As a lover of history and an advocate for Karma, I know that our present day is an interconnected and often complicated chain of events stretching back in time, often obscured by misrepresentation, many times repressed to hide shame.

So when a columnist with conservative tendencies, David Brooks, wrote an article this past week endorsing reparations for African American slavery I was forced to re-examine my position and my understanding of this divisive topic. Admittedly, I found that my knee jerk opposition to this concept was not based on any sound argument nor did I have any compelling evidence to support my opposition. On the contrary, deeper examination revealed that my opposition to reparations was based on a combination of ignorance and avoidance behavior… an avoidance of examining a topic that could potentially further polarize an already deeply divided country.

And then I realized… I’m part of the problem. While I post support for Black Lives Matter, while I rage at the hate-filled rhetoric of white supremacists, I am simultaneously perpetuating a myth that we, as a country, don’t need any moral reckoning with our history. Rather, my firm belief was that the road to racial justice lies solely in a present day moral reckoning. And, any efforts to trace the lineage of discrimination beyond my myopic lifespan would distract and divide the political resolve to address racial injustice in its present form.

And then Brooks linked me to a 2014 article in the ‘The Atlantic’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations. Much of the African American history that Coates led me through in his article was not unknown to me. However, when he laid it out, end-to-end, as a pervasive and foundational theme in the history of our country, something changed in my current understanding of why the African American community is still largely excluded from the American Dream. And, as is the case for many epiphanies, my first reaction was “Of course!” How could today’s current economic and political climate for African Americans be anything other than what it is!

African Americans have endured through an unbroken chain of events spanning 400 years that have systematically, in one form or another, deprived them of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yes, America HAS made progress, but certainly not without a struggle. And that struggle continues today. However, Coates makes a very strong argument that the current political and social activism will always be lacking unless we, as a country, truly understand the full history of racial injustice.

“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”

At the very least, we should have an honest, open discussion about reparations and attempt to understand what reparations could look like. Fortunately there are models that could inform such a debate, even going as far back as Colonial America. Coates highlights the extremely volatile debate around German reparations that occurred in Israel in 1952. The wounds of the Holocaust were still fresh and fears flourished that the German horrors would be laundered. Israel eventually negotiated a settlement with Germany and a significant amount of Israel’s early infrastructure development was directly attributed to these reparations.

“From 1953 to 1963, the reparations money funded about a third of the total investment in Israel’s electrical system, which tripled its capacity, and nearly half the total investment in the railways.”

I’ve been peripherally aware of a ‘reparations’ bill submitted by Congressman John Conyers from Detroit and only just learned that he’s submitted this annually for the last 25 years. I’ve dismissed this bill as some symbolic, divisive financial pay-off resolution. My knowledge and opinion of this resolution relied on inflammatory rhetoric that I’ve just discovered is a gross mischaracterization of the bill and its underlying motivation. This bill has been titled the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.

“People who talk about reparations are considered left lunatics. But all we are talking about is studying [reparations]. As John Conyers has said, we study everything. We study the water, the air. We can’t even study the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone.”

Just as the NRA has effectively shut down the mere study of gun violence, so too have both Democrats and Republicans shut down the mere study of reparations. And, I think it’s very important to understand that the mainstream notion of reparations as simply paying money to direct descendants of slaves is a gross misrepresentation of the complex nature of racial injustice in this country. Coates’ article effectively lays out an argument that the insidious damage to African Americans extends well beyond slavery and therefore requires a broader and more thoughtful debate and approach.

The topic of reparations has already been broached within the context of the approaching 2020 Democratic Primaries. Whether or not this issue gains any traction during the debates is yet to be seen. However, I’m fairly confident that the GOP will jump on this issue and attempt to use it to further divide and conquer the electorate. Therefore, I urge anyone who is ambivalent and uninformed on this topic to take the time to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article. In closing, I’ll quote the same passage from Coates’ essay that David Brooks states was the key passage that changed his view on the topic of reparations and that redefines reparations as something much more than simply financial compensation.

“And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations — by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences — is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. … What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices — more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.”