Coates “Well Mr.Williamson, hope everything is going well; I appreciate you coming here and sit down with me to chat.”

Williamson “Same to you. Even though our ideologies are quite different, I still appreciate the opportunity to learn from your angle of things.”

Coates “Let’s get right into topics then! First thing I want to say is – I think we might have a different perception of reparations. What I was trying to say in my article is, reparations should be more than compensations for the past injustices – it’s not a free handout, which will do absolutely nothing in remedying the current inequalities exist between whites and African Americans. What I’m meant was the unfiltered acceptance of our history as a nation. We must recognize that the current disparities in every aspect of lives exist between the races are results of past injustices, not characteristic faults. More explicitly said, African Americans have a much lower median income right now is the direct result that they weren’t allowed to participate in the most stable and effective way to generate wealth! The Home Owner’s Loan Corporation was basically the only means for the average American family to purchase a home. It directly assisted the what is now known as the ‘White Flight’ and concentrated all the poverties within blocks of cities. They facilitated creations of slums and ghettos and it just became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Throughout history, African Americans were the ones who were not given the job opportunities and limited social mobility. It used to be that an African American household made more than double of his neighbor next door because he has to pay a higher rent, higher down payment – if any of them were accessible at all! Bring it back to the topic, what I believe, is that to truly create equality, we must recognize what caused the inequality in the first place – the nation is built on the sufferings of African Americans and the systematic oppression of them even after we claim things are equal.”

Williamson “Wow, that is such a powerful statement. I see where you are coming from now, but hear me out too. What do you think about the other minorities? those immigrants who have given up all they ever had to fight for a chance of establishing themselves here. The jews and the Asian immigrants were not always faced with welcoming smiles. What do you think about them and don’t you think you are excluding their struggles in your article?”

Coates “You’re one hundred percent right when you say that immigrants face the same type of discriminations and hardships that African Americans in the history face. By no means I was downplaying that narrative, it’s just that the sufferings of this race have so profoundly impacted our societies even today that I want to use it as an example to make the claim. You said that reparations are more symbolic in the way that it says that we are not equal because it’s sympathetical. I would say otherwise and argue that my definition of reparation is not sympathetic, it rather is to recognize what one has done in the past to prevent future injustices.”

Williamson “I think that would be a better interpretation of your ideologies, thanks for the clarification and I learned so much from this dialogue!”

Coates “No problem, I am glad.”

The two men continue the intellectual discussions on other current topics…..