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We are at the edge of something phenomenal when a conservative columnist opens the door to reparations. And as foundational as it was, that Coates essay was 2014. #ADOS have renewed, enlivened, and brought specificity and understanding, thru data, to reparations debate 🇺🇸
I appreciate the Coates essay for providing a mainstream foundation for the reparations debate in 2014, but everyone, including Coates, abandoned the real advocacy, data, and carving out of a specific group required to push for reparations legislation. #ADOS #Lineage2020 🇺🇸
The data and specificity of the designation of #ADOS as a specific group doesn’t get u a Coates genius grant; it gets you harassed and mischaracterized as xenophobic. But that’s the work @tonetalks and I have been doing for years now. It’s the sacrifice we’ve been making 🇺🇸
Even Coates’s friends have been side eying and misrepresenting what we’re doing with #ADOS in carving out our SPECIFIC justice claim and SPECIFIC contribution to America, but, with surgical precision, we’ve continued to make the case for reparations #LineageMatters 🇺🇸🇺🇸✈️
Coates himself took on a pessimistic outlook toward America and the reparations debate, which makes sense given #ADOS history in this country, but let’s be clear: pessimism is not advocacy. Advocacy hinges on some future political goal #LineageMatters #Reparations2020 🇺🇸
Coates had his moment of profound importance during the Ocasio-Cortez discussion, where she attempted to seemingly justify adding “people of color” to the reparations conversation. Coates should’ve checked her. He didn’t. #ADOS #LineageMatters #Reparations2020 🇺🇸 
This work is not about being *LIKED*. Carving out specific resources for *OUR* specific group is a recipe for being outcasted and disliked. And we need to get honest about how our mainstream Black writers were unwilling to tip over that hornets 🐝 nest #ADOS 🇺🇸
Also Obama said this to Coates, as if ALL immigrant groups didn’t come here voluntarily: “So how do Latinos feel if there’s a big investment just in the African American community, and they’re looking around and saying, ‘We’re poor as well. What kind of help are we getting?’”...
Cont’d: “...Or Asian Americans who say, ‘Look, I’m a first-generation immigrant, and clearly I didn’t have anything to do with what was taking place.’”...
theatlantic.com/amp/article/51…
theatlantic.com/amp/article/51…
Nobody wanted to tell immigrants the truth, including Coates. And that truth is that immigrants came here voluntarily and as such, they owe the reparations debt as well. We don’t do a la carte taxation in this country #ADOS #LineageMatters #Reparations2020 🇺🇸
The other, just as powerful, truth is that immigrants OWE the debt because most of them benefit from the work #ADOS put in. They benefit from our movements. They don’t have to fight the KKK because #ADOS already did. That’s what Coates should’ve told Obama #LineageMatters 🇺🇸
Coates also should’ve told Obama that, all due respect, the president’s lineage is white American and Kenyan, and as such, he doesn’t have any particular moral authority. He doesn’t come from maids or sharecroppers or incarcerated men. #ADOS #LineageMatters #Reparations2020 🇺🇸
And given that Obama was the son of a Kenyan, his bias was tilted in favor of not angering immigrants, as opposed to making #ADOS whole thru transformative and restorative justice. Coates from Baltimore needed to contrast those specific histories. #LineageMatters 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
So now we can’t allow @nytdavidbrooks to rope Coates back in 2 use the reparations question as just a stumbling block for Democrats. This is about putting real meat on the bone 🦴 🍖. Note how Brooks got to the end of his essay and, like Coates, refused to get serious. We see u.
And if @nytdavidbrooks is serious about his reparations about face, he’ll press NYT to do a series on what reparations would look like, including myself, @tonetalks,@SandyDarity and others. If not, then he’s just whistling in the wind. #ADOS
White America loves to waste time with conversations on race in America. And we waste time indulging them. Enough. We have the scholarship. We have the data. It’s time for The Reckoning. #ADOS #Reparations2020 #LineageMatters 🇺🇸
