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I think Coates' concept of reparations would be for the Jim Crow and later practices that crippled African Americans' ability to build wealth like white people

I think Coates' concept of reparations would be for the Jim Crow and later practices that crippled African Americans' ability to build wealth like white people have. Things like housing discrimination, job discrimination, etc. Perhaps also things like the Tulsa Race Riot and other efforts that wiped out black business districts. Consider the problems Jackie Robinson, first black player in Major League Baseball, had in trying to buy a house in the suburbs of Manhattan (Westchester County, NY and in Connecticut) http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/jackie-robinson-buys-home-connecticut/ http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/jackie-robinson-b... For these things, the perpetrators and/or their children are likely still alive, as are the beneficiaries.

api 8y ago
Contemporary young people should find it easy to understand how this worked and how housing discrimination prevented wealth building. That's because the same thing is now kind of happening intergenerationally via older NIMBY homeowners restricting supply and driving prices to unattainable heights. "Generational redlining" is of course an unintended consequence rather than an intentional policy, but the nature of the effect is illustrative and could serve as a teaching moment. Good or bad, homeownership is a major way people build wealth in our society. Being excluded from it prevents you from building wealth. Take the outrage that many younger people feel about generational exclusion from homeownership and then realize that until relatively recently blacks were systematically excluded in much more explicit ways: exclusion from loans, red lining, etc. The effects were the same: no equity, no ability to escape increasing rent, family instability.