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What is Coates' view on reparations in his article?
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Coates's critics have argued that he did not present a detailed plan for reparations, and he responds, essentially, that these specifics are less important than the public reaching a consensus on the enduring ramifications of slavery.Coates is essentially arguing against his liberal critics, two of whom (Kevin Drum and David Frum) had written against one of his previous pieces in TheAtlantic, which made a case for a committee to study the lingering effects of slavery and white supremacy with an eye toward establishing reparations for African Americans. Coates's critics have argued that he did not present a detailed plan for reparations, and he responds, essentially, that these specifics are less important than the public reaching a consensus on the enduring ramifications of slavery:
[A]lthough studies certainly end up in the dust-bin of history all the time, without some sort of official document tallying up the specific costs of some three centuries of injury, it seems relatively useless to argue for a plan for payment.
He then makes a particularly interesting argument: namely, that the best way to make a case for reparations is...
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to look at the lingering pervasiveness of white supremacy. In other words, the ideology that supported slavery has existed throughout American history, and is still around today. "Even if one feels that slavery was too far into the deep past (and I do not, because I view this as a continuum)," Coates writes, "the immediate past is with us." He points in particular to the way that lending and zoning practices have devastated African American neighborhoods. Unlike his critics, he thinks that most white Americans do not recognize that any of these things are really evidence of systemic injustice or white supremacy.
Finally, Coates expresses his conviction that liberal voters can be persuaded of the need for reparations. He points to such ambitious projects as universal healthcare and free college tuition as evidence. Therefore, he does not think the problem with reparations lies with their cost or with the complexities inherent in their implementation. Rather, he thinks that many whites do not understand the need for them in the first place, because they fail to comprehend, and are "incurious" about, the pervasive effects of white supremacy. An honest, informed, national conversation about reparations, he argues, is perhaps the only way people can come to recognize what most who study American history understand: the devastating effects of slavery, which continue to linger in the American present.
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