Research Proposal - Reparations for Blacks: Helping Impoverished Communities through Other Educational Reforms

Despite some modest progress in recent decades, glaring race-related inequalities still exist across the entire spectrum of the human condition in the United States today. Indeed, African Americans (hereinafter alternatively blacks) have shorter life expectancies, lower salaries and a lack of access to high quality health care services compared to whites, but these disparities are especially pronounced with respect to education. Because education is the key to addressing the myriad other problems facing the African American community today, it is vitally important to identify opportunities to directly address this issue. Therefore, the purpose of the proposed study is to explore educational reform in the United States through an anti-racism and anti-oppression lens, examining reparations as a way to address racism and oppression. In sum, educational reparations and curriculum restructuring will help America progress as a nation and address anti-racism and anti-oppression in truly meaningful ways.

1) The identification of a problem or question to be examined

The death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department in May 2020 resulted in widespread national and global outrage in the past several decades. There were calls for reparations for blacks in the U.S. even prior to this deadly incident, though, but Floyds death did underscore the urgency of this type of restorative racial justice for African Americans today (Conley, 2021). Indeed, the case for reparations began immediately following the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 (Conley, 2021). Over the course of the past century and a half, demands for reparations have intensified and the issue remains central to Americas future as a democratic republic.

It is important to note, however, that calls for reparations have taken a back seat to the multiple other pressing challenges facing the nation. For instance, according to Coates (2019), In fact, there is a bill about reparations thats been sitting in Congress for thirty years but now reparations for slavery and legalized discrimination are a subject of major discussion (para. 3). Few people today, including even the most ardent racists, would likely argue that the four million African Americans who were enslaved prior to the Civil War suffered some degree of deprivations, and reparations...…(2008). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

Coates, T-N. (2021, June 10). Ta-Nehisi Coates revisits the case for reparations. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations.

This author wrote a seminal case for reparations in 2014, including those involving education, that is frequently cited by proponents as justification. These arguments will provide a valuable addition to the proposed studys analysis concerning the rationale in support.

Conley, J. (2021). To Teach the University is to Teach Reparations: A Class Project. Radical Teacher, 119, 4151.

The primary research conducted by this author involving modern university students provides an insightful assessment concerning opposing views about reparations. This resource will be useful in framing in the arguments against reparations in the proposed study.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1998, March 1). Unequal opportunity: Race and education. Brookings Institute. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/.

This author makes the point that far too many Americans believe that the Civil Rights Movement is over and everything is equal now. Therefore, any remaining disparities in academic achievement must be attributable to genetic, cultural or a lack of motivation on the part of blacks. This study provides useful background information that will be used to support the argument for…