Study Questions for Coates, “The Case for Reparations”
1. Find definitions or descriptions of the following terms:
a. Debt Bondage: Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery or bonded labor, is the
pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other
obligation,
b. Vagrancy laws: In legal terminology, vagrancy refers to the offense of persons
who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work.
State laws and municipal ordinances punishing vagrancy often also cover
loitering, associating with reputed criminals, prostitution, and drunkenness.
c. Sharecropping: Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small
plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop
d. The Great Migration: The Great Migration, sometimes known as the
Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of 6
million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban
Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970.
2. Who was Emmett Till?
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi
in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store
3. What does it mean to buy a house “on contract”? How did sellers take advantage of
buyers?
a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all
the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither. If he missed a single
payment, he would immediately forfeit his $1,000 down payment, all his monthly
payments, and the property itself.
4. What are “restrictive covenants”?
a covenant imposing a restriction on the use of land so that the value and enjoyment of
adjoining land will be preserved.
5. What is “redlining”?
redlining is the systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially
associated, neighborhoods or communities, either directly or through the selective raising
of prices.
6. What was the Contract Buyers League?
a collection of black homeowners on Chicago’s South and West Sides, all of whom had
been locked into the same system of predation.
7. What are some of the differences between white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods
in Chicago?
The average per capita income of Chicago’s white neighborhoods is almost three times
that of its black neighborhoods. When the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson
examined incarceration rates in Chicago in his 2012 book, Great American City, he found
, that a black neighborhood with one of the highest incarceration rates (West Garfield Park)
had a rate more than 40 times as high as the white neighborhood with the highest rate
(Clearing). “This is a staggering differential, even for community-level comparisons,”
Sampson writes. “A difference of kind, not degree.”
8. What is the “income gap”? What is the “wealth gap”?
In broad strokes, the income gap is the difference between the rich and the poor. In U.S.
political discourse, income inequality is often expressed as the gap between the 1% and
the 99%. The wealth gap, on the other hand, gets at assets and net worth (assets minus
debts), rather than looking at just income. Take two people, one with a paid-off home
worth $200,000 that he inherited, no student debt because his parents paid for college and
a salary of $45,000 per year. In other words, Chicago’s impoverished black
neighborhoods—characterized by high unemployment and households headed by single
parents—are not simply poor; they are “ecologically distinct.” This “is not simply the
same thing as low economic status,” writes Sampson. “In this pattern Chicago is not
alone.”
9. Some people point to the success of the Obama family as good evidence for the view that
white advantage no longer exists. Why is this a weak argument?
Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family’s singular
perseverance, not of broad equality. Just because one family is thriving doesn’t include
other colored families.
10. What is HR 40?
In other words, Chicago’s impoverished black neighborhoods—characterized by high
unemployment and households headed by single parents—are not simply poor; they are
“ecologically distinct.” This “is not simply the same thing as low economic status,”
writes Sampson. “In this pattern Chicago is not alone.”
11. How does Coates respond to the attempt to escape the question of reparations by
disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors and by citing a recent date of ancestral
immigration?
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.
12. What was Bacon’s Rebellion?
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion that took place 1676-1677 by Virginia settlers
led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. His grievances
against the governor stemmed from Berkeley's dismissive policy to the political
challenges of its western frontier, particularly leaving Bacon out of his inner circle and
1. Find definitions or descriptions of the following terms:
a. Debt Bondage: Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery or bonded labor, is the
pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other
obligation,
b. Vagrancy laws: In legal terminology, vagrancy refers to the offense of persons
who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work.
State laws and municipal ordinances punishing vagrancy often also cover
loitering, associating with reputed criminals, prostitution, and drunkenness.
c. Sharecropping: Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small
plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop
d. The Great Migration: The Great Migration, sometimes known as the
Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of 6
million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban
Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970.
2. Who was Emmett Till?
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi
in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store
3. What does it mean to buy a house “on contract”? How did sellers take advantage of
buyers?
a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all
the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither. If he missed a single
payment, he would immediately forfeit his $1,000 down payment, all his monthly
payments, and the property itself.
4. What are “restrictive covenants”?
a covenant imposing a restriction on the use of land so that the value and enjoyment of
adjoining land will be preserved.
5. What is “redlining”?
redlining is the systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially
associated, neighborhoods or communities, either directly or through the selective raising
of prices.
6. What was the Contract Buyers League?
a collection of black homeowners on Chicago’s South and West Sides, all of whom had
been locked into the same system of predation.
7. What are some of the differences between white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods
in Chicago?
The average per capita income of Chicago’s white neighborhoods is almost three times
that of its black neighborhoods. When the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson
examined incarceration rates in Chicago in his 2012 book, Great American City, he found
, that a black neighborhood with one of the highest incarceration rates (West Garfield Park)
had a rate more than 40 times as high as the white neighborhood with the highest rate
(Clearing). “This is a staggering differential, even for community-level comparisons,”
Sampson writes. “A difference of kind, not degree.”
8. What is the “income gap”? What is the “wealth gap”?
In broad strokes, the income gap is the difference between the rich and the poor. In U.S.
political discourse, income inequality is often expressed as the gap between the 1% and
the 99%. The wealth gap, on the other hand, gets at assets and net worth (assets minus
debts), rather than looking at just income. Take two people, one with a paid-off home
worth $200,000 that he inherited, no student debt because his parents paid for college and
a salary of $45,000 per year. In other words, Chicago’s impoverished black
neighborhoods—characterized by high unemployment and households headed by single
parents—are not simply poor; they are “ecologically distinct.” This “is not simply the
same thing as low economic status,” writes Sampson. “In this pattern Chicago is not
alone.”
9. Some people point to the success of the Obama family as good evidence for the view that
white advantage no longer exists. Why is this a weak argument?
Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family’s singular
perseverance, not of broad equality. Just because one family is thriving doesn’t include
other colored families.
10. What is HR 40?
In other words, Chicago’s impoverished black neighborhoods—characterized by high
unemployment and households headed by single parents—are not simply poor; they are
“ecologically distinct.” This “is not simply the same thing as low economic status,”
writes Sampson. “In this pattern Chicago is not alone.”
11. How does Coates respond to the attempt to escape the question of reparations by
disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors and by citing a recent date of ancestral
immigration?
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.
12. What was Bacon’s Rebellion?
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion that took place 1676-1677 by Virginia settlers
led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. His grievances
against the governor stemmed from Berkeley's dismissive policy to the political
challenges of its western frontier, particularly leaving Bacon out of his inner circle and
