Joel Mathis

I'm not sure how an effective reparations program would work, but I do know that this is probably about the worst argument against it:   The room grew raucous at times, with spectators hissing at Republican witnesses and Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the subcommittee’s senior Republican, when he spoke against the measure. In a comment that rippled throughout the hearing, Mr. Johnson suggested that great black leaders like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington thought African-Americans should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  “Those great leaders encouraged people to take responsibility for their own lives, because that gives every human being a greater sense of meaning and satisfaction,” he said, adding that the bill “risks communicating the opposite message.”  It's the old "bootstraps for thee" argument, and it presumes that whites have achieved their greater wealth by dint of hard work and grit, so why can't African Americans do t

I came to this book after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me" , which a number of reviews suggested followed in Baldwin's footsteps. It's true there are similarities — both relatively short, yet incisive, essays on what it's like to live as a black man in America — but there are differences: Baldwin's book is written when (in 1963) it seems like white supremacy in America might be undone; perhaps as a result, it's a more hopeful book than what Coates delivered. Which is an odd thing to say about a book that remains bracing, angry, and uncompromising after all these years. A few quotes from the book that seem relevant to our current discussions. These are all taken from the second part of the book, ""Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind":

Three thoughts about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”: • This is a relentlessly political book — how could it not be? — and yet attempts to respond to the book from within the typical left-right Democratic-Republican construct of punditry seem to be insufficient to me — they come to the book, as with other political debates, without curiosity, for the sake of trying to win an argument. Let’s try again. This is an American black man telling us how he perceives living as a black man in America today: It contains no policy prescriptions, no endorsement of party or candidate, no 10-point campaign for better living. We haven’t found the right way to talk about this book yet.