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On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing about H.R. 40, a proposal from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) that would authorize a national apology and study reparations for slavery and racial discrimination against black people in America.


Among those testifying before the subcommittee was writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose seminal essay, “The Case for Reparations” is considered by many to be the spark that made the reparations debate a national, mainstream issue. Coates framed his prepared remarks, in part, around a quote from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said of the hearing: “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us living are responsible are a good idea.”

Calling McConnell’s remarks a “familiar reply,” Coates said the Majority Leader’s statement “proffers a strange theory of governance, that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generation.”


“Many of us would love to be taxed for the things we are solely and individually responsible for,” Coates explained. “But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach.”

Coates reasoned that it “is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery” before breaking down the social, political and economic legacy of the Land of the Free’s government-sanctioned institution. But one part of his Holy Ghost-inducing clapback came directly for McConnell’s throat and his claim that “no one alive” is responsible. Coates testified:

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 guard 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.

But instead of rehashing how Coates had all of Black America screaming, “Tell that turtle-looking motherfucker!” at their television sets, we came up with a list of people who are alive that owe reparations.

By no means should this list be considered all-inclusive. However, it is an indication of how many people blissfully walk around thinking that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racial discrimination is dead.


In criminal law, people convicted of theft and people who receive stolen property are ordered to repay the victim. In civil law, when a man is wrongfully incarcerated, he is compensated. In defamation law, when someone is defamed, they receive compensation. In employment law, when someone is underpaid, they are entitled to back wages. Every single aspect of law, justice, and fairness demands that Americans pay reparations for the wages, wealth, dignity and lives that it has taken over the last 400 years.

There is only one reason black people in America have not been compensated for what was stolen:

Because the thieves get to decide.