The Case For Reparations by Tanehisi Coates

[NZA]

yeah the ones out in the Ft. McDowell area and along baseline and around 91st ave are fuked six ways from sunday. Alcoholism is a mutha fuka.

I also heard from this lady I work with that meth dealers will let the kids get high for free because they know at age 18 the kids are gonna get a huge check.

Money definitely will help, but there's more to the problem facing both the black and NA communities than a lack of money. Generational nihilism and a stagnant mindset need to considered. At the risk of sounding condescending and for lack of a better analogy you can't just give millions to a kid and expect him to make all the right choices.

really, what natives have been given isnt much. any land they reside on is mostly what whites dont want, and in a society like ours, group ownership doesnt help individuals build wealth. many rezes cant even afford the basics like regular garbage collection or repair of the streets. if you drive through guadalupe, the yaqui indians live in the most run down section of tempe. you can literally see an improvement the moment you leave their town border. and the drunkenness is true. they stagger around drunk in broad daylight on a wednesday.

per cap checks they receive are a couple thousand a year at the most. if you consider they have almost no economic activity on the rez, that small per cap check might be the only real income for many of them. those that leave the rez to work in the broader economy are only a few thousand dollars richer than the average AA, and probably facing similar discrimination in hiring and whatnot.

i think reparations is best either as an investment in the infrastructure of certain locations or as a lump sum check of a significant amount. being given wastelands to live on and subsistence checks doesnt seem to work if we go by how so many NAs actually live.

i would like my 40 acres and a mule converted into a modern day dollar amount

 

[Mr. Somebody]

The united states owns 650 million acres of land.

 

[Lucky_Lefty]

Article brought me to tears damn near

 

[Mr swag]

Nikkas don't need reparations.

I wouldn't accept reparations even if they were given. I didn't work a single one of those days . How am I going to take someone elses unpaid wages?

 

[J-Nice]

I was just about to post this :comeatmebro:

My friends and I are hosting a reading/cocktail event this weekend to discuss this and come up with ways to be proactive about this.

 

[HideoKojima]

I was just about to post this :comeatmebro:

My friends and I are hosting a reading/cocktail event this weekend to discuss this and come up with ways to be proactive about this.

is Oprah going to be at this thang?

 

[J-Nice]

is Oprah going to be at this thang?

Strictly confidential.

 

[Canon]

Coates is a great writer

Nice to see this discussion starting to hit the mainstream

 

[Blackking]

I was just about to post this :comeatmebro:

My friends and I are hosting a reading/cocktail event this weekend to discuss this and come up with ways to be proactive about this.

what state r you in...?.

and if ur in detroit, id like to invite you to something.

 

[Lucky_Lefty]

why isn't this stickey'd?

 

[Panther]

why isn't this stickey'd?

 

[Blackgate]

A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesirables might include madams, bootleggers, gangsters—and “a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites.”

...

 

[J-Nice]

what state r you in...?.

and if ur in detroit, id like to invite you to something.

I'm in Philadelphia. But thanks anyway breh

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Fantastic piece. I'm going to share this with some people. I knew the G. I. bill thing, but I didn't know that black people were overwhelmingly ineligible for SS old age benefits at first.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

AT THE VERY LEAST, a formal apology from Congress wouldn't hurt.