Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates Talks About Reparations, Race Before Receiving Stowe Award
The
Harriet Beecher Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice is
awarded biennially to an author whose work "makes an impact on a
critical social issue in the tradition of Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'."
Ta-Nehisi Coates had never heard of the Stowe Prize before he was told he would receive it this year. There are a lot of prizes he hadn't thought about until recently. "Most of the time I've been writing and I didn't win anything," he said. "I started winning things in the last three or four years."
He's spent those years solidifying his position as the nation's premier writer on African-American issues. Coates, an editor, correspondent and blogger for The Atlantic monthly magazine, specializes in issues of African-American identity and racism and white supremacy in America.
The Stowe prize and Coates seem destined for each other. Coates will receive the award June 4 at an event at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. He is the third recipient of the prize, following Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in 2011 for "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" and Michelle Alexander in 2013 for "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."
The jewel in Coates' crown is "The Case for Reparations," an Atlantic cover story published last June that makes the case that black Americans' entrenched spot on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder came as the result of decades of conscious collective decisions by white Americans, and a call for Americans to acknowledge this. As he wrote in that blockbuster article, "White supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it."
Debby Applegate, leader of the Stowe prize selection committee, said Coates was chosen before the Ferguson conflict, but that series of events confirmed that he was the right choice. "His writing — clear, incisive, empathetic, and rigorous — has already had a huge impact on this complex debate and his influence is guaranteed to grow as the debate grows louder," she said.
Applegate pointed out another thing that Coates and Stowe have in common: both wrote for the Atlantic Monthly.
In advance of the Stowe awards ceremony, Coates spoke with The Courant.
Q: What do you think about the legacy of Harriet Beecher Stowe as a writer, as an activist, as an agent of social change?
A: Not as much as I probably should. She is well within the tradition of folks who believe their writing matters and who actually effected some change. That's not really a common thing to happen. You can directly see change. She sold an insane number of books. You can actually see folks' consciousness raised. You can't say that about most of us.
Q: Do you consider yourself a person who writes about race or a person who writes about racism?
A: I don't know what it means to write about race. I think it means you write about racism but you want to be polite. .. It makes people feel bad and they don't want to say that. But I try to be very direct.
Q: The word "plunder" pops up a lot in your writing. What do you mean when you refer to the United States' legacy of racially motivated plunder?
A: I wouldn't even call it racially motivated. ... Our concept of racism was invented to justify plunder, to justify taking something from someone else. It's always about taking. Slavery is the most obvious form of plunder. You take everything from a person, their family, their physical body, their freedom, their education. Even after enslavement, this continues. Why do I have the right when things are not going my way to string you up by a tree and burn you alive? Because you are less than me. Why do I have the ability to collect taxes from you and not give you the same kind of services? That's an act of plunder. I think in this country we have a problem saying these sorts of things when talking about race. I want to make it as uncomfortable as it should be. You should not study history to feel better about yourself.
Q: What about people who are not in any position to take anything away from you and don't want to?
A: It's not that advantages dissipate with the generations. Wealth is transmitted through generations. The notion that what happened in the past somehow dissipates is contrary to the very ideas of wealth and inheritance we have in this country.
Q: How long had "Reparations" been stewing in your brain before you actually wrote it?
A: Probably all my life, but around October 2012 I had been studying and looking at a variety of things, the discussion in this country about what's wrong and why black people are at the bottom of every socioeconomic status you can come up with. Most of the explanations were unsatisfactory. I began researching housing policy in this country, which is the foundation of the modern American middle class. They made these things available that led to a great deal of prosperity for a lot of folks, and oh, we were cut out of that. A lot about the world begins to make sense. If your city looks a certain way, it didn't spring up from nothing. It's not organic. This is not God's plan. People had certain policies and here are the results.
Q: When you call for reparations, what did you hope to accomplish? What form would you envision these reparations would take?
A: I don't know. You can't undo it. What you can do though is not create a policy where people believe nothing happened. People walk around and say "I worked hard and got mine all by myself and you need to do the same." We need to get past those myths and make some policies based on what actually happened. No policy is actually perfect. It's important that people make an effort, that they try. We aren't even trying right now. The main thing of the article is to see that there is a case.
Q: When you write about all of your subjects, do you think anyone in a position to change anything is listening?
A: I don't think that much about that. My job is to write as hard as I can. What people take from that is not really up to me.
Q: What reaction do you have when people say we live in a post-racial society?
A: Humor.
Q: When reading about racial strife still happening in this country, it's easy to feel a sense of hopelessness. To put it simply, some people are racists. What are the chances that society can really accomplish anything to prevent evil people from doing evil things?
A:
I think it's possible. This country prides itself on the fact that it
was up against mighty British empire, the most powerful country in the
world. We found the way to harness the power of the atom and to build
all sorts of technological marvels. This is a country that came up with
some great inventions. I don't believe that it can't happen, that it's
impossible. What people want to happen is what will happen.Ta-Nehisi Coates had never heard of the Stowe Prize before he was told he would receive it this year. There are a lot of prizes he hadn't thought about until recently. "Most of the time I've been writing and I didn't win anything," he said. "I started winning things in the last three or four years."
He's spent those years solidifying his position as the nation's premier writer on African-American issues. Coates, an editor, correspondent and blogger for The Atlantic monthly magazine, specializes in issues of African-American identity and racism and white supremacy in America.
The Stowe prize and Coates seem destined for each other. Coates will receive the award June 4 at an event at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. He is the third recipient of the prize, following Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in 2011 for "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" and Michelle Alexander in 2013 for "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."
The jewel in Coates' crown is "The Case for Reparations," an Atlantic cover story published last June that makes the case that black Americans' entrenched spot on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder came as the result of decades of conscious collective decisions by white Americans, and a call for Americans to acknowledge this. As he wrote in that blockbuster article, "White supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it."
Debby Applegate, leader of the Stowe prize selection committee, said Coates was chosen before the Ferguson conflict, but that series of events confirmed that he was the right choice. "His writing — clear, incisive, empathetic, and rigorous — has already had a huge impact on this complex debate and his influence is guaranteed to grow as the debate grows louder," she said.
Applegate pointed out another thing that Coates and Stowe have in common: both wrote for the Atlantic Monthly.
In advance of the Stowe awards ceremony, Coates spoke with The Courant.
Q: What do you think about the legacy of Harriet Beecher Stowe as a writer, as an activist, as an agent of social change?
A: Not as much as I probably should. She is well within the tradition of folks who believe their writing matters and who actually effected some change. That's not really a common thing to happen. You can directly see change. She sold an insane number of books. You can actually see folks' consciousness raised. You can't say that about most of us.
Q: Do you consider yourself a person who writes about race or a person who writes about racism?
A: I don't know what it means to write about race. I think it means you write about racism but you want to be polite. .. It makes people feel bad and they don't want to say that. But I try to be very direct.
Q: The word "plunder" pops up a lot in your writing. What do you mean when you refer to the United States' legacy of racially motivated plunder?
A: I wouldn't even call it racially motivated. ... Our concept of racism was invented to justify plunder, to justify taking something from someone else. It's always about taking. Slavery is the most obvious form of plunder. You take everything from a person, their family, their physical body, their freedom, their education. Even after enslavement, this continues. Why do I have the right when things are not going my way to string you up by a tree and burn you alive? Because you are less than me. Why do I have the ability to collect taxes from you and not give you the same kind of services? That's an act of plunder. I think in this country we have a problem saying these sorts of things when talking about race. I want to make it as uncomfortable as it should be. You should not study history to feel better about yourself.
Q: What about people who are not in any position to take anything away from you and don't want to?
A: It's not that advantages dissipate with the generations. Wealth is transmitted through generations. The notion that what happened in the past somehow dissipates is contrary to the very ideas of wealth and inheritance we have in this country.
Q: How long had "Reparations" been stewing in your brain before you actually wrote it?
A: Probably all my life, but around October 2012 I had been studying and looking at a variety of things, the discussion in this country about what's wrong and why black people are at the bottom of every socioeconomic status you can come up with. Most of the explanations were unsatisfactory. I began researching housing policy in this country, which is the foundation of the modern American middle class. They made these things available that led to a great deal of prosperity for a lot of folks, and oh, we were cut out of that. A lot about the world begins to make sense. If your city looks a certain way, it didn't spring up from nothing. It's not organic. This is not God's plan. People had certain policies and here are the results.
Q: When you call for reparations, what did you hope to accomplish? What form would you envision these reparations would take?
A: I don't know. You can't undo it. What you can do though is not create a policy where people believe nothing happened. People walk around and say "I worked hard and got mine all by myself and you need to do the same." We need to get past those myths and make some policies based on what actually happened. No policy is actually perfect. It's important that people make an effort, that they try. We aren't even trying right now. The main thing of the article is to see that there is a case.
Q: When you write about all of your subjects, do you think anyone in a position to change anything is listening?
A: I don't think that much about that. My job is to write as hard as I can. What people take from that is not really up to me.
Q: What reaction do you have when people say we live in a post-racial society?
A: Humor.
Q: When reading about racial strife still happening in this country, it's easy to feel a sense of hopelessness. To put it simply, some people are racists. What are the chances that society can really accomplish anything to prevent evil people from doing evil things?
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