlining and the post-world-war race riots are the exact reason public-school US history classes sort of peter out around “we killed Hitler hooray!”
Much easier this way to claim that those blacks just won’t stop griping about ancient history, I mean racism ended forever in 1865 get over it!!!
I think you are onto something here. Recent history is just too “controversial,” so best re-teach the Revolutionary War every year until high school and then cram everything after WWII into two days of, “Vietnam and then there were hippies, the end.”
There’s serious problems with even including Jefferson in textbooks at this point because he sounds too liberal or something (the whole ‘founding fathers made a business out of selling their children into slavery’ thing is so far beyond the discourse as to not be an issue), anything that suggests present-day America is anything less than a posthistorical utopia marred only slightly by taxes is too controversial by miles.
Don’t forget that MLK led some marches and then white people realized that maybe it’s not so nice to make black people drink from separate water fountains so now everyone’s a full citizen! HOORAY
[btw, I think I heart you even though your username is mildly horrifying!]
In an effort to avoid controversy, we end up with a very triumphalist account of how all those Bad Things were solved or defeated long ago. Nothing’s lingering because that would raise difficult questions. I mean, we get GOP operatives today celebrating how racism ended thanks to Rosa Parks: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/12/01/30070…
Or why a MTV poll says that the majority of those ages 14-24 surveyed believe:
that we’re living in a post-racial society
that discrimination against whites is just as big of a problem as against other races
that affirmative action is never fair, despite historical inequalities
that having a black president means race is not a barrier in accomplishments http://cdn.lookdifferent.org/content/studies/000/…
I realize you are just restating the conclusions reached by this summary, but the conclusions themselves do not seem to accurately represent the actual survey responses, based on this source. For example, the survey apparently did not even ask respondents whether “we’re living in a post-racial society”, it asked “whether [this] generation believes in equality more than older people” and if “as more people of [this] generation move into leadership roles, racism will become less and less of an issue”… and a couple more like that. I think the summary statements are aimed more to inflame than summarize.
Sorry – I’m a bit of an analysis/methods nerd!
No, thanks for clarifying that. The post-racial thing was definitely something that was thrown around in the summary and articles about the survey, so that was on me for repeating it and not doing my own homework.
If I were still in the business of teaching at university, this would go straight on the syllabus. In fact, I would probably suspend the syllabus, assign it, and discuss it in class. It’s good.
There are a hand full of books that cover this ground, but not as succintly or relentlessly as Coates does here. It’s an impressive feat to have put this material together into such a compact, readable space. Amazingly so.
I like that the whole internet is talking about the same thing this morning and for once it’s one of my favorite writers doing a big tour de force rather than, say, rich people arguing about who is a bad feminist, which is what those moments are usually about.
Honestly any day where it’s not a dancing cat or a 90s videogame reference is a red-letter day.
Great article, thanks for bringing it to my attention. One of my favorite parts was:
“From the White House on down, the myth holds that fatherhood is the great antidote to all that ails black people. But Billy Brooks Jr. had a father. Trayvon Martin had a father. Jordan Davis had a father. Adhering to middle-class norms has never shielded black people from plunder.”
Since American courts seem uninterested in these arguments, I wonder if there is a way to go after some of America’s multinational institutions (e.g. banks) under international law? International cases seem to have more success — for instance, as Coates notes, with Isreal, and also more recently Kenya. (The German state and various other institutions also paid out claims to other European nationals harmed by the Nazis; Holocaust survivors in Maryland are currently working to extract an apology and symbolic reparations from French national railway SNCF, which transported them to the camps and has already paid out to victims in Europe). Caribbean countries are now pursuing a reparations strategy against several European countries on the same basis.
I would also note that there is some precedent for slavery reparations: when slavery was ended in Britain and France, Caribbean planters were paid compensation for their lost “property.” Likewise, Haitians were forced to pay France for their own freedom, a debt which was not paid off until 1947. It seems strange that reparations for slaves are out of the question when slave owners have already received them.
Note how in all these cases of successful divestment or international pressure it’s the guys who have all of the money and power putting pressure on or expropriating wealth from people who don’t. We might be a bit less naked about it rhetorically in this day and age; but our society, both nationally and globally, is still very much founded on might makes right (and comes up for elaborate just-so stories of how genetics/open competition/the inherent worthlessness of other people also makes it right later)
The US basically does not recognize international law. I don’t think we’re signatories to a single treaty that would allow American companies to be broadly targeted in such a way. So probably not, although individual countries may be able to threaten the specific operations of individual companies on their soil.
I was thinking (among other things) of going after U.S. multinational corporations in other jurisdictions.
Yeah, I think I see, but I also think that any coordinated international action against a US company would result in major diplomatic kerfuffles.
[Oops hit save too soon] Like right now Europe and the US are actively working on a treaty to expand intercontinental trade, and the possibility of companies being ideologically targeted would hinder that significantly.
Not saying it’s RIGHT. Just saying it’s politically unlikely.
Well, your examples of compensation to the slaveholders were paid at the time and as an intrinsic piece of slavery’s abolition in those countries. Ours went differently.
We had the opportunity to offer reparations to former slaves immediately after the war to defeat the South’s insurrection but, as TNC alludes, actively forsook it. It’s one of the tragedies where a clear, better path was available to a nation and something much worse was chosen. Andrew Johnson fiercely opposed any compensation during his administration, which is part of the reason he goes down as one of the worst Presidents in US history, including unsuccessfully vetoing authorizations of the Freedmen’s Bureau. A subsequent Congress let the Bureau go defunct regardless.
I believe recently a coalition of Caribbean nations attempted to sue Europe for reparations, but I have no idea how it’s going/went. It is an important statement and action to take, even if it goes nowhere.
International politics, as someone else said, is very much “might is right”, so shit ain’t happening.
One of the easiest, and economically significant moves that could be undertaken is the voiding of loans from the IMF and other 1st world nations to former slave colonies. A lot of the reason 3rd world nations can’t get ahead economically is because they are in horrendous debt to the IMF, who dictates as part of their loans where their resources should go, and even what kind of industries they should invest in. (Literally – “we will not give you this loan unless you put X amount of money into tourism services like resorts and keep your national borders open to trade w/ almost no tariff, etc.”)
I think they just resolved to sue a few months ago, so it’s still in the early stages. I can’t find anything later than this March article about it http://bigstory.ap.org/article/caribbean-adopts-p…
I agree on the IMF loans. I also think France should repay Haiti for how the island was forced to compensate France/former slave-owners after Haiti became free–which started Haiti’s descent into catastrophic debt, leading to their current poverty (where they had been the richest Caribbean island starting out).
My print copy of this is sitting at home. Tonight’s reading, then.
I feel like there are two waves of reactions with this piece from progressives.
First Wave: automatic RTing and sharing and favouriting and “he’s a genius so you should read this.”
Second Wave: we are actually reading it and losing our fucking minds over how good it is
(I am now in the Second Wave.)
(Third Wave) (looking around at all our nice shit)
“He doesn’t mean, like, me, though, right? Like…someone else will give the reparations so I get to keep all my nice shit?”
I am sure I, alone, have benefited in no way from systemic white supremacy! Why, my Irish ancestors were not considered white for about FOUR GODDAMN SECONDS, so.
NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE
We were indentured servants from Scotland! It was just as bad!
But my family has lived in the south for hundreds of years and never owned slaves, grandpa was a sharecropper himself and his family was super poor, so obviously my ancestors had absolutely nothing to do with it all.
(actual argument used by my southern relatives.)
(and yes, branches of the family did in fact own slaves. they just never had the big plantations. which apparently means their slave-owning didn’t count.)
I only just now read it. It is astonishing. I can’t believe just how good it is. The amount of reserach, detail — there’s so much here in such a succinct, clearly written space.
I think I’m going to read it again later, even.
Slowly slowly reading this b/c I should also be like doing work today, but it’s so long and so good and I’m rooting for everybody.
Aaaah it’s so long! I have to wait until later to finish it, I’ve already taken too much time reading a good third of it. What I’ve read so far has been INCREDIBLE, so I know I’ll look forward to finishing it this evening.
Have been reading him online for awhile. This article compelled me to buy a paid subscription to the Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds me of James Baldwin in all of the important ways. We’re immensely lucky to have him around and thank God the Atlantic is still enough of an organ of the “free press,” whatever that means today, to publish his work so that a large audience can read it.
What I love is how they try to balance it out by providing guys like David Frum with a soapbox; can’t have too positive a balance in the karmic bank account or the other journalists won’t talk to you anymore.
Seriously though he’s amazing and having this whole archive where you can just watch him develop into this towering voice is amazing.
It’s been awesome (in the classic way…I think…if I’m even using “classic” right. “Classical?”) to watch his thought processes over the years. For me, this article seems the most directly logical, and thus likely, outcome from the paths his public mind has trod. It’s full of harsh truths that I wish we, as a country could actually face. Yeah…I said “could”. I wish I had more hope. Recent conversations with white ex-friends have only served to cement my cynicism (realism?).
I just read James Baldwin’s fiction for the first time recently. He’s astounding. I read Giovanni’s Room in a single sitting. He makes Hemingway look like a hack (and generally, I like Hemingway.)
I have a massive ignorance of mid-century American authors, and Baldwin is one of the cases where I want to change that (sorry, Updike). Do I start with Go Tell It on the Mountain?
Go Tell It on the Mountain is his most famous work, really, but I confess, I have not yet read it. I had previously only read his essays, Native Son, among them. I read Giovanni’s Room — It’s incredibly intense, perfectly written. Looking forward to reading more, for sure.
I haven’t read much of Baldwin, but I absolutely recommend The Fire Next Time. It’s two essays, one written to his nephew on being a black man on the 100th anniversary of the Emanicipation, the second essay looks at race and religion.
Noted, thanks 🙂
This!
There is one important difference between Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Baldwin and since this is The Toast, I would be remiss in not mentioning it. Just wanted to say how much I admire Mr. Coates, because I think Baldwin wa a god on earth, and intended no disrespect to anyone. That is all. 🙂
So, a takeaway from that article for me was to call my representative and ask him to vote for Conyers’s HR 40 (or whatever it will be in the next session) when it’s introduced next year, as it hopefully will be. However, I’m always so nervous to call “my” representative/senator and ask them to vote for anything…I don’t know how to do it. Do any politically-active people have suggestions on what to say? And if it doesn’t make it to the House floor, is there even a point in calling? I may be overthinking it, but any advice is welcome.
All you have to say is that you’re a constituent from [wherever] and you’d like to express your support for a yes vote on [bill]. You can give reasons or you can not, but they’ll note your support either way! From your quotes I’m assuming you know you’ll talk to a staff member or a voicemail system – there are people who are paid to answer these calls! As long as you’re polite, they’ll appreciate your call 🙂
Would emails be just as effective? I think they are, but I suspect a Toastie who has worked directly in a legislator’s office or works on the nonprofit side organizing outreach to legislators would probably know…
Just want to put that forward as a potential alternative to phone calls!
Emails are helpful, especially ones that aren’t form letters, but phone calls are taken slightly more seriously. Unfairly or not, in a way they give extra credit to those who work up the nerve to call. Emails are better than nothing though, so if you can’t or don’t want to call, definitely send a note that way!
That’s really good to know. Thank you for that! I’ve always wondered about that..
Emails and phone calls were treated as equal when I worked for a Member of Congress. Basically an intern takes your call and writes the message and puts it with the letters. Don’t bother with a mailed letter though, they get security screening and it takes like an extra 3 weeks.
Seconding not relying on a form letter.
I send emails frequently and it never works, but that’s what I get for being born in a red state!
Good idea. It’s an amazing article but what would be even more amazing is if it (and the national conversation it sparks) actually manages to get HR 40 passed.
Or even if it doesn’t pass, that it gets to the floor, or receives a lot of media attention and brings the issue to a wider audience.
It is your representative/senator’s JOB to hear what you have to say. They should be nervous, not you. I like to write an email which gives me time to gather my thoughts, and then follow up with a phone call using the email as a script. Again, it is their JOB to listen to you. My calls generally go something like, “Hi this is whomever, I’m a resident of either my district or state or whatever and am calling to register my support (or dismay as the case may be) for whatever. If I have well thought out reasons I’ll do a spiel.
I of course agree with you in theory, but in practice, as an anxious person, calling anyone I don’t know makes me nervous! Calling someone and requesting something even more so. The more information I’m armed with (thank you so much, above commentors!), the easier (relatively) it is.
Call! Don’t be nervous! Just be nice and not insane on the phone and you’ll make their day. The only real change this could have is if lots of people call or email and create a groundswell of attention and support.
I used to answer these calls and if it’s a bill that the official isn’t already really invested in one way or another, it can have some sway. With a little research before hand you can find out if it’s worth a call– is your representative on a committee that will see the bill, for example? Keep it simple, lead with the fact that you live in their district, and if you have any particular expertise on the bill (i.e., it especially affects your neighborhood, or relates to your field of work) consider writing a letter instead so you can give a brief explanation.
One other thing– find out the bill number before you call. I answered so many goddamn calls that were like “I’m against that tax bill. You know, the one about taxes!”
I mean, I’m a fan of participating in democracy regardless of outcome size, so I’d say it’s “worth it” either way. But otherwise, hallo to my fellow ex-Hill-sitters. (Okay, I was just an intern, it’s all a sham. But interns do facilitate a lot of the constituent communication stuff!)
I actually worked in a state capitol, so maybe I shouldn’t be offering advice? I don’t know how different constituent management is at the state vs. federal level. (actually, I will barrel ahead with the advice. Tip #3: PAY ATTENTION TO STATE POLITICS, IT MATTERS JUST AS MUCH)
YES TO TIP #3. One of my parents was in state politics, seriously, so much stuff that matters happens at that level.
I imagine the principles are about the same, although it’s possible that the relative sizes of constituencies will affect exactly how much time staff spends per call/letter. In my time on the Hill, a phone call coming through the main line was answered by either an administrative staffer or an intern, if the staffer was on lunch/call volume was unusually high (ie, MoveOn had told everyone to call about a bill that day). As interns, our phone-sitting jobs were (1) be polite, and (2) capture a few data points about who was calling and on what issue. Those data points would later be turned into summaries of call volumes for the relevant policy staffer(s).
So, I’ll also double up on knowing the bill number you want to talk about. That way, if others are calling about it, your calls get grouped together accurately.
Yeah, I was a full time Hill staffer and I concur, except I recommend writing emails over letters because they get screened for god-knows-what and it takes weeks or more. You should say you want the bill passed out of committee and make sure the intern answering the phone gets your contact info and knows you are a constituent.
As polka_stripes says, you’re going to get a low-level staffer on the phone (if you call during office hours), and she is going to take down where you’re from (often, this might be as simple as asking for your zip code) and the issue you’re calling about, and promise to pass that along. Do be sure to call the Hill office, not the field office, and I guarantee that the human being at the other end will have fielded dozens of calls about various policy issues in the past week alone. (There’s a possibility that “low-level staffer” will mean “intern”, but there are paid staff doing this work, too.) Also, you will not be in any way the weirdest call they receive that day.
I hope that makes the calling thing seem less intimidating.
P.S. in case anyone wants to check and see if their local Congressional reps have cosponsored the bill in the past, click here.
Great link–thanks, RK Fire!
I almost clicked, then I remembered I live in the state which elected Rick Perry and Ted Cruz, and thought, Nah.
No point lol
:cries, somewhere in TX:
In case you do want to know, Eddie Bernice Johnson, who represents a Dallas district, and Sheila Jackson-Lee, who represents a Houston district, have both cosponsored the bill multiple times. They’re about it for Texas, though.
Thank you! I will at least send them a wee email in support.
Do it! Calling feels so good. I don’t know why. I just feel so refreshed afterwards. Or I did, when I had voting representation in Congress. I called Eleanor Holmes Norton’s office once to tell them I hoped Eleanor would tell other congresspeople to vote for something. I literally heard the eyeroll.
LITERALLY.
I’m all of a third of the way through myself, and already losing my mind from the goodness.
But this first section (the history lesson) is super-combining with my thoughts after reading the Slate article earlier this week talking about the poll that shows white millenials don’t “get” racism. (I hate most sweeping generation-generalization pieces, but that one really, really clicked with what I was taught/thought up until a few years ago, and what so many of my peers have said to me in the past.) Which basically boils down to seeing racism as a thing that exists or doesn’t exist in the present-tense, without an understanding that yesterday’s actions won’t just go away on their own.
Which means I’m about to stitch this sentence on a bunch of pillows as this year’s holiday gift:
It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.
(Slate article here. Other sources may have other/better write-ups of the survey, but it’s where I found it:) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/p…
(Okay, back to reading)
It’s such an excellent, thorough, thoughtful argument, and it completely won me over on an issue I had always handwavingly thought was “complicated.” The practicalities may be complicated, but the reality isn’t. Coates expresses it so succinctly: “But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”
Then he goes on to point out that not only are we as a nation resisting paying reparations, we aren’t even willing to look at how reparations might be calculated and structured.
A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers’s bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. We would support this bill, submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested.
“It’s because it’s black folks making the claim,” Nkechi Taifa, who helped found N’COBRA, says. “People who talk about reparations are considered left lunatics. But all we are talking about is studying [reparations]. As John Conyers has said, we study everything. We study the water, the air. We can’t even study the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone.”
That HR 40 has never—under either Democrats or Republicans—made it to the House floor suggests our concerns are rooted not in the impracticality of reparations but in something more existential. If we conclude that the conditions in North Lawndale and black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you’d expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America’s crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world’s oldest democracy?
QUICK SIDEBAR: that bill was written by my incredible Congressman (&employer, full disclosure) John Conyers, Jr. who has represented Detroit for nearly fifty years. He is the shit, and dealing with some stupid legal technicalities that may keep him off the ballot and force him into a costly write-in campaign (against a dude CURRENTLY FACING TRIAL FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CHARGES. Real cool guy). Anyways, all of his work on this bill and many others may go out the window very soon. Google him and send us money, or just some good vengeful feminist vibes sent our way would be so helpful 😀
Ahhh thank you for this context!
The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter.
The relatively sudden turnaround that we as a country have made on gay marriage, which seemed similarly politically unfathomable not long ago, gives me hope that something similar could happen for reparations. But not that much hope, since the potential costs are so much higher for those of us benefiting from this ugly history.
The discrimination against gay marriage didn’t have any economic basis. It doesn’t cost any money to quite being a shit about that. Or, for the younger generation, there’s nothing to gain by becoming shitty about it, the way there was for opposing desegregation to protect property values. Opposition to gay marriage is pretty much entirely small-minded intolerance.
I think that same patina of shittiness coats the opposition to reparations, but… there IS going to be a cost in there. There has to be, the whole idea is that there is a debt to be paid.
Agreed totally. I’d also like to point out that it was white men who lead the charge on all things gay. To this day they remain the most visible, most recognizable segment of the gay population (unless you count HOT LESBIAN ACTION which I don’t because BURN EVERYTHING DOWN).
We like our progress to be whiter than not, is what I’m saying.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, about how certain rights are easier to swallow. Although gay people have been horribly persecuted, and horribly treated, our rapid national turn around has to stem in part from the fact that it’s a right that is as easily withheld from an affluent white guy as it is from a poor black woman. I used to say a few years ago that I thought it was a good sign that we could move faster on each social issue, but I’m feeling more skeptical of that. We didn’t reach end state on women’s rights or civil rights and then turn to gay rights. We didn’t pair marriage equality and paid maternity and paternity leave and housing assistance to minorities together as one giant package of rights, and turn back the tide that’s chipping away at women’s rights to their bodies and african american’s rights to schools and votes sine we got those rights through hard fighting in the 60s and 70s.
I fear that we’ll get gay marriage in all states, call that movement done, stall out and turn to the next rights issue that doesn’t require we deal with race and gender in any substantial way. Say, animal rights. Which I also support deeply, but its not going to sit well with me if a cow gets a retirement fund before we have abortions available in every damn state and kids in the central cities are still being shot on their way to their shitty public schools every damn day.
My court call took FOREVER this morning so while I was waiting for my turn I read this on my phone, taking breaks to watch black fathers get reprimanded by the judge for missing their probation-compelled drug tests. Reorienting laws and rules to fit the reality that lots of people (not me, ever, though) smoke pot and its NOT A BIG DEAL seems to me to fall at the confluence of “relatively easy to accomplish” and “would substantially mitigate the effects of anti-black racism.” So I’m excited to see that there seems to be some momentum in that direction, at least versus earlier times within my memory.
Still not sure why TNC had to spend so much time in the flyover, though.
It’s wonderful timing that this TKO from TNC comes at the same time as the scathing review of that hideous racist bile book from that steaming shitpile Nicholas Wade. Because TNC’s article is, indirectly, a complete refutation of Wade’s entire disgusting thesis. Wade wants to pretend Europeans are genetically superior and more civilized because they adapted to the Industrial Revolution better, as if the Industrial Revolution were not 100% funded from the plunder of tens of millions of black bodies and black labor over half a millennium. It also directly gives a lie to the idea that whites are somehow less “tribal” (seriously, has Wade never heard of World War II? Apartheid? Jim Crow?) and shows how, even in 1970s Chicago, white tribalism was alive and vicious and government sponsored.
“Epstein: before it’s too late”
Right, I was talking on Twitter last night about the main essay question on the final for my European History survey class freshman year of high school (which was a graduation requirement by the way), and we were basically asked “How did Europe get to be so awesome and rule over everyone?”. 15 year-old Samantha wrote a rambling answer about the Industrial Revolution. 31 year-old Samantha probably would have just written “COLONIALISM AND SLAVERY! *mic drop*” and then left the room.
For what it’s worth, those are two sides of the same coin. There’s no way large-scale industrialization in England would have happened without the massive capital accumulation made possible by the Caribbean Sugar Plantations. (For more on this, see Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery .)
The most frightening thing about all of this is that as a white-dominated society we’ve lost awareness (or deliberately been uneducated about) of the root of the disease of Black inequality — a history of unending institutionalized racism, as this piece so thoroughly illustrates. It’s called “the ghetto” because Black people were ghettoized by discriminatory housing policies, not because African-Americans are inherently “ghetto” people.
So we find ourselves in a place where it’s acceptable to blame poor African-Americans for their own poverty, thus confusing the symptom with the root and compounding the disease exponentially. It’s so insidious. Reparations, properly carried out according to a comprehensive study, could be the first attempt to address the root instead of the many symptoms.
What made reading this article so frustrating was that I don’t think we’re anywhere close to confronting and acknowledging our recent post-slavery treatment of black people. If we’re at a place where there are actual mainstream citizens of this country who believe that slavery was ok because the slaves had a roof over their heads (an actual argument that I have heard from those on the right), how are we going to be able to take the long view of what our country has done to black people up to the present day and account for that?
POSTIN THIS DOWN HERE JIC: the “reparations bill” referenced by TNC, HB 40, was written by my incredible Congressman (&employer, full disclosure) John Conyers, Jr. who has represented Detroit for nearly fifty years. He is the shit, and dealing with some stupid legal technicalities that may keep him off the ballot and force him into a costly write-in campaign (against a dude CURRENTLY FACING TRIAL FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CHARGES. Real cool guy).
Anyways, all of his work on this bill and many others may go out the window very soon. Google him and send us money, or come to Detroit and help us and live in my bomb ass riverside apartment, or just sending some good vengeful feminist vibes our way would be so helpful 😀
Oooh, thanks for this!
I agree with reparations in theory, but in practice they generally just wind up being a bandaid for larger social problems, and don’t really solve anything.
Where have they been put into practice in a meaningful way?
Well, as the article points out, Israel! Where they were used to invest in infrastructure and a merchant fleet, bolstering the overall development of that country significantly. As is explained at length in the article which people should read before making blanket statements about Bandaids!
Ok, that’s what I thought – I made it only part way through the article on the bus this morning and was already firmly on the side of reparations, and so was curious as to what the original commenter was basing her information on. But if it was addressed in the article well, then. There you go.
Yup. Didn’t mean to target you, I hope that was clear–just where it happened to fall in the commenting thread. It’s just very frustrating to have this beautiful, clear, thoughtful examination of the topic greeted with a throwaway like “Oh I don’t think that will ever work for [reasons contradicted in the article] so why bother.”
Totally clear! And we are definitely on the same page, there.
Did you read the piece? Serious question.
In TNC’s article, he makes it fairly clear (at least to this reader) that he’s looking for a national, psychological and emotional reckoning first, and actual cash second.
Is that the definition of reparations you find ineffectual, or are you thinking of another example?
I think also, in the case of cash, what might be an immensely practical proposal is not just a check for x amount to individual african americans, but a commitment to invest x billions of dollars into communities of color — to build strong public schools, to build fresh and local grocery stores in inner cities so people can access food, to build safe and accessible public transit (not just buses), to build access to medical services, (including reproductive health services, mental health services, drug rehabilitation services).
The legacy of slavery in this country is also the legacy of ghetto-izing communities of color, and then abandoning any commitment by the state to upkeep the infrastructure of such places. Actual infrastructure investment would go a HELL of a long way to ameliorating systematic inequality.
But of course a psychological and emotional reckoning, as you call it, is an important first step to make the next step possible!
The thing about the article is that I think it says more than “give us a check and we’re good here”, it’s asking us to do the thought exercise thinking through what our debt is, and the ways we could make it right again.
As a nation we’d begin to heal just by really looking at what is owed when labor and life and family was stolen to build the wealth of a nation? And then to push past that and say even after we stopped stealing everything from you, all your children and your children’s children were kept from getting access to any of that enormous wealth by any means we could. What is owed? What would make it right again? Where could we start? Because you know the thing is I’ve never met a person who was emotionally harmed who said, “money is what will heal this pain.” This is about exploring the pain, putting it on trial and figuring out what is owed. its about justice, not handouts, not platitudes and its a much colder harder thing than a wad of cash, its the full report, the painful exploration of how every bank, every piece of land, every company and law might be soaked in blood, and pumped full of money stolen from other people.
This wouldn’t be a bandaid. He’s asking for a surgery. We’d have to cut ourselves open and rip out the tumor we keep ignoring, and then dissect that tumor, see what it’s made of, and the design a targeted chemical mixture that takes aim at the remaining pathologies and then support ourselves as we heal with lots of care and attention.
And then when we’re done, and the country has ripped itself inside out from every side, then maybe we’d know enough to look at what we owe the Native Americans.
I read this last night and cried ugly tears of frustration. I just want everyone everywhere to read it. It’s so, so important.
I want to print this out to read later, but I don’t see a “print” version of this story. Can anybody help? Obviously I can just paste it into Word if I have to.
the print version of the magazine!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Further reading, everyone: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/…
Also, this sentence: “To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations.” Damn.
I woke up to this article. The paragraph about “patriotism a la carte” I read about three times in a row, savoring the words.
And I really hope that “patriotism a la carte” takes root in the political lexicon.
So…I woke up thinking I had a ton of work today and then somehow spent most the day reading this article and these comments.
Next week’s gonna be terrible and stressful, but I feel so much more informed and thoughtful today that it’s probably worth it.