Congressional Hearing
on HR 40 on Reparations: Testimony by Ta-Nehisi Coates
As we
continue to work on our upcoming issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on “The Ethics of Memory: What
Does it Mean to Apologize for Historic Wrongs,” recent events have caught up
with our efforts. On June 19th,
the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties conducted a hearing on HR 40. - Commission to Study and Develop
Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act? Among those who testified
before the committee was Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose influential 2014 article “The
Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic
revived the issue of reparations for slavery and its legacy. Below
is the transcript of his testimony.
Testimony by Ta-Nehisi
Coates before the House Subcommittee on HR 40
Yesterday, when
I asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a
familiar reply. America should not be held liable for something that happened
150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible. This rebuttal
proffers a strange theory of governance that American accounts are somehow
bound by the lifetime of its generations. But well into the century the United
States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We
honor treaties that date back some 200 years despite no one being alive who
signed those treaties.
Many of us
would love to be taxed for the things we are solely and individually
responsible for. But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective
enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach. It would seem
ridiculous to dispute invocations of the founders, or the Greatest Generation,
on the basis of a lack of membership in either group. We recognize our lineage
as a generational trust, as inheritance and the real dilemma posed by
reparations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance. It’s impossible to imagine
America without the inheritance of slavery.
As historian
Ed Baptiste has written, enslavement “shaped every crucial aspect of the
economy and politics” of America, so that by 1836 more than $600 million,
almost half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or
indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the
enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America:
$3 billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country
combined.
The method
of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling nor persuasion, but
torture, rape, and child trafficking. Enslavement reigned for 250 years on
these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hallowed
principles — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — to all, regardless
of color. But America had other principles in mind. And so, for a century after
the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror,
a campaign that extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell.
It is
tempting to divorce this modern campaign of terror, of plunder, from
enslavement, but the logic of enslavement, of white supremacy, respects no such
borders, and the god of bondage was lustful and begat many heirs. Coup d’états
and convict leasing. Vagrancy laws and debt peonage. Redlining and racist G.I.
bills. Poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism.
We grant that
Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he was alive for the
electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac
Woodard. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama and a regime
premised on electoral theft. Majority Leader McConnell cited civil rights
legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the
harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by
a government sworn to protect them. He was alive for the redlining of Chicago
and the looting of black homeowners of some $4 billion. Victims of that plunder
are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority
leader.
What they
know, what this committee must know, is that while emancipation deadbolted the
door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open. And
that is the thing about Senator McConnell’s “something”: It was 150 years ago.
And it was right now.
The typical
black family in this country has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white
family. Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women.
And there is, of course, the shame of this land of the free boasting the
largest prison population on the planet, of which the descendants of the enslaved
make up the largest share.
The matter
of reparations is one of making amends and direct redress, but it is also a
question of citizenship. In H.R. 40, this body has a chance to both make good
on its 2009 apology for enslavement, and reject fair-weather patriotism, to say
that this nation is both its credits and debits. That if Thomas Jefferson
matters, so does Sally Hemings. That if D-Day matters, so does Black Wall
Street. That if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow.
Because the
question really is not whether we’ll be tied to the somethings of our past, but
whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them. Thank you.
