When Coates makes his case for reparations his central argument is that when the topic of reparations comes up people always ask who are the individuals that will be paying, he says we need to think beyond that because the real question is what America owes. some key words he used in his argument were repairing the damage, to me what he meant by this was making the playing field even for everyone because there shouldn't be achievement gaps and wealth gaps. In the interview coates brought up a topic from his article building on how black families were cheated and had to sign contracts that were scams.