![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() No such bill was passed, and in time Coates turned away from history’s uses and toward its limits. This inquiry might yield inconclusive results, but the research would force the United States to account for its sins and, in so doing, help it mature “out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.” A public return to the past, in other words, would change America’s future. To finally put an end to this regime of subjugation, Coates insisted that Congress should pass HR 40, the long-touted bill to fund an investigation into the amount of reparations due to black people for slavery. From the brutal theft of black labor via slavery through the predatory practices of the Jim Crow era to today, the state has used and sanctioned violence against African Americans to exploit them. In “The Case for Reparations,” Coates argued that much of the country’s history has been defined by the “armed robbery” of black people by whites. This often pessimistic view of America’s past-and the body of historiography that vindicated it-was central to the 2014 article that helped launch him into the national spotlight. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |