On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the debate for and against reparations raged between an older, soft spoken black American author and his younger, more contentious African-American counterpart.
Shelby Steele, author of the book, Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country, debated Ta-Nahisi Coates of The Atlantic, who just won an award for his cover story that made the case for reparations.
In his book, Steele argues that liberals have "damaged the black family more profoundly than segregation ever did" by their insistence that the U.S. government should atone for America's past sins. Whereas Coates' argument stemmed from this: "Reparations is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely."
Stephanopoulos began with Coates, asking him why he believes that. Coates said:
Well, because history matters. It's pretty clear to us that George Washington matters. We all get together and celebrate on July Fourth, independence. We're all very proud of our legacy, our history. We all talk about America's great legacies of democratizing force in the world. We talk about the greatest generation in World War II. We have a problem talking about history when it disadvantages us. And I think any sort of full consideration of patriotism in this country can't just talk about history when it favors us. We have to talk about it when it disfavors us, too.
Steele, on the other hand, held to the argument that the struggle within America is really one for individual freedom, not fighting for advantage. He said that thinking white America somehow owes blacks is what has held the community back and kept them reliant on government programs for so long. Steele said thinking to the contrary leads to more dependency, not less.
Most shocking for Coates was to hear that Steele believes that absolutely nothing should be done to close the wealth gap between blacks and whites. Instead, Steele suggested that blacks should put more energy into making their own lives better and resist arguments that cause them to be "tempted into arrogance."
Transcript below:
Stephanopoulos: Shelby Steele, you have argued in the past that the problem with reparations would be 'trading honor for dollars, selling our birthright for a pot of porridge.' What did you mean by that?
Steele: Yes, you know, I think there's a problem of dependency that -- where we have sort of allowed that to happen in our community, to be more dependent and that's hurt a great deal.
Stephanopoulos: How do you answer the argument that Mr. Steele makes in his book, Ta-Nehisi, that this government action has divided us more than ever before, done more harm than good for African-Americans?
Coates: I look forward to reading Mr. Steele's book. I haven't gotten a chance -- a copy yet. Bit I think I'm a little familiar with the argument. And what I'd say, he's correct. Government action has divided us, but I don't think it's the government action that Mr. Steele is talking about. I think the government action that has divided us is the taxes that were put on African-American labor during enslavement. I think it's the red-lining period where we effectively erected a white middle class in this country and declined to do the same thing with black people and, effectively, left them out for unscrupulous lenders to take advantage of. I think the criminal justice policy in this country, which sees African-American men construe some minuscule portion of the world's population and yet 8% of the enslaved population. We definitely have government policies that divide us. I don't think it's the ones that Mr. Steele is talking about though.
Stephanopoulos: What's the answer to that?
Steele: The answer to that is -- one is, can be tempted into arrogance there. But the answer, I think, for the most part, is again, this idea that this fact, really, that we have become more dependent as a result of the efforts on the part of white America to sort of do well by us, to do the good, to be helpful, and to make up for the shame of the past. And that sort of thinking, I think, is what's caused us to -- held us back.
Stephanopoulos: If affirmative action is not the answer, how do you close this gap, this huge gap in wealth between whites and blacks?
Steele: You don't. You don't close it. You don't do anything. You leave it alone. You practice -- as best as possible -- a discipline of freedom where you -- your struggle is not for some sort of advantage, but your struggle is for freedom itself. and that's how -- that's what you, I think, do.
Stephanopoulos: Leave it alone?
Coates: I'm sorry, that's just completely untenable to me. The gap that you're talking about -- for every five cents in wealth that African-Americans have, white families have a dollar in wealth. There's a 20 to 1 gap. That gap didn't get there by magic. That gap is a result of housing policy that we had in this country. A long, long policy of taking wealth out of African-American communities and putting them elsewhere. And it has real consequences. I grew up in a neighborhood in West Baltimore, where every day I went to school, and at least a third of my brain was occupied with the safety of my body. That's a result of that community being rendered in a certain way for a long time in our history. And so, just leaving it alone, sort of, casts young black boys and young black girls who are going to schools like I went to as a child and just says, 'Hey, go out there and cope.' That's untenable to me.
Steele: I went to those kinds of schools, too. Worse, worse. I was in the days of segregation. And again, you know, there's this sort of compounding effect where we -- I call it 'character-ological racism' -- where we see racism as you do, I think, as immobile, immovable. And the result of that, again, is more dependency, not less dependency.
Coates: I see it as totally movable. I see it totally movable.
Steele: And the point is, is that -- it ain't gonna' move. It is what it is. It's not going to change, it's not going to go away. We need to get about the business of making our own lives as best we can.
