BILL MOYERS:
Welcome. The young man you’re about to meet is out to change how we think and talk about
race. And he just might do it, beginning with this cover story in the new issue of “The
Atlantic” magazine. Its provocative title is “The Case for Reparations.” Yes, reparations
– defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the act of making amends, or giving
satisfaction for a wrong or injury.” The “wrong or injury” in question is what
President Lyndon Johnson once called slavery’s “ancient brutality” – and the terrible
things that have followed it, in the name of white supremacy enforced by state power.
This article is must reading for every American.
The author is the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, who grew up in Baltimore, lives in Harlem, and
teaches writing at MIT. He's now a senior editor of “The Atlantic,” where in this
issue he writes: “the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out
of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.” Thank
you for joining me. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Oh, thank you for having me. It's an honor. BILL MOYERS:
Here's exactly what you say: "White supremacy does not contradict American democracy—it
birthed it, nurtured it, and financed it. That is our heritage." What is white supremacy? TA-NEHISI COATES:
It is a system that is really, really old in this country, which holds that a certain
group of people who hail, you know, with a certain ancestry should always be ensured
that they will not sink to a certain level. And that level is the level occupied by black
people. And so what the language of what white means adjusts over time, you know; it doesn't
need a static thing called white. At one point, you know, Irish people do not fit into that.
At one point, Italian people do not fit into that. At one point, Jewish people did not
fit into that. And now they do. You know? And we've changed that. And we've adjusted.
The only people who never fit into that are African Americans. BILL MOYERS:
So when you ask whites to look at slavery, and its consequences, what are you asking? TA-NEHISI COATES:
I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver. I'm asking you as
an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things
that the country that you belong to condoned or actively participated in in the past. And
that covers everything from enslavement to the era of lynching, when we effectively decided
that we weren't going to, you know, give -- afford -- African Americans the same level of protection
of the law. It applies to sharecropping, when we decided
that we were going to, in whole swaths of the country, allow people to be effectively
re-enslaved. It applies to redlining, when we decided that people that lived in certain
places would get, you know, the largess of the government and people who would not. It applies today in terms of mass incarceration.
When we decide that we are going to be harder on crimes committed by certain people -- or
the same crime committed, you know, by certain people -- and, you know, not be that hard
when it's committed by other people. This is heritage. It's with us. It's with all of
us. And it doesn't necessarily… It's not with you because you're white, you know? It's
with you because you're an American. Just like it's with me, because I'm an American.
I have to live with this, too. BILL MOYERS:
How so? TA-NEHISI COATES:
I think part of the problem is, when we talk about this, this is a situation of, well,
what do white people owe to black people? And that ain’t really it. It’s what the state -- the United States,
as we should say, of America -- first of all owes African Americans, but not far behind
that what it owes itself. You know? Because this is really about our health as
a country. And I make that delineation because there are people who, you know, and they would
say this, who never held any slaves, who were never voluntarily part of any sort of Jim
Crow system, who thought the country should be doing something different the whole time.
Nevertheless, we’re all part of this. We’re all part of this. Whatever solutions that
eventually come to, will come out of my tax dollars, too, I assure you. BILL MOYERS:
Was there something that hit you in the face as you started going back into the past, that
you didn't expect to find? TA-NEHISI COATES:
It is the degree to which where we are right now is not a mistake and is not inexplicable.
We think of the problem of racism, the quote unquote “negro problem" or the problem with
the color line, you know, all sorts of variations of how it's talked about, as something that's
really, really hard to figure out. And it's actually not hard to figure out.
You can literally see a policy, you know, from the 17th century stretching up into,
you know, we can say conservatively into the 1960s, into the 20th century, the mid-20th
century here in America, designed to injure African Americans. If you understand that
and if you take that, it would not make sense that that would just sort of go away, that
that injury would disappear within 50 years of half-halting, you know, reform and trying
to make things better. It's not actually that hard to figure out. We have it at our core that a certain group
of people, who are marked by ancestry, who are marked by melanin, must represent a bottom
for us. And, you can see that in the era of enslavement. You can see that literally being
written, as I’ve shown in the piece, into the laws. You can see that when we decide
to in this period of enslavement. And yet, we still can't get away from having a two-tiered
society. You can see it, most depressingly, I have
to say for me, when we go to erect our modern safety net, during the New Deal, which, progressives—and
I consider myself in that camp—like to say that was the era, that was our golden era.
Social Security, when it's initially passed excluded African Americans. Now it didn't…
It wasn't written that way. It wasn't written that way. What was written was folks who were
either, worked as farm hands or worked as help in the house were excluded. BILL MOYERS:
Domestic help. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Domestic help, yes, yes. They were excluded. But what that had the effect of doing is excluding,
I think, roughly 80 percent of African Americans in the South. And something around 65 percent
of African Americans nationally. And what people will tell you is, well, that got fixed.
And it did get fixed. But the problem is during those years, people
are injured. People are injured. And that's how you get a gap. The fact that you injure
people for those years, it doesn't mean that, people will catch up when you eventually fix
it. And I say that it relates to us today, because the argument that we make about Obamacare
and the Medicaid expansion is, well, eventually market pressures will force those states in
the South to catch up. They'll fix it. They'll fix it. But see, in those intervening years,
black folks who needed it most, much like black folks who needed it most during the
era when we passed Social Security, will be injured, again. And the fact that it gets
fixed will not close the gap. So the question becomes: why do we keep doing
that? Why do we look at a map of Obamacare, as they say, and where the Medicaid expansion
has gone through and where it hasn't? And why do we see this swath of the country that's
directly identical to where we had plantation slavery? BILL MOYERS:
But you set out to find out, and I was intrigued that you set out to find out in the here and
now. You didn't start back then. But you start in Chicago with a fellow named… TA-NEHISI COATES:
Clyde Ross. Clyde Ross, who is in his early 90s now. And one of the essential theses of
the piece is that we tend to think of segregation and Jim Crow. And we see, you know, separate
but equal. We see separate water fountains, separate bathrooms. And I wanted to deepen
that and say that the relationship is actually different. It's not merely excluding somebody.
It's the taking of resources from one group for the betterment of another group. And this happens in all sorts of ways. Slavery
is obviously the most direct way. But Clyde Ross, who was born in Mississippi, literally
has his family's land taken out from underneath of him and reduced to sharecropping. When
you talk about Mississippi, and you say African Americans not having the right to vote, this
is not, like, a symbolic thing. This is the right to see how your tax dollars are used. It actually has effects on your life. And
he saw that. And he moved north. He went, served in World War II. Noticed that things
were a little different in the country. Came back. Could not live in Mississippi. Moved
to Chicago, thought it was different. You know, and certainly some things really were
different. I don't want to minimize that. But when he went to get that emblem of citizenship,
of being part of that big, broad America, that middleclass America that we exalt, a
home; when he went to buy a home, he found that he had actually been cut out of society
in a much more complicated way. BILL MOYERS:
How so? TA-NEHISI COATES:
Well, Clyde Ross bought a home at the time, or attempted to buy a home at a time in which
home buying in this country was subsidized. Where we had an FHA that insured loans so
that if, for instance, I wanted to go buy a home, and I weren’t able to pay for it,
the FHA would say, no problem, we’ll cover that if he walks out on his home. African
Americans were totally cut out of that. BILL MOYERS:
FHA – Federal Housing Administration? TA-NEHISI COATES:
Yes, exactly. And not only were they cut out of it, we had redlining – which is a phrase
that we all know but we don't talk enough about – wherein it was said a neighborhood
in which African Americans live cannot receive FHA funding. And that went beyond the FHA. Banks decided
who they were going to lend money to based on FHA policy laws, they responded to that
in much the same way. On the “Atlantic” website, you'll see, we have actual maps where
you can look at a city like Chicago and see where the loans were and where the loans weren't.
And this was a practice that lasted on paper into 1960, and likely much longer than that. BILL MOYERS:
So you go on, "Until America reckons with the moral debt it has accrued— and the practical
damage it has done—to generations of black Americans, it will fail to live up to its
own ideals." Talk for just another moment about that practical damage. TA-NEHISI COATES:
The most obvious example is the wealth gap. When you have a family, on average that has
20 times the wealth – a white family has 20 times the wealth of black families. And
then you can really trace this to actual policy. You see it. Again, you know, when we look at these incarceration
rates, we still see it. I mean, the gap is so, so huge. It's not a mere, minor discrepancy.
We talk a lot about the achievement gap between black children and white children. But I'm
always much more interested in the injury gap. A black child that comes into this world is,
because of policy, because of the policies of his country, over many years, is going
to arrive with injuries that a white child just isn't. And until we start deciding…
First of all, until we accept that. Until we say that, yeah, yeah. Until we say, we
did something. As a country, yes, we did do something. We have done something. And in
many ways, we continue to do things that mean that that black child is going to come in
with injuries that that white child is not. We just aren't having a conversation. And
you can't substitute and say poor children. That's a separate problem. That's another
problem. It's a real problem. A related problem. But it's a separate problem. Until we directly
confront the problem of racism, I don't think we're getting at it. BILL MOYERS:
Help us to understand this point in your piece, quote, "To ignore the fact that one of the
oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend
that the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism,
is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying. The lie ignores
the fact that reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same."
Explain that. TA-NEHISI COATES:
There are plenty of African Americans in this country – and I would say that this goes
right up to the White House – who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted
by white supremacy. This came up for me very powerfully during the… at the height of
the birther controversy about the president where Donald Trump is demanding that the president
release his long-form birth certificate. And then after that demanding that we see his
transcripts. Barack Obama's the best we got as African Americans. This is as good as it
gets, you know? The comedian Sinbad, said, there are no more.
There are no black men, raised in Hawaii with roots in Kansas. That's just not going to
happen again. This is the best we have. And if you don't believe him, then you definitely
don't believe me. And you definitely don't believe my son, you know? You definitely don't
believe these black folks, who were born in Cleveland or born in Baltimore, born in Chicago. So young African Americans who see that, who
see people who have totally, totally played by the rules and then come to their neighborhoods
and tell them to play by the rules, too. And they see them being treated with a double
standard. The message is you're not really part of this. The message is a broken social
contract. That there's one social contract for one group of people, and another one for
you. I'm a strong, strong believer that the filter
of racism and the filter of white supremacy is greatly underestimated in this country.
That's really the one thing I've tried to get across. I think… BILL MOYERS:
It seems to me that's why you wrote this article. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Yes, yes, yes, it's very much why I wrote the piece. And I think, one of the things
is that we talk about race a lot, we do. So I think it's wrong to say we don’t have
conversations. No, we actually talk about it quite a bit. I don't think we talk about
it in depth as much as we should. And I think part of the problem is when you start talking
about it in depth, when you start getting to a level where you say, listen, everything
we are, everything we have is built on past sins. That the things are tied. When you start
recognizing that there's something congenital. You know, it's as if I had a problem with
alcohol and I could say, okay, but I'm just going to go into the bar and I'm not going
to have a drink. I'm going to be okay. I don't need to have any sort of conversation. That's
a different conversation in that I have to confess to the fact that I'm an alcoholic.
That there's something in me, you know, that that’s here. And I will always have to cope
with that. And I will always have to deal with that. The honesty that that takes, the strength
that that takes, the courage that that takes is pretty profound. And to have to do that
on a national level is… it's not just a weight for Americans. I would say it would
be a weight for any society comprised of human beings. It's very, very hard, en masse, for
groups. And I, to be honest with you, I have doubts about our ability to do it. BILL MOYERS:
Our ability as white folks to say… TA-NEHISI COATES:
No. No. BILL MOYERS:
To say we were this nation was founded on white supremacy? It is an organizing principle
of our society? TA-NEHISI COATES:
No, I have doubts about us as Americans to do it. I mean, so as you think about it for
African Americans, it's a very depressing picture, too. Because if you're African American,
it's like, okay, and then what? So what am I supposed to do with that information? You
know, where do I go with that? I’m a minority, it's not like we're not… we're clearly not
going to have an armed revolution to seize any power. So what, then? You're telling me this. But
what am I then supposed to do? It's terrifying. It's terrifying all around. And it's not even
terrifying because we're Americans. I think if I spent any amount of time in any country,
all countries have sins in their past. And getting states to confront those sins honestly
and directly is really, really hard. The one example that people often put up is
Germany. They say, well Germany was really able to confront its past. The difference
is Germany killed off 80 to 90 percent of the Jews who lived there. So they didn’t
have Jews alive as active political actors to use that history. It’s very easy, you
know, to apologize for something when there’s no one there to draw any sort of consequence
from it, directly from you, in your country, to be part of your politics. It’s fine to apologize after you wiped everybody
out, for all the good that does. America has a much, much more complicated problem. African
Americans are very, very much part of the political process here. And so, as Americans
to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, this is who we are, and that’s okay. Frankly, I don’t know that any country’s
ever done that. I’m really, really clear about that. But we look at ourselves as pioneers,
in terms of liberty, in terms of freedom, in terms of enlightenment values. We say that
we’re pioneers. And I firmly believe that reparation is a chance to be pioneers. We
say we set all these examples about liberty and freedom and democracy and all that great
stuff. Well here’s an opportunity for us to live that out. BILL MOYERS:
Having read the article, I know that you do not mean reparations as white folks writing
checks to black folks. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Right. Right. BILL MOYERS:
So in an ideal world, what form would reparations take? TA-NEHISI COATES:
In an ideal world, when we talk about social justice we would understand it as part of
healing that heritage and dealing with that legacy. So, for instance, take health care
right now. Obamacare right now. When you look at a whole swath of the country again where
we had… where enslavement… we had plantation slavery on a very, very deep level. And you look at that and you say, why is there
not a Medicaid expansion going on there? We would be very clear about why it's not going
on there. And those of us who make policy, those of us who have power, who sit on our
courts would think about that when we make rulings. We wouldn't be afraid to say that.
I mean, right now following John Roberts’ line, I think what he said was “…to stop
discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
What we want is a kind of color blindness. We think that's the answer. But color blindness
isn't the answer. Color isn't the problem. Racism is the problem. And being conscious
of racism is the solution. So when you talk about what that looks like concrete, I would
like to see that in our policy. When we were talking about ACA , it's very funny, one of
the attacks from the right, from people like Rush Limbaugh, was that this is reparations.
Well, not quite, but it would be nice if it could be. It would be nice if that was part
of it. If you actually did say that, hey, you know… BILL MOYERS:
Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there’s nothing… Listen, in an ideal… Taking this outside
of the realm of politics, in the realm of just straight talking about this, yeah, this
will disproportionately benefit African Americans. And yeah, that's a really, really good thing.
It might actually help heal this heritage that we have over here. And in an ideal world,
you could actually say that. In a world in which people are actively considering reparations
and actively thinking about it and talking about it in a serious way, you could say that.
You could say that. BILL MOYERS:
And all the more to be said, because it's many of the former Confederate States are
where the metrics of life are the lowest for African Americans. You're saying that in a
just world, that would be rectified. TA-NEHISI COATES:
That would be rectified. And we would talk very, very differently. We would not be afraid
to talk about our heritage. And we would not be afraid to talk about racism. And we would
be able to talk about white supremacy in our policy. We would not have to retreat to other
language like quote unquote, you know, race. Or we would not have to retreat to other language
like quote unquote class. We would say, no, no, no, this is about white supremacy. And
we have a problem with this. And we have had a problem with this for a long time. And we
need to be conscious of that in our policy. When we pass a stimulus budget, for instance,
we need to specifically think about helping people who have been injured in our past,
because they've occupied a certain place in our country. That's what the world looks like
to me. It’s a consciousness thing. Which we don't have at all right now. BILL MOYERS:
You know, some critics who greatly admire your work and who acknowledge that, indeed,
white supremacy has been the central organizing principle of American life, find your pessimism,
that's their term, at odds with the hard evidence. Jonathan Chait of “New York Magazine”
looks at how quote, "…the United States has progressed from chattel slavery to emancipation
to the end of lynching to the end of legal segregation to electing an African-American
president…" and sees that there are real signs of racial maturing. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Yes. Yes, well that's the kind of progress that you highlight and you brag about if you're
not on the other end of it. If you're Martin Luther King and it’s 1965 and you're making
that long march through Alabama, suddenly you can look around and say, wow, at one point
in Alabama, my ancestors a hundred years ago were enslaved right here or in this region.
And isn't it something that we've progressed to a level that I'm not enslaved. Well, that's
progress. And I mean, yes that is progress. Jonathan Chait is very, very much right. Also,
if somebody, every day comes home, and beats you with a tire iron, and then, decides to
stop beating you, that would be progress. It doesn't change the fact that you are laying
down on the ground bleeding. This is fact. So yeah, yeah, it's progress. It's progress.
But what does that then mean? Does that mean everything’s over? Does that mean it's okay?
Does that mean… There are all sorts of progresses that aren't necessarily celebrated. You say,
well, I'm relieved. I agree, I agree that speaks to progress with relief. I am relieved
that all those things happened. But I'm not going to dance and celebrate. And that’s
not to be congratulated. I’m relieved. I think that’s how most African Americans
would greet that. BILL MOYERS:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, I hope every American reads this piece. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Thank you, I hope so to. BILL MOYERS:
And I thank you very much for joining me. TA-NEHISI COATES:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. BILL MOYERS:
So brief a conversation hardly does justice to the force of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ argument
in “The Atlantic.” As you read it, pay close attention to how officially-sanctioned
segregated housing in cities like Chicago and New York determined the neighborhoods
where African Americans lived, which in turn decided the schools their children could attend.
That legacy casts a long shadow: according
to a new study, the country’s most segregated schools are not in the Deep South, they’re
right here in New York. And yet another study -- a survey of all 97,000 public schools
in America by the Department of Education -- finds race to be the deciding factor in
a pattern of inequality that still exists 60 years after the Supreme Court ruled segregation
to be unconstitutional. Among the findings: racial minorities are more likely to have
less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with
less experience.
At our website, BillMoyers.com, we’ll link you to that survey, as well as to two very
good videos produced by “The Atlantic” and based on Ta Nehisi Coates’ reporting.
They tell the story of North Lawndale, that desperately poor community on Chicago’s
West Side, and they look back to the sixties and the Contract Buyer’s League, when black
citizens fought back against Chicago’s rampant housing discrimination. That’s all at BillMoyers.com. I’ll see
you there, and I’ll see you here, next time.åß
