Reconsidering Reparations, by Olúfẹmi O Táíwò

Review by Fred Ashmore

Olúfémi Táíwò is an academic philosopher who works in the intersection of climate justice and colonialism. This book has helped me better understand some of the issues.

It begins with an excellent review of world history, focussed on racism and colonialism. It opened my eyes to a mass of new information, even though I have taken a strong interest in these subjects. Táíwò makes a powerful case that the world runs on a basis of inhumanity, racism and exploitation, under a global political and economic system that maintains and accumulates advantages to ‘the greedy one who takes the fat’. The system also maintains a flow of disadvantage to those who have a weaker position. These characteristics were established during the development of the Atlantic Order, when slavery and colonialism were taken for granted. Most of us barely notice that the system is there; it is just the way things happen. He terms this system the Global Racial Empire. It seems a pretty good name for it.

The author further argues that the cornerstone objective of reparations is the unmaking of this system and remaking it in a human image. He terms this the constructive approach to reparations: to remake the world so as to distribute rights, advantages, and burdens. The remade system will be one which works globally, as the Global Racial Empire does, but justly.

The final chapter addresses the principal approaches to reparations and how they might work. A ‘harm repair’ approach is based on some form of restitution or retribution. It is similar to our present system of justice, in which someone who has been wronged can seek compensation. It feels very familiar. But its ‘before and after’ approach bypasses complexity and can amount to an impossible effort to reconstruct history.

A ‘relationship repair’ approach recognises a moral or political right created by past wrongs. These would include the history of enslavement, colonial conquest, cultural genocide and racial segregation. The recognition has of itself a communicative content, which is also important. Conversely, a failure to acknowledge such a right is also strongly communicative.

Táíwò also addresses the way in which these approaches to reparation have led to real actions and targets. Reparations should, he says: make tangible differences in the material conditions of people’s lives; address the core moral wrongs of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism; and distribute benefits and burdens based on the different relationships of persons and institutions to the core moral wrongs.

This is an excellent book, carefully argued, full of information. It would make a great study text for Quakers seeking to understand the issues more deeply, though it would also no doubt spark fierce arguments among the participants.

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Comments

Dear Friend

I am the Historian at the Darby Friends Meeting in Pennsylvania.  While doing research on our Meeting’s historical role in abolitionism, I came across a very interesting document in our Library.  It is entitled A brief statement of the rise and progress of the testimony of the religious society of Friends, against slavery and the slave trade… by the Kite brothers 1843.  You can find it line at teh Library of Congress.

Starting on page 47, is a discussion of the actions taken by the Quakers at that time to address reparations.  It states reparations committees were established by the Quarterlies to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and that that “by 1787, the Yearly Meeting states that the effecting of a satisfactory settlement for the past services of those who had been held in slavery was brought to a close.”  The pamphlet goes on to discuss what was done in other jurisdictions.

Perhaps more historic research required?

By lucerne96 on 3rd May 2023 - 0:21

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