Homework for 3/31
- HR 40 is the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. Coates talks about how we would support this bill, but America is not interested. HR 40 has never even made it to the House floor. Coates suggests that the reason HR 40 has not been passed is not because of the impracticality of reparations but because of something more existential. It may be because our country believes that they can never repay African Americans for what they have done, so there’s no point in passing the bill. To the Americans, the idea of reparations threatens something much deeper, their heritage, history, and standing in the world.
- In the early 1900’s African America’s were treated nowhere near equal to white people. Many American’s had fixed mindsets that didn’t allow them to expand their thoughts on African Americans living and working the same way white people do. In 1961, when an African American man named Clyde Ross, bought a house he was charged very unfairly compared to the white families that previously lived in the exact same house. Coates states, ” Ross had bought his house for $27,500. The seller, not the previous homeowner but a new kind of middleman, had bought it for only $12,000 six months before selling it to Ross.” (Coates). This quote explains how Clyde Ross was charged over double the amount that the seller bought the house for just because he’s black. The seller knew that Ross would not be able to afford his monthly payments so he made them extremely high so that he’d be able to kick Ross and his family out, but that never happened to white people. Carol Dweck has a lot of ideas about fixed and growth mindsets. Carol Dweck explains a fixed mindset as, “their intelligence had been up for judgment, and they failed. Instead of luxuriating in the power of yet, they were gripped in the tyranny of now.” (Dweck). White Americans in the early 1900’s had fixed mindsets, they believed that they couldn’t treat African American’s equally because nobody else was, they were still seen as different. White people didn’t want to have their intelligence up for judgement if they treated black people equally, other white people would think they’re crazy for doing that.
- I believe that Americans don’t want the HR 40 bill passed because it gives them some form of discomfort. They aren’t willing to pay back the African American’s because it might ruin their image or their pride. Coates states, “The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.” (Coates). This quote gives a few reasons as to why America does not want to pass the HR 40 bill, it threatens their heritage, history, and rank in the world. America does not want to give in and pay back the African Americans because it’s our of their comfort zone and it’s not who they normally are, they don’t want to be seen as weak. Avoiding doing something that makes you uncomfortable happens to everyone, every day. Lukianoff and Haidt talk about a similar idea in their reading. They speak about how college students can be very sensitive these days and don’t want to learn or talk about certain parts of history because it makes them uncomfortable, Lukianoff and Haidt state, “The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable.” (Lukianoff/Haidt). This quote shows how students today have changed the way of learning, colleges have cut out parts of curriculums because students feel that it could be awkward or uncomfortable, similar to the US. The Americans don’t want to pass the HR 40 bill because they don’t want to look back at history and face the facts of what has happened.
➤
