Summary: The Case For Reparations

‘Social Contract Theories and the Rights of People of Color’ Homework
Nidhi Lala
Indiana University, Bloomington
Philosophy-P
145
Professor Sandra Shapshay
18th, September, 2014
Ta-Nehisi Coates makes an incredibly powerful statement about the rights of African Americans in ‘The Case for Reparations’. He traverses American History by exposing the various socioeconomic ways in which African American have been exploited. Coates’ shows through this essay that the exploitative acts of the past directly caused the disadvantages facing African Americans today.
His argument for reparations rests on four basic premises-
1. The philosopher Locke, on the topics of morality and justice, writes that:
Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes
2. African Americans have, in a multitude of ways, been exploited at the hands of Whites; perpetrators have ranged from the U.S. federal government to private individuals and corporations (Coates, 2014).The methods of exploitation used in the past included, but were not limited to, discriminatory housing policies embodied in the FHA, and more recently, predatory loans offered to African Americans by Wells Fargo (Coates,
African Americans who don’t receive opportunities for advancement naturally get frustrated with society, which may catapult into violent outbursts among sections of the highly disadvantaged population. Even those African Americans who were subjugated to and suffer to this day from the brutalities of discriminatory policies may, and have every right to, feel oppressed by this system. Looking at the issue from a societal view, I argue that the higher authority has to take certain measures to ensure peace for this generation and incoming