The case for reparations

Quite some time ago, I concluded, with Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, that the Lord has already determined, and wrought, the reparations owed for the years of American chattel slavery. Credit is owed to Ta-Nehisi Coates for accomplishing the near-impossible feat of making me reconsider an opinion with his Polk-prize-winning 2014 essay, "The Case for Reparations." He powerfully demonstrates that systematic oppression of African-Americans continued long past the formal end of chattel slavery, effectively countering my assumptions regarding that for which African-Americans might be owed reparation. It's a long read, but Coates' arguments are thoughtful and deserve thoughtful engagement.

What reparations, then? How might they be gathered, administered, and distributed? Is money even the issue? At the end of section IX, Coates writes,

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Amen.

But how to effect such a spiritual renewal? Nate DiMeo, creator and producer of the elegant and wonderful The Memory Palace, has a suggestion in "Notes on an Imagined Plaque to be Added to the Statue of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Upon Hearing that the Memphis City Counci has Voted to Move it and the Exhumed Remains of General Forrest and his Wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, from their Current Location in a Park Downtown, to the Nearby Elmwood Cemetery." DiMeo and Coates agree that in order for our nation to truly change, we must first become historically aware.

But that, in turn, must be a spiritual renewal. Our nation must want to become historically aware, to know its sins in order to make amends for them. Those who want to know their sins are those who want to repent of them because they long to lay them at the foot of the Cross of Christ.

Both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nate DiMeo speak eloquently of the persistent and evil problem of race relations in these United States. Perhaps unwittingly, the case they make is, ultimately, a case for the preaching of the Gospel.