Up from Racism

The Case for Reason About Reparations for Slavery

Last summer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor for The Atlantic Monthly, set a new traffic record for the magazine's website with his whopping 16,000-word, 10-chapter June cover story, "The Case for Reparations." Drawing not from the slavery era, but from the post-Civil War years up to the present, the one-time history major from Howard University wove together several multi-generational stories arousing empathy for the descendants of emancipated slaves. It was well-written and commendably devoid of angry overtones.

It wasn't so much a case for reparations, though, as it was a plea for America to begin a national conversation about reparations. Specifically, Coates wants the U.S....