I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear.

The case for reparations.

There are plenty of African Americans in this country, and I would say this goes right up to the White House,

who are not by any means poor, but are very much reflected by white supremacy.

Thanks for joining us.

The young man you're about to meet is out to change how we think and talk about race,

and he just might do it, beginning with this cover story and the new issue of the Atlantic magazine. Its provocative title is The Case for Reparations. Yes. Reparations, defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the act of making amends or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury. The wrong or injury in question is what President Lyndon Johnson once called

slavery's ancient brutality and the terrible things that have followed it

in the name of white supremacy enforced by state power.

This article is must-reading for every American.

The author is the journalist Tanahasi Coates, who grew up in Baltimore, lived in Harlem, and teaches writing at MIT.

He's now a senior editor of the Atlantic, where in this issue he writes,

The Payment of Reparations would represent America's maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom

worthy of its founders.

Thank you for joining me.

Oh, thank you for having me.

It's an honor.

Here's exactly what you say.

White supremacy does not contradict American democracy.

It birthed it.

Yeah.

Nurtured it and financed it.

...