America must reckon with its original sin of slavery

America must reckon with its original sin of slavery

ESTHER J. CEPEDA 2:53 p.m. PDT July 14, 2014

(Photo: Washington Post Writers Group )

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CHICAGO — In his 2004 book “The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Blacks and What It Means for America,” author Nicolas C. Vaca shatters the myth of a Rainbow Coalition among minorities.

Paraphrasing Latino activist Daniel Osuna, Vaca notes that though, in theory, “Latinos and blacks have parallel histories of suffering at the hands of white America, and that they also share a history of struggling to obtain social, economic, and educational opportunities,” it pretty much ends there. “In the real world the ostensible moral and philosophical bases for coalition politics have largely fallen apart because of competing self-interests,” Vaca wrote.

Parallel, as in side by side, yes. But not exactly equivalent.

This distinction came to mind as I read Manuel Roig-Franzia’s Washington Post profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic and author of the blockbuster cover story “The Case for Reparations.”

Here’s the part that made my eyeballs bug out of my head:

“But what also has been notable is the reaction of like-minded readers to the piece, which took two years to complete,” wrote Roig-Franzia. “Everywhere he goes, Coates hears versions of the same plea: What about my group? What about Native Americans? What about Latino immigrants? What about me?”

Coates tells Roig-Franzia one morning at a Capitol Hill coffee shop: “You get here and people say, ‘Why can’t you do that for our community?’” Coates “calls the reaction ‘disrespectful’ but ‘not illogical.’ Disrespectful because he believes the experience of blacks in America deserves its own, focused examination. Not illogical because he can empathize with the desire of people who feel wronged.”

It is remarkably brave that a prominent African-American intellectual would buck the tyranny of political correctness and say, basically: Hey, let’s not compare apples and oranges here — a sentiment I heartily agree with.

“When I said ‘disrespectful,’ I didn’t mean to me, personally,” Coates told me in a telephone interview. “What I meant was disrespect to one particular people. I spent two years of my life studying this; it wasn’t some simple petition for reparations. It’s very much rooted in a specific African-American experience. It’s not simply about people who are not white, or people who are victims of oppression, but about a specific period of our history.”

Coates elaborated, “I could almost see Japanese-Americans make a case because of their internment or the Native Americans, but I just d

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