Author/journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates address as the keynote speaker at the Harvard conference on “Universities and Slavery” followed by his discussion with the President of Harvard.
"You have a moral responsibility to act, to think, to know." In case you don't get to the end of this interview, please allow me to re-emphasize the call-to-action. I'm on my 2nd reading of "The Water Dancer," obsessed by it. #TaNehisiCoates
The brother is brave. He's bold. He told the president of Harvard that if he was her, he would make the history of slavery and its financial distribution to schools such as Harvard a requisite study. Bravo brother.
My only argument is that the brother tries to speak for white people or in their defense, saying "we". When clearly Black people have no problem digesting truth and taking accountability the way white people do.
"clearly Black people have no problem digesting truth and taking accountability the way white people do." LOL OH MY SIDES ROFLMAO please, please, tell me more, kang. LOL
Blank Spott You’re laughter will be replaced with screams when you see what Allah does to this country for what you’re people have done to us. Keep watching the news.
Regina is no representative of the greatness of America. Henry Ford hired black and white workers, proudly. Many black people became wealthy and successful in America. Many white people helped and cheered them on. You have a choice, Alim. It's not a choice between black and white. It's a choice between individualism vs collectivism. Do you side with your racial "group" and define yourself by what you were born into and had no control over? Or do you uphold reason and individualism and join a brotherhood of values, made up of many races? As for Allah (or Jesus for that matter) religion has proven its complete lack of worth throughout history: wars, crusades, jihads, inquisitions, burning of books, banning of science and progress. The Islamic golden age was the best that could be said of Islam, and it was much more about atheism, science and medicine than about Allah and submission. I rest my case.
This young man demonstrates the great power of knowledge in that he has obviously spent a great deal of time and effort in researching an abundance of history of this country especially when it comes to slavery and the civil war and then makes this history relevant to American society today Tanehesi Coates is brilliant at what he does.
Blank, yes, sadly, this is where the argument ends, and has always ended throughout history when one group clashed with another group on a racial basis. This is why we all need to adopt reason and individualism, and abandon racial ties, if we ever hope to make progress and gain freedom.
When your motive is not to set an example but through your hard work & your greatnes you become one.....thank you sir for the inspiration for me to dig deeper into my history & hopefully i to can make significant changes not only for myself but for others
He is absolutely right; when a wrong is done it is not enough that it be stopped - it must be repaid. He mentions Native Americans as well. We who were not directly responsible for these atrocities committed against blacks and Native Americans nevertheless continue to profit from them every day of our lives. We need to give real estate, guarantee high level education, jobs and income to all blacks and Native Americans at the very least.
Slavery and the Jim Crow era is still alive and well. The tactics may have changed but the principles are the same. We were brought here as slaves and as long as we are here we will be slaves.
Regina, Ta insults black people by pretending to represent them or their interests. Many black people aren't as you say, but are in fact, intelligent, ambitious, hard-working, caring of their families and proud of their country. They see themselves as INDIVIDUALS first and black second or even last. They don't passively cling to group affiliations, but actively create their own identities.
@@enlist6450 yes, it's sad to think of all those people who died and their families who suffered without them and now theyre grouped in with the same side they fought against and beat. Shouldntve even bothered.
I wish that there were reparations, even if it were only to make sure every black child gets the very best education starting in pre-school, through college with supporting things like healthy meals in school, supporting and getting the support of their parents, treating all with respect. The very least we can do.
Shut. The fuck. Up. You have absolutely no idea why any of this is happening, even though you're commenting on a video that expressly and explicitly described why everything you just said was wrong. Educate yourself.
Can you ever have justice in a stolen land? Prob not, but proper reparation goes some way, and it's not just a monetary issue, here in Europe positive discrimination for example has some success in attempts to balence the social condition of traditionaly disadvantaged like Women, Minority groups etc.albeit also caused resement and hostility, for those who think it's too big an undertaking needs to acknowledge the crime was also huge.
All land was stolen until there were such a thing as property rights and rule of law. How can one claim to "own" something if one doesn't recognise and uphold the principle of ownership? But land doesn't equal wealth anyhow. There's plenty of land on Earth. No shortage of it. What is always and eternally in short supply is human ingenuity. It's human ingenuity that transforms land/nature into things valuable to human consumption, and ultimately, wealth. Positive discrimination doesn't benefit anyone. It slows down the economy, reinforces prejudices, encourages "white-lash", degrades people from proud, independent, productive entrepreneurs into weak, coddled, dependent "professional victims" and alienates them from those (of whatever race) who don't need the hand-outs. American needs a revolution all right: a FREE MARKET revolution. Get the government out of the economy and Americans of all stripes will be better off and more united.
thanks ta nehisi coates, critical thinking question: porsha olayiwola reminds us the grips of gender permeating the community of black lives activism. could we posit that a female black activist would reach such a pinnacle of attention?
Anthony Johnson was a former African slave sold in Virginia as an indentured servant, as was the law at that time. When he'd completed his term he was awarded land and started a tobacco plantation, buying indentured servants both black and white to work his land. When he refused to release a black field hand(John Casor) a white neighbor for whom Casor wanted to work supported Casor in suing for his freedom. In 1654 the court decided in Johnson's favor, making him-a former black slave from Africa- the first legal slaveholder in the American colonies. More than 20,000 slaves were owned by nearly 4,000 freed black slaveholders from all 13 colonies. The list of examples is obviously long but occasionally some were quite ruthless: Nat Butler owned a farm but made his real money from slave trading. He lured runaway slaves to his farm then depending on the profit sold them back to the original owner or to other slaveholders. The area most populous of freed black slaveholders was New Orleans where 28% of freed blacks owned slaves. With civil war eminent the freed blacks of new Orleans pledged their support for the Confederacy, declaring: The freed colored population of Louisiana own slaves and are dearly attached to their native land and they are ready to she'd blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for abolutionism, no love for the north but they have plenty for Louisiana. They will fight for her in 1861 as they did in 1814-1815.
If you were a black person who experiences racism, would you prefer: A) longer life expectancy, cheaper housing, faster commute, more job opportunities generally? Or B) a tiny number of people to pretend to feel sorry for you to make themselves look good in front of others?
@En List, i prefer not to experience racism, would you prefer to be stabbed in the back and have the stabber pull the knife out halfway, or would you prefer not to be stabbed at all?
Affirmative Action is a reparation. Quotas in Federal employment are reparations. Quotas exist in higher education as well and in america's extensive social welfare system there is an explicit reparation.
Someone should remind Coates that he also benefits from the fruits of slavery. By living in the US, he drives on roads, is protected by the US military, has access to healthcare, etc. Obviously black people have not benefited from living in the United States AS MUCH as white people. But black people living in the US today have an, on average, a much higher standard of living than people in Africa. There's a reason almost no rich black people move to Africa. (And no, white people are not still responsible for all of Africa's problems. Most African nations have been independent for over fifty years.)
There's too much fallacious content and erroneous reasoning in this talk to comment on at once. It seems pretty clear that Ta Nehisi is a socialist (though he doesn't use that word openly; most don't). He seems committed to redistribution of wealth - or reparations as he terms it - based on race rather than the meritorious operation of a free market. Never mind that many of his generation and several removed weren't slaves, while plenty of his generation, and several removed, HAVE emigrated to America from conditions possibly similar or even equivalent to what slaves experienced, and rather than demanding reparations, only ask for the freedom and opportunity to live, work, produce and build their own wealth. Never mind that plenty of his generation who DID descend from slaves, have, knowingly or not, embraced capitalism and the virtues it entails, and have built their own identities and souls, demanding nothing but the earned in body as in spirit, and receiving the rewards of wealth, self-worth and happiness. Ta takes a brief moment to remark on the wealth the southern slaveowners built on the backs of slaves, never once mentioning the CIVIL WAR that was fought between the south and north to end slavery, nor the vastly superior profitability of the capitalist north, bouyed by the invention of the steamship, the building of transcontinental railroads, electrification, the automobile, television, etc. etc. America was built on freedom, not slavery. Slavery was neither a speed-bump, nor was it the entire road. It was a terrible blight on the country, which took a civil war to put an end to. The civil war occured because, unlike every other known nation in history, America was built on a PRINCIPLE: the principle of inalienable individual rights. This principle applies now, as it did then, to all sexes, races, creeds, etc. As such, it was upheld by the founders, despite the evil of some of them being slave owners. Their slave owning was an abrogation of that principle. The principle still stood and stands.
My uncle emigrated to the United States in 1968. The year the Housing Act was passed because MLK was assassinated. There was massive resistance to the act and protests all over. Richard Nixon will later give a speech stating that it wasn't the job of the federal government to desegregate the suburbs. He couldn't get a house wherever he wanted because of systemic racism. Had he immigrated from Europe his experience with housing would've been very different. I can say that because we look where the European immigrants who came in the same era lived compared to where he had to live. In the 1970s Boston, Massachusetts went through the desegregation crisis where they were rioting against school desegregation. Delaware was fighting against busing as white parents came together to fight school desegregation. Philadelphia had the same issues around its suburbs. The south regrouped and elected and reelected segregationists. Some of them like mayor Hartfield of Atlanta changed their tactics from outright bigotry to sophisticated strategies like annexing suburbs of Atlanta to dilute the political power of the city's black population. The first black mayor of Detroit, Coleman Alexander Young was constantly in the cross hairs of the city suburbs and political conservatives who fought him every step of the way as he tried to combat the city's extreme police brutality in the 1970s and 80s. Back to your America's founding. Your founding fathers were slaveholders. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, right next to his slave. Your Supreme Court Justices were slaveholders. Your members of Congress were slaveholders. Your wonderful banking industry, Insurance industry made a significant part of their revenues from slavery. All 13 founding members states were slave states. New York abolished slavery in 1827 but they had no problem letting slave ships dock in their port and then transfer the slaves to the south. The last slave ship, the Clotilda, arrived in 1860, right before the Civil War. Some of the slaves were transported to Alabama from New York. Other countries abolished slavery without fighting a civil war. Fighting a civil war over slavery isn't a flex. Black Americans faced racism fighting for the union during the civil war, fighting for the US during the Spanish-American war, fighting for the US during World War I and World War II. The Confederacy, after losing the war immediately passed the black codes to undermine the reconstruction amendments. I'm tired man. This is too much.
Are multiple generations of job preferences for blacks not reparations? What about multiple generations of educational and scholarship preferences? If being white is not a disadvantage in getting into university, why did Elizabeth Warren pretend to be a Native American on her application? The suggestion by Coates is an insistence that we should be judging people by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. His views are a clear expression of what it means to discriminate against people because of their race. That’s not a step forward. It actually hurts the poor by the divide and rule trick. It’s too bad but there really is a long way to go before freedom and his views are simply bigoted.
Multiple generations of job preferences, educational opportunities and scholarship preferences? Was that before or after freedom fighters and civil rights leaders like Medger Evers, Malcolm X, Dr King, Fred Hampton were assassinated?
@@abukebbay8399 Malcolm was assassinated by members of a religious sect who were the predecessors of the racists of today. Luckily Malcolm was smart and rejected the heresy of his assassins. You forgot JFK and Robert Kennedy. So it was before and after. Right?
@@Hoireabard How many black people did the Nation of Islam incarcerate? How many did mortgages and business loans did they deny? How many schools did they defund? If they had assassinated any of the Kennedys they would've been obliterated off the face of the earth. Racism isn't just about hurling insults or committing acts of violence, any jack and Jill can do that. It's about doing it knowing that you will get away with it and then follow through. Andrew Jackson committed genocide just with a paper and a pen when he signed on the Indian Removal Act. Andrew Jackson is still worshipped today, his face is on the $20 bill. There is no black person dead or alive that can do that. By the way, there is an ongoing case about the assasination of Malcolm X. Let's wait for the results.
@@abukebbay8399 it depends on what you mean by incarceration. The Nation of Islam did not run state prisons. However, according to Malcolm, Elijah Muhammad kept many underage girls as virtual sexual prisoners. The poor children were not of the age of consent. Malcolm protested and, again according to him, Elijah wanted to kill him. Malcolm was smart. The Nation of Islam wasn’t a banking organization either. But again, Malcolm had accusations of corruption as bad as any bank to make about the supposedly religious organization. What evidence do you have that they would have suffered more by killing Kennedy than by killing Malcolm (as Malcolm himself warned)? Yes, racism is about doing it and getting away with it. It’s commonplace and Jussi Smollett sure was surprised when he got caught red-handed. The corrupt Chicago prosecutor who dropped the charges thought she would get away with covering it up as usual. She was a friend of the Obamas, but the case was too high profile and she couldn’t sweep her racist cover-up under the Chicago carpet. . He should still be in jail. You’re right about that. You must not be familiar with the genocide by Shaka Zulu when tribes throughout Southern Africa were depopulated during Zulu expansion. Also, it wasn’t so long ago that Hutus slaughtered over a million Tutsis in just one month. I’m surprised you didn’t know. What year were you born? It brings Elijah Muhammad back to mind. While he enslaved underage girls for sexual pleasure he preached white people were the devil. Racist scapegoating is easy isn’t it? You’re right about that too!
@@Hoireabard I never said black people or Africans don't commit crimes or do evil. There are plenty examples of that. Racism isn't about evil. Its about dispossessing resources and opportunities from one group for the benefit of another group which occasionally involves physical violence. Andrew Jackson didn't wipe out the native population simply out of animosity. He was a bigot, but he was following the agenda of the United States to dispossess the indigenous people of their land and their human rights.
