Paper Example - The Reparations for Black Americans Debate

The recent weeks and months of racial justice demonstrations and protests have pushed the notion of reparations for Black Americans to the national debate center. A major proposal of the reparation suggests that the American government should pay $97 billion following the number of hours slaves were forced to labor between 1610 and 1865. In 1969, the American government launched reparation programs for Black Americans. This program set quotas for African-American employment in the construction trades. Scholars and authors have presented different arguments which either support or discredit reparations to African Americans. David’s article, The impossibility of Reparations, presents various limitations that would face the reparation program presented by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates's article, The case for Reparations, provides an insight into the inhumane treatment of African American slaves and their descendants showing a rationale for reparations. Ta-Nehisi’s case for reparations is stronger than Frum’s rejection of reparations since it does not only focus on slavery but the entire Black experience in America over the years. Frum's argument against reparations is weak since it focuses on slavery rather than racial injustices against Black people.

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Summary of Coates Argument

Coates's case for reparations offers an account on the primary injustices Black Americans were subjected o by the white Americans. Illustratively, Coate describes how African American families lost property due to law inequality. He reviews Clyde Ross’s story of how his family lost its property and land due to inequality in the law. He accuses the state of partnering with white employers to Black American’s franchises. He reviews a three-part investigation into the theft of African-American owned land which can be traced back to the antebellum period (Coate). The investigation revealed that there were 406 victims and about 24, 000 acres taken via different means including terrorism and legal chicanery. Coates offers an insight into how African American workers were treated unfairly. Illustratively, sharecroppers had their wages treated as slash funds for landlords. Landowners were obliged to split the gains from cotton fields with the sharecroppers. However, unfair practices like the loss of bales or the alteration of the sharecroppers split.

Apart from that, Coates also shows the state’s facilitated the demise of the promising African American families. He explains the housing schemes that hindered or discouraged Black Americans from owning houses. Citing from Ross’s story, Coates shows that Black people were subjected to unfavorable housing contracts that in a way enslaved them to work for their houses and benefit the whites. Notably, in the contract sale sellers retained the dead until full payment of the contract unlike with a regular mortgage. Interestingly, Black Americans did not qualify for equity and in case they missed one payment, they would have to forfeit the down payment, all monthly installments, and the house too (Coates). Coates notes that between the 1930s and 1960s, African Americans across the nation were denied access to legal home mortgage markets via means both extralegal and legal (Coates). Whites residing in Chicago used every intervention from bombings to restrictive covenants to refrain their neighborhoods from segregation. Notably, the federal government also discouraged African Americans' efforts to owning a home after the creation of the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA was insuring private mortgages which led to interest rates drop and reduction in down payment when purchasing a house. However, Black Americans were left out since the FHA assimilated an approach or map that graded neighborhoods based on their perceived stability.

Coates explains the impact of economic inequality on the Black Americans' neighborhood. He notes that in the early 20th century neighborhoods like North Lawndale had a population of 112, 000, but the current population stands at 36, 000. The neighborhood is primarily Black with 92% of the population being Black. It has a higher homicide rate compared to the entire Chicago and 43% of its residents live below the poverty line. This neighborhood is a reflection of the Black neighborhood across the nation. This neighborhood shows discrimination in America between whites and blacks. In case there was no segregation in the states, poverty would be common across the country without any bias towards color. However, poverty concentration appears to be paired with melanin’s concentration (Coates). Coates's article shows the importance of reparations in healing or revolutionizing an unequal nation. He cites historical cases and instances in which slaves were compensated for any wrongdoing or injustices they were subjected to by their masters. Notably, he reviews the German reparations towards the Jews. Coates maintains that reparations do not have to be in monetary form but an act that will enable the Black community to heal from past injustices that have shaped their present communities.

Summary of Frum’s Argument

Frum’s rebuttal ‘mainly focuses on the possible constraints that would hinder a successful reparation as proposed by Te-Nehisi. Frum is skeptical of the social consequences that would arise from attempted reparation to African Americans. He argues that reparations to African Americans would lead to the emergence of other minority groups demanding restitution (Frum). Illustratively, he argues that reparations to Black Americans could lead to demands from Native Americans who lost their entire continent. According to Frum, Coates's reparations proposals assume a binary racial composition of an oppressed Black minority and a white majority inflicting pain.

Frum points out that the issues of individuals qualified for reparations will become highly embittered and contested. Frum argues that the issues of “who qualifies?” will become explosives= as the benefits provided expand. Additionally, Frum shows that the side impacts will increase and will be unexpected. He argues that affirmative action will characterize some parts of the United States economy more significantly compared to others, particularly, the public sector more compared to the private sectors (Frum). Due to this fact, there has been a substantial growth of the African American middle class since African Americans are more likely to secure jobs in the public sector, unlike whites. However, this kind of strategy limits talented people African Americans from high rewards and risks associated with the private sector. As a result, Black Americans have a lower probability of owing the business compared to white people.

Frum’s rebuttals maintain that reparations for Black American’s will lead to extreme inequalities. He argues that since not all African Americans are poor, the program might exclude about a million Black people. If so, it will likely tax rape victims and murder victim families for the advantage of their assailants (Frum). Moreover, the differences of power, wealth, and political influence within African Americans will increase its urgency irrespective of the reparations being delivered collectively and communally. Frum also argues that the legitimacy of the reparations programs would fade citing that reparations for Blacks cannot be compared with the German reparations. He argues that Jews could demand reparations from Jews since Israel was already a state. On the contrary, Black Americans have no state hence there will be questions on the distribution of the money and the people accountable for distribution.

An Argument for a Stronger Position

Coates's argument for reparations is stronger compared to Frum’s rebuttal. Coates's arguments enable the audience to understand the injustices deeply and their impact on the community. Illustratively, the reviews Blacks’ life in the 250 slavery years, 90 Jim Crow years, and vividly shows the different forms of injustices they experienced as well as how these injustices have influenced their lives from those years to the present. The factor that Coates proves and shows that injustices faced by African American slaves had an impact on the lives of the slaves’ generations makes a strong argument for the need for reparations. According to Locke, reparation has to provide satisfaction to a private man for the damages received (Locke). Notably, Frum’s argument that it would be hard to identify who receives or benefits from reparations falls behind Coates's case for reparation. Coates's argument outweighs Frum’s argument from such a perspective since he manages to show how injustices during slavery and over different times have impacted the African American community. Illustratively, the state’s role in housing contracts which made it hard for Blacks to own houses or that allowed whites to extort African Americans growing middle class led to high poverty rates in Black neighborhoods.

Another major strength of Coates's argument is that it does not focus on slavery but the historical experience of Black Americans. Coates's essay enables the audience to fathom that contemporary African American poverty is a failure of African Americans or a historical accident but is rooted in the public policy. By reading the essay, one understands that the essence of racism in the United States is disrespectful. Therefore, it is evident that America’s obligations to slaves’ descendants did not end with the ending of slavery in the 13th Amendment or the falling of Jim Crow (Serwer). Notably, the minimal focus on slavery in Coates's essay enables his argument to outweigh Frum’s rebuttal and objections of repercussion. Coates's argument aligns or concurs with Fullinwider’s reformulated harm argument that states that after the abolishment of slavery, the American government failed to protect or vindicate the full rights and equal citizenship (Fullinwider 142). In case the government had protected full rights and promoted equal citizenship, slavery’s legacy would have considerably faded. Fullinwider presents a similar argument like Coates showing that if the present African Americans still suffer from different aspects emanating for slavery’s legacy, the root cause of the harms is not slavery but the state after 1865 (Boxill). Therefore, the factor that Coates's argument for reparations does not focus on slavery but the role of the government and points out how the government failed to protect its citizens based on racial lines makes the argument more compelling to demand reparations for Blacks in the United States.

Recommendations

Opponents of reparations could raise various issues regarding the success of reparation programs for Black Americans. Notably, they could present an argument that discourages the use of cash or money as reparations. Coates's article vividly shows the huge loss of property and money by African Americans due to unequal protection by the state. Therefore, it would be important to have reparations in monetary form. Additionally, initial reparation cases have had direct payment as a central feature. Illustratively, Germany paid Holocaust victims and their descendants and American payments to the Japanese due to unjust incarceration (Darity et al. 105). Since the objective of reparations for African Americans is eliminating White-Black wealth inequality, direct payments are the most effective form. Apart from that, reparation funds could also be directed to community and neighborhood building projects or towards establishing endowments for Historically African-American Universities and Colleges.