Questions

1. What ethos does Brent Staples establish in the opening paragraphs of the essay?

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   Questions: - What ethos does Brent Staples establish in the opening paragraphs of the essay?
2. Why do you think Staples uses the term “targeted compensation” (par. 7) instead of “reparations”? What does he mean by his claim that “reparations advocates are…subverting the true story of black people in the United States” (par. 10)?

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   Questions: - Why do you think Staples uses the term “targeted compensation” (par. 7) instead of “reparations”? What does he mean by his claim that “reparations advocates are…subverting the true story of black people in the United States” (par. 10)?
3. What concessions does he make to the counterargument—that is, support for reparations?

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   Questions: - What concessions does he make to the counterargument—that is, support for reparations?
4. Why do you agree or disagree with Staples’s statement that there is “no provable connection between 19th-century bondage and specific cases of 21st-century destitution” (par. 8)?

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   Questions: - Why do you agree or disagree with Staples’s statement that there is “no provable connection between 19th-century bondage and specific cases of 21st-century destitution” (par. 8)?
5. Following is a response in the New York Times to Staples’s column. What parts of Staples’s argument does Martin Kilson question? What evidence does he provide? How effectively does he challenge Staples’s position? Consider the analogy he makes in his final statement.

   To the Editor:

   Brent Staples’s pride in the achievements of his great-grandfather and other farmland-owning post-Emancipation Negroes (Editorial Observer, Sept. 2) is refreshing. But his appraisal of black social mobility as “spectacular progress” is bizarre.

   By 1940, when blacks numbered 12 million, there were 63,697 teachers, 3,524 doctors and 1,052 lawyers, according to the Census Bureau. Was this spectacular progress? A generation and a half later, in 1970, when blacks numbered 20 million, there were 235,436 teachers, 6,106 doctors and 3,728 lawyers. Spectacular progress?

   For Mr. Staples, reparations activists fake a narrative of blacks “as a victim class.” But historical scholarship documents the horrendous victimization of blacks—for example, unpaid labor of millions that was key to American capital accumulation.

   Just as American Jews uniformly supported reparations from Germany, so do African Americans uniformly support reparations for American slavery’s victimization of their ancestors.

   —Martin Kilson, Dublin, N.H., Sept. 3, 2001

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   Questions: - Following is a response in the New York Times to Staples’s column. What parts of Staples’s argument does Martin Kilson question? What evidence does he provide? How effectively does he challenge Staples’s position? Consider the analogy he makes in his final statement.To the Editor:Brent Staples’s pride in the achievements of his great-grandfather and other farmland-owning post-Emancipation Negroes (Editorial Observer, Sept. 2) is refreshing. But his appraisal of black social mobility as “spectacular progress” is bizarre.By 1940, when blacks numbered 12 million, there were 63,697 teachers, 3,524 doctors and 1,052 lawyers, according to the Census Bureau. Was this spectacular progress? A generation and a half later, in 1970, when blacks numbered 20 million, there were 235,436 teachers, 6,106 doctors and 3,728 lawyers. Spectacular progress?For Mr. Staples, reparations activists fake a narrative of blacks “as a victim class.” But historical scholarship documents the horrendous victimization of blacks—for example, unpaid labor of millions that was key to American capital accumulation.Just as American Jews uniformly supported reparations from Germany, so do African Americans uniformly support reparations for American slavery’s victimization of their ancestors.—Martin Kilson, Dublin, N.H., Sept. 3, 2001