Coates: Mr. Williamson your oppositions toward me may be valid but also fairly flawed. You stated that we as a country will be spitting ourselves based on race, if we were to make programs to benefit one race as opposed to the other. But that is exactly what has already happened, by having government programs benefiting only white families as opposed to black families. This is what created this need of reform. Moreover, Germany was able to pay restitution to the people it wronged not only without spilling its people but also by becoming an example to the rest of the world.

Williamson: Reform is certainly needed but not only for one race, but to benefit all those in poverty. This in turn will mainly help African Americans more because they make up a larger majority of the group. This is shown by the booming economy of Reagan. Where African American prosperity increased (% wise) tenfold of those of white Americans

Coates: This increase is based on percentage. African Americans already have a low income; thus it is far easier to have a higher percentage increase than those of white Americans. But African Americas don’t only need economic help, they also need social reparations. As I stated African American’s see their neighbor’s homes taken away, and live in neighborhoods with correction centers right next to them. Many of these poor African Americans not only grow up economically poor but also dignity poor. They don’t believe they have the same opportunities as white people, rich or poor, and that is in itself an institutional affect.

Williamson: That may be true, but how is their outlook on life different than those of Irish immigrants and European Jews. They both faced discrimination but were able to overcome it and become prosperous. This is your point about the Obamas, that they had to work twice as hard to get where they are. But did they really face any other difficulties than any other group in major poverty.

Coates: Yes, those groups faced difficulties but those groups weren’t forcefully brought here. And those groups weren’t key to building America into the economic super power it is today. This country has profited more from the backs of African Americans than any other group, and has also treated no other group worse.

Williamson: Does this entail the ancestors of these people to then be awarded special privileges based on horrors they did not endure? And allow for people, like yourself, to speak at a special minorities club at prestigious MIT? Much more, if American Americans did not come here forcefully but on choice they still would have been segregated. This is based on people’s natural tendencies to marry among themselves and stay with people who look and have the same culture as them, this is true for people of many ethnicities.

Coates: Your statement of natural segregation is not true. This has been proven again and again with housing and zoning. For as much as one African American tried to get into a white neighborhood, it did not turn into a black neighborhood because those people wanted to be with other African Americans, but because of fear mongering and white flight. This idea of self-segregation is a white theory since it has been shown that a many white people say they are happy in their enclaves while a majority of African Americans state they wish to be in interracial neighborhoods. Thus, I believe that if African Americans were to come here by choice, at the beginning of the country they would have been much more accepted and integrated. As it was in the beginning. At the beginning of this country white and black servants used to riot against their masters together, black and white people used to get married legally, and inter-racial children were accepted, this was before it was discovered that African Americans could be used much more freely for labor and with much less care.

Williamson: Although I agree that African Americans were treated horrendously in the past, the time for reparations is gone. Those who deserve it are dead.

Coates: Those who deserve it cannot be dead when they are still living with the consequences.