1. As you read, make annotations that help you Understand, Ask Questions, Draw Relationships, and Challenge. Post pictures of at least 4 different annotations, using at least two of the moves we’ve been practicing.

2. Pay attention to what happened to Clyde Ross, one example of a Black man who moved from the south to Chicago in the great migration. How does the information Coates provides about housing in Chicago complicate the perhaps more commonly known narrative of historical discrimination? Be sure to quote from at least one part of Coates’ text in Part I. Pay attention to the time period involved.

This information, for me at least, shows how unjust even the North was. I’m sure this is my own ignorance and lack of education on the subject but I always assumed that the north was like heaven compared to the south. Evidently, that is far from the truth. Clyde Ross said, “When I found myself caught up in it, I said, ‘How? I just left this mess. I just left no laws. And no regard. And then I come here and get cheated wide open.” Even he expected life to be astronomically better but instead he found himself still being taken advantage of and treated unfairly.

3. As you read Part II, pay careful attention to the statistics/information. Pick 2-3 pieces of data that strike you as important in some way. Explain why.

“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).” I think this is extremely important to note. I very highly doubt that this staggering difference is solely because the black neighborhood actually has 40 times more crime. The police, the prison system, american judicial systems… they are all biased against black people.

“The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. When financial calamity strikes—a medical emergency, divorce, job loss—
the fall is precipitous.” This is important to note because those numbers are crazy. Black people are essentially doomed no matter what, they will always be hit first and the hardest.

5. Coates notes, in Part III, that HR 40, a bill authorizing the study of reparations, has repeatedly failed to pass the House – under Democratic or Republican leadership. What do you make of Coates’ explanation? Quote and comment.

I think the explanation makes sense. Coates says, “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.” I think this means that no matter how much we claim to have evolved and bettered ourselves, the racism and unspeakable acts our forefathers believed in and took part in run just as strong in our veins. This country has been forged from the steel of racism and segregation and white superiority. One can only do some much change without removing the whole foundation and acknowledging that the faults lie far deeper and stronger than what they would like the world to know.