Task 1:

“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.“

“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. Not because of rationality but because of the way we exist in America.”

“Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion—and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.”

“John Conyers’s HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.”

Task 2:

When stating that justice may be the issue I think Coates is suggesting that you can’t put a price on the black experience of the last 300 years. The question is, how will money bring justice, and how do you figure out who gets that money.

Task 3:

Racial reckoning may have a big impact on the bill because it suggests that we are recognizing the racism that has always been present. Through racial reckoning we may be able to provide support for this bill as voters and make legal change to racist policy.

Task 4:

He describes that we may feel threatened by the HR 40 bill not because of the money we may have to pay but because it seriously contradicts our way of life for the last 200 years. I think this claim has some merit. Although I do think that much of this argument stems around economic outcomes, I do think there may be some feelings of change that might cause people fear whether they’re conscious of it or not.

Task 4:

For most white Americans, the story of America has been the escape of pilgrims that were being persecuted for their religion and the massive success of a new nation under hard circumstances. This narrative gives America the sort of “we did what we had to do” foundation. By discussing reparations and injustice publicly we can start to address the fact that we are not so innocent and that we have made big decisions out of greed and hatred.