"The cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic, an impassioned essay by Ta-Nahesi Coates titled "The Case for Reparations," generates a remarkable amount of discussion among commentators at the big and small media outlets between Boston and Washington.
The 15,000-plus word article argues that American society has plundered black Americans since their forced arrival in the country four centuries ago through laws, customs, finances and politics, and the nation needs to come to grips with its past. Coates says the way to do that is to consider the bill introduced annually by U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., the Detroit Democrat whose measure calls for a deep study of the effects of slavery and possible solutions."
....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."
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