The Desire For A Reckoning Meets The Wish For A Reset : Code Switch : NPR: The title of Ta-Nehisi Coates' much-discussed cover story at The Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations," might be something of a misnomer.
Coates' opus is really calling for a collective reckoning with America's history, and he uses a call for reparations as the vehicle. He aims to disabuse readers of the notion that the most destructive policies toward black wealth creation were from some long-ago time. So he recounts a dark — and fairly recent — history of black wealth being plundered.
The Case For A Reckoning
From the kleptocratic local governments of the Jim Crow South to the redlining and housing discrimination of the post-World War II period, Coates points to a pattern that continues into living memory. He traces this pattern to the current day — his conclusion links the recent housing crisis that devastated black wealth to this same fundamental impulse — and argues that it will persist until we grapple with it.
