1.Identify the four passages where Coates mentions/discusses/describes HR 40, the bill to study reparations. This is the bill that never passes the House, and it’s important that you have ready access to the “places” where Coates discusses it. Quote each mention. Be thinking – hard – about what’s up. Pay careful attention, because Coates is really after more than “how much would it cost.”

Passage 1: “Broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay? But if the practicalities, not the justice, of reparations are the true sticking point, there has for some time been the beginnings of a solution. For the past 25 years, Congressman John Conyers Jr., who represents the Detroit area, has marked every session of Congress by introducing a bill calling for a congressional study of slavery and its lingering effects as well as recommendations for ‘appropriate remedies.’

A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy
solution in Conyers’s bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study
Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. We would support this bill,
submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested” (Coates 20-21)

Passage 2: “That HR 40 has never—under either Democrats or Republicans—made it to the House floor suggests our concerns are rooted not in the impracticality of reparations but in something more existential. If we conclude that the conditions in North Lawndale and black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you’d expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America’s crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world’s oldest democracy?” (Coates 21)

Passage 3: “Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion—and that is perhaps what scares us. 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 47)

Passage 4: “John Conyers’s HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.” (Coates 53)

2. Coates suggests in the first mention that the JUSTICE of reparations may be the issue, not the $. What do you think he means by this?

I think he means that American’s aren’t fully ready to admit that justice must be served because then they must admit that there have been centuries of racism and discrimination in this country. Not to mention that those centuries of blatant discrimination are the basis of America, it’s our very foundation. Anyone can be paid off easily, the problem our country has is that we are too prideful to admit that out “greatness” is caused by white supremacy.

3. In the second mention, he says it’s probably something more “existential.” That perhaps reparations has to do with our EXISTENCE as a country. What might a racial reckoning mean for American democracy?

It might mean that our country and the image of it is completely changed. It will no longer have the facade of the country that built itself from the ground up on sheer willpower and determination. It will now be the country that could only make it to the top by pushing down those who are different or deemed “less worthy”. The country that cheated its way to the top.

4. In the third mention, he perhaps helps us out a bit by suggesting reparations is a kind of threat. What’s that seeming threat? What do you think about it?

The threat is that if we must make reparations then our reputation will be at stake. We will no longer be the underdog that comes out on top. I think it’s a very real threat to the country but one we must accept and grow from. It is so threatening because most Americans simply aren’t ready to admit that this lovely country is founded on lies and extreme racism.

5. In the fourth mention, Coates observes that a reparations conversation might help us out of a “childhood myth.” How does what Coates has detailed challenge the American “myth” or story of itself?

Coates has challenged this by saying the true story. That what so many are lead to believe is just plain wrong. America is not doing everything in its power to make reparations with the black community and we have never put all of our energy into that. The north was just as bad as the south, just in different ways. We have gotten far too good at putting up a facade of equality but still letting most black people slip through the cracks.