- Read and Annotate the remainder of “The Case for Reparations.” Take photos of at least 4 annotations and include them in your homework response on your ePortfolio. In your shared/posted annotations, draw at least 2 relationships to earlier sections of Coates’ text.
- How did elements of programs/agencies like the New Deal, the GI Bill, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation help Whites up and hold Blacks back? Explain with at least 2 pieces of textual evidence. (Find key information in parts V and VI of Coates.)
- “Title III of the bill, which aimed to give veterans access to low-interest home loans, left black veterans to tangle with white officials at their local Veterans Administration as well as with the same banks that had, for years, refused to grant mortgages to blacks” (para. 79). This quote shows that the GI bill only benefitted white veterans. Black people couldnt get a mortgage before the war, so when some went to war and were able to make it back you would have thought they would get some sort of benefits for risking their lives in the war correct? No the GI bill shoved it in the black veterans’ face that they were used only for their hard work and potentially their life once again with nothing to gain from it. If you say you’re going to give veterans low interest loans/mortgages then give all the veterans those privileges.
- “It was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, not a private trade association, that pioneered the practice of redlining, selectively granting loans and insisting that any property it insured be covered by a restrictive covenant—a clause in the deed forbidding the sale of the property to anyone other than whites” (para. 85). This quote shows that redlining didn’t just pop up randomly in the real estate industry, it was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation that created and tried to perfect the act of segregating down to neighborhoods. They made sure to include the fact that the sale of property should only go to white people, which perpetuates the buying on contract route for black people which inevitably runs them straight into poverty with no hope of getting a loan to try and help pay for their home that they aren’t even allowed to rightfully own.
- Coates writes in Part VIII, “Contract Sellers did not target the very poor” (para. 7). Consider this section of the text and connect it to another section: Coates’ distinction between the Obamas and the Bushes at the end of Part II. How does what we’re reading help us consider why upward mobility is that much harder for Blacks than for Whites? Explain with evidence.
- “The more telling question is how they [Malia and Sasha Obama] compare with Jenna and Barbara Bush—the products of many generations of privilege, not just one. Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family’s singular perseverance, not of broad equality” (para. 42). This quote helps to explain why black people have a harder time with upward mobility compared to white people. Barack Obama being president was a great representation of the black community, but it also brought to light how difficult it is to become a president of color considering how long we had exclusively older white men as presidents. Seeing that we have only ever had white men in office up until President Obama took the presidency, it shows the extreme white privilege. When Barack Obama is compared to the Bush’s you find the long history of white privilege with the Bush family, while Barack got much hate/comments/theories on why he was “unfit” to be president because he was black and people thought he hadn’t been a U.S. citizen for long enough. Things like this are what exemplify why it is so hard for people of color in general to move up in the world. They are always questioned on their abilities, and even if they exceed expectations they could simply not move up when compared to their white competitors because of their skin color and white people’s biases/stereotypes.
- I’m not sure I explained that very well at all, I had a thought in my head and I tried to put it on paper but I don’t think it makes complete sense. My main idea was that black people have a harder time moving up in the world because of how past generations of white people formed bad perceptions of black people PLUS the whole system/country being against everything black people did/do.
- “Perhaps after serious discussion and debate – the kind that HR 40 proposes – we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans…. 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” (Coates Part IX, roughly para. 12). Why might the issue of reparations be so much more threatening if it’s not actually about the $?
- Personally, I think the idea of reparations is “more threatening” (I myself do not think it’s threatening to pay reparations) because it means the white people in this country as a whole would have to face the terrible past of this country after being taught that this country is the best in the world which it most definitely is not. Some white people are just not used to self reflection and or thinking of others feelings/traumas. These are the people that are threatened by the idea of reparations because they don’t want to confront all of the problems in this country or within themselves (confronting our racist tendencies and implicit biases). Paying reparations is definitely about the money, but it is also extremely about tackling issues that white people are uncomfortable talking about/refuse to talk about. I feel like reparations would be the start to really reforming what this country looks and feels like.
Meep<3
