Coming to terms with our past, part II: On the morality and politics of reparations for slavery

Political Theory

Volumn 32, Issue 6, 2004, Pages 750-772

  McCarthy, Thomas ^a  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

National responsibility; Reparations; Slavery; Transitional justice

Indexed keywords

EID: 10044223474     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591704268924     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. Hannah Arendt, "Preface to the First Edition," in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1950; repr., New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), ix.
2. The codirectors of the RCC are Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School and Randall Robinson, founder and president of TransAfrica. See Charles J. Ogletree, "Litigating the Legacy of Slavery," The New York Times, March 31, 2002, section IV, p. 9; and "Reparations: A Fundamental Issue of Social Justice," http://www.black-collegian.com/news/special-reports/. The RCC filed its first suit in March 2003 on behalf of the living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. In 2002 a class-action suit was filed in New York by another group of lawyers on behalf of Deadria Farmer-Paellmann and millions of slave descendants, and against a number of private corporations that profited from slavery. It was subsequently consolidated with similar reparations lawsuits filed in a number of other states and brought before the U.S. District Court in Chicago, where the judge ruled against the plaintiffs, "without prejudice," suggesting that the legislative and executive branches of the federal government were the proper addressees for slavery reparations claims. The RCC approach, which has the broad backing of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) and other reparations advocacy groups, is the focus of my remarks.
3. The codirectors of the RCC are Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School and Randall Robinson, founder and president of TransAfrica. See Charles J. Ogletree, "Litigating the Legacy of Slavery," The New York Times, March 31, 2002, section IV, p. 9; and "Reparations: A Fundamental Issue of Social Justice," http://www.black-collegian.com/news/special-reports/. The RCC filed its first suit in March 2003 on behalf of the living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. In 2002 a class-action suit was filed in New York by another group of lawyers on behalf of Deadria Farmer-Paellmann and millions of slave descendants, and against a number of private corporations that profited from slavery. It was subsequently consolidated with similar reparations lawsuits filed in a number of other states and brought before the U.S. District Court in Chicago, where the judge ruled against the plaintiffs, "without prejudice," suggesting that the legislative and executive branches of the federal government were the proper addressees for slavery reparations claims. The RCC approach, which has the broad backing of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) and other reparations advocacy groups, is the focus of my remarks.
4. See John Torpey, ed. Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); and Pablo de Greiff, "The Role of Reparations in Transitions to Democracy" (unpublished manuscript. International Center for Transitional Justice, New York. 2003). De Greiff is currently editing a multivolume ICTJ study on reparations.
5. See John Torpey, ed. Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); and Pablo de Greiff, "The Role of Reparations in Transitions to Democracy" (unpublished manuscript. International Center for Transitional Justice, New York. 2003). De Greiff is currently editing a multivolume ICTJ study on reparations.
6. See Author' Note. I discuss some of the practical-political issues in "Repairing Past Injustice: Remarks on the Politics of Reparations," in Reparations for African Americans, ed. H. McGary (forthcoming).
7. See Rodney C. Roberts, ed., Injustice and Rectification (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). I use the term reparation in the general sense of repairing a harmful situation produced by a wrongful action. Thus it is not meant to contrast with, but is to include, "restitution," "compensation," "rehabilitation," "reconciliation," and other concerns of rectificatory justice. This general usage is not unusual; it is adopted, for instance, in Torpey, Politics and the Past, and in Roy L. Brooks, ed., When Sorry Isn't Enough (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
8. See Rodney C. Roberts, ed., Injustice and Rectification (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). I use the term reparation in the general sense of repairing a harmful situation produced by a wrongful action. Thus it is not meant to contrast with, but is to include, "restitution," "compensation," "rehabilitation," "reconciliation," and other concerns of rectificatory justice. This general usage is not unusual; it is adopted, for instance, in Torpey, Politics and the Past, and in Roy L. Brooks, ed., When Sorry Isn't Enough (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
9. See Rodney C. Roberts, ed., Injustice and Rectification (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). I use the term reparation in the general sense of repairing a harmful situation produced by a wrongful action. Thus it is not meant to contrast with, but is to include, "restitution," "compensation," "rehabilitation," "reconciliation," and other concerns of rectificatory justice. This general usage is not unusual; it is adopted, for instance, in Torpey, Politics and the Past, and in Roy L. Brooks, ed., When Sorry Isn't Enough (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
10. The qualification "morally permissible" is meant to signal the sorts of issues raised by Jeremy Waldron in "Superseding Historic Injustice," Ethics103 (1992): 4-28. In general, I agree with those who argue that judgments concerning reparations in particular circumstances have to be made "all things considered." In particular, other legitimate moral-political claims - for instance, claims having to do with property or equity - have to be taken into account and weighed against reparations claims; and rectificatory claims may be overridden by conflicting moral-political claims. To be sure, in the case of African Americans, the demands of corrective and distributive justice tend to be mutually reinforcing rather than conflicting.
11. Bernard Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1984), chaps. 4-7. Though Boxill acknowledges their complementarity (p. 171f), his treatment of them differs somewhat from the one proposed here: whereas I treat both the backward- and forward-looking arguments as conceptually related to past injustice, he reserves that to the former and casts the latter in terms of social utility (p. 168). On my account, the goal of making amends for past wrongs in present circumstances includes future-oriented considerations about improving the situation that resulted from them. The aim of redressing the consequences of past wrongs is what marks these forward-looking considerations as matters of rectificatory rather than distributive justice, with which they may well substantively overlap. I am grateful to Paul Stern for pushing me to clarify this point.
12. Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, 152-54. In thus arguing for group compensation, there is no need to revoke the claim that the moral-political basis for reparations lies ultimately in past violations of individuals' rights and liberties: individuals were denied equal respect and treatment because of their group classification.
13. Janna Thomson, Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Injustice (Oxford, UK: Polity, 2002).
14. See Robert Gooding-Williams, "Race, Multiculturalism, and Democracy," Constellations 5 (1998): 8-41.
15. Orlando Patterson, The Ordeal of Integration (Washington, DC: Civitas/Counterpoint, 1997), 121-22.
16. See, for instance, Andrew Valls, "The Libertarian Case for Affirmative Action," Social Theory and Practice 25 (1999): 299-323; and Dalton Conley, "Calculating Slavery Reparations: Theory, Numbers, and Implications," in Politics and the Past, ed.Torpey. Valls presents his own case for black reparations in "Racial Justice as Transitional Justice," Polity 36 (2003): 665-83.
17. See, for instance, Andrew Valls, "The Libertarian Case for Affirmative Action," Social Theory and Practice 25 (1999): 299-323; and Dalton Conley, "Calculating Slavery Reparations: Theory, Numbers, and Implications," in Politics and the Past, ed.Torpey. Valls presents his own case for black reparations in "Racial Justice as Transitional Justice," Polity 36 (2003): 665-83.
18. See, for instance, Andrew Valls, "The Libertarian Case for Affirmative Action," Social Theory and Practice 25 (1999): 299-323; and Dalton Conley, "Calculating Slavery Reparations: Theory, Numbers, and Implications," in Politics and the Past, ed.Torpey. Valls presents his own case for black reparations in "Racial Justice as Transitional Justice," Polity 36 (2003): 665-83.
19. Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, 153.
20. See David Miller, "Holding Nations Responsible," Ethics 14 (2004): 240-68, and "Inheriting Responsibilities," http://users.ox.ac.uk/magd1534/JDG/miller.pdf. The former essay regards nations as groups of contemporaries, while the latter views them as intergenerational communities sharing common national identities. There is some overlap between the arguments of the latter and my arguments here, but Miller explicitly rejects treating states as the primary bearers of historical responsibility, reserving that role to nations in his primarily cultural sense.
21. See David Miller, "Holding Nations Responsible," Ethics 14 (2004): 240-68, and "Inheriting Responsibilities," http://users.ox.ac.uk/magd1534/JDG/miller.pdf. The former essay regards nations as groups of contemporaries, while the latter views them as intergenerational communities sharing common national identities. There is some overlap between the arguments of the latter and my arguments here, but Miller explicitly rejects treating states as the primary bearers of historical responsibility, reserving that role to nations in his primarily cultural sense.
22. See note 9.
23. In stressing the legal-political basis of national responsibility, this approach differs from - but is not necessarily incompatible with - approaches that emphasize the symmetry between national pride and national shame, so that, for instance, identifying with the past accomplishments of one's nation is morally inconsistent with refusing to acknowledge responsibility for harmful past actions. See, for instance, F. Abdel-Nour, "National Responsibility," Political Theory 31 (2003): 693-719.
24. Brooks, When Sorry Isn't Enough, 7.
25. Robert Westley, "Many Billions Gone," Boston College Law Review 40 (1998): 439.
26. Boris Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (New York: Random House, 1973).
27. See Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided by Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
28. It is used in this way by Robert Westley, for instance, in "Many Billions Gone," 439-45. The case he makes there draws heavily on Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/ White Wealth (New York: Routledge, 1997), as do many similar arguments.
29. It is used in this way by Robert Westley, for instance, in "Many Billions Gone," 439-45. The case he makes there draws heavily on Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/ White Wealth (New York: Routledge, 1997), as do many similar arguments.
30. See Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), for an interesting account of this process. Loury himself opposes reparations, as he makes clear in "Trans-Generational Justice - Compensatory vs. Interpretive Approaches," http://www.queensu.ca/conferences/reparations/.
31. Janna Thomson provides a convincing presentation of this approach in Taking Responsibility for the Past, where she characterizes such a narrative as "an interconnected history of wrongs" (p. 81). But she does not think it can do the causal job I shall assign it (pp. 104-107) - mainly owing to her more legalistic understanding of causal responsibility, and because, as noted above, her socially constructed groups, even when persecuted as groups, do not have the same moral-political standing as "organized" communities such as nations.
32. The sketch offered here draws on the work of Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).
33. The sketch offered here draws on the work of Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).
34. Ogletree, "Litigating the Legacy of Slavery."
35. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 2. On page 49 they point out that by 1970 the lowest level of spatial isolation observed for blacks in any major city, north or south, was greater than the highest isolation indexes ever recorded for any other groups in any American city.
36. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 30-31.
37. Until 1950, the code of ethics of the National Association stated, "A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood . . . members of any race or nationality . . . whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood" (cited in Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 37).
38. King, Separate and Unequal, 4.
39. As noted, arguments for reparations often single out the black-white wealth gap as a key inequity, the linking of which to past racial discrimination would justify remedial action. The approach I am sketching incorporates that gap in an expanded narrative.
40. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 52.
41. Ibid., 53. The 1939 FHA Underwriting Manual states, "If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial class" (cited by ibid., 54).
42. Ibid., 53. The 1939 FHA Underwriting Manual states, "If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial class" (cited by ibid., 54).
43. Ibid., 55-57.
44. A very influential analysis of this process was provided by William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Massey and Denton's analysis differs from Wilson's by making residential segregation the key variable.
45. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 2.
46. See ibid., 118-25, for a statistical model of this amplifying effect.
47. Ibid., 160-61.
48. A similar argument could be made in regard to Native Americans.
49. I discuss some of them in "Repairing Past Injustice: Remarks on the Politics of Reparations."
50. For a discussion of this, see Pablo de Greiff, "The Role of Reparations in Transitions to Democracy."
51. See Author's Note.
52. Laura Hein makes use of the idea of public pedagogy in her discussion of Japanese reparations for atrocities perpetrated during World War II, in "War Compensation: Claims against the Japanese Government and Japanese Corporations for War Crimes," in Politics and the Past, 127-47.
53. I discuss this gap in section II of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the USA.
54. Lawrie Balfour discusses the links between our "national amnesia" concerning the history of racial oppression and our failure to address its legacies in "Unreconstructed Democracy: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Case for Reparations," American Political Science Review 97 (2003): 33-44.
55. See "Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the USA," 631-33, for an overview and references.
56. "Public memory" is obviously a broad metaphor for socially constructed representations of the past, which may be decisively affected by historical scholarship, as they were in the German Historikerstreit of the 1980s. See the discussion of this in "Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the USA."
57. This is a point emphasized by Charles Ogletree and other reparations advocates.
58. See "Repairing Past Injustice" for relevant references and discussion.
59. See, for example, Adolph Reed, "The case against Reparations," The Progressive, December 2000, 15-17; and the pieces by Armstrong Williams, John McWhorter, and Shelby Steele in Should America Pay? ed. Raymond A. Winbush (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
60. See, for example, Adolph Reed, "The case against Reparations," The Progressive, December 2000, 15-17; and the pieces by Armstrong Williams, John McWhorter, and Shelby Steele in Should America Pay? ed. Raymond A. Winbush (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
61. See Tommie Shelby, "Foundations of Black Solidarity: Collective Identity or Common Oppression?" Ethics 112 (2002): 231-66. See also Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, The Miner's Canary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), who make a case for "enlisting race" rather than ignoring it when building multiracial coalitions.
62. See Tommie Shelby, "Foundations of Black Solidarity: Collective Identity or Common Oppression?" Ethics 112 (2002): 231-66. See also Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, The Miner's Canary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), who make a case for "enlisting race" rather than ignoring it when building multiracial coalitions.
63. I am borrowing this idea of a demoralized common life from Thompson, Taking Responsibility for the Past, 68.