“A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers’s bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.” – Coates

“That HR 40 has never—under either Democrats or Republicans—made it to the House floor suggests our concerns are rooted not in the impracticality of reparations but in something more existential. ” – Coates

“Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans.”- Coates

“John Conyers’s HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate.” – Coates

Coates feels that the justice is the bigger issue because there is no reason we can’t afford to pass HR 40.

Coates says that not passing HR 40 is a threat. I think this is the case because it is a message to the African American people that there is no way they can improve their future.

Coates feels that the government thinks that passing HR 40 is a challenge to the freedom and honor of America and that it would threaten their good standing image.