Guides: Reparations Research Guide: Reparations Research Guide

San Diego Law Review, Volume 60, Issue 3 (2023)

San Diego Law Review: Special Symposium Issue on Reparations and Transitional Justice
This articles in this symposium issue of USD School of Law's flagship journal respond to the 2023 report of the California Task Force on Reparations and consider ways in which governments and private institutions should redress past atrocities.

California Reparations Legislation in 2024

On January 31, 2024, California legislators announced 14 separate bills designed to implement the recommendations of the CA Reparations Task Force. Notably, none of the bills involve direct cash payments.

Education

AB 1929 (McKinnor) – Expand access to career technical education by creating a competitive grant program to increase enrollment of descendants in STEM-related CTE programs at the high school and college levels.
AB XXX (McCarty) – Career Education Financial Aid for redlined communities

Civil Rights

ACA 7 (Jackson) – Amends the California Constitution to allow the State to fund programs for the purpose of increasing the life expectancy of, improving educational outcomes for, or lifting out of poverty specific groups.
ACR 135 (Weber) – Formally recognizes and accepts responsibility for all of the harms and atrocities committed by representatives of the state who promoted, facilitated, enforced and permitted the institution of chattel slavery.
AB 1815 (Weber) – Prohibit discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles in all competitive sports by extending the CROWN Act to explicitly include competitive sports within California.
SB XXX (Bradford) – Property takings: Restore property taken during race-based uses of eminent domain to its original owners or provide another effective remedy where appropriate, such as restitution or compensation.
AB XXX (Jones-Sawyer) – Issues a formal apology for human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants

Criminal Justice Reform

ACA 8 (Wilson) – Amend the California Constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude for incarcerated persons.
AB 1986 (Bryan) – Eliminate the CDCR practice of banning books without oversight and review.
AB XXX (Jones-Sawyer) – Fund community-driven solutions to decrease community violence at the family, school and neighborhood levels in African-American communities by establishing a state-funded grant program.
AB XXX (Holden) – Mandela Act: Restricts solitary confinement within CDCR detention facilities.

Health

AB 1975 (Bonta) – Make medically supportive food and nutrition interventions, when deemed medically necessary by healthcare providers, a permanent part of Medi-Cal benefits in California.
SB XXX (Smallwood-Cuevas) – Address food injustice by requiring advance notification to community stakeholders prior to the closure of a grocery store in underserved or at-risk communities.

Business

AB XXX (Gipson) – Eliminate barriers to licensure for people with criminal records. Expansion of AB 2138 to prioritize African American applicants seeking occupational licenses, especially those who are descendants.

News Coverage

California Reparations Legislation: A.B. 3121 and the California Reparations Task Force

A.B. 3121 (2020)
Enacted in September 2020, this California Assembly Bill established the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans
The California Reparations Report (final version)
600 page full-color report containing the evidence considered by the Task Force, organized by theme. Report also covers past efforts at reparations both internationally and domestically, and concludes with detailed policy recommendations and a recommendation for a formal California apology.
Executive Summary
CA Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans (website)
Meeting agendas, minutes, and video recordings. Meeting minutes include reports and testimony by expert consultants

Books and E-books at USD

This list provides selected resources that cover the topic of Black Reparations in the United States.

Atonement and Forgiveness by Roy L. Brooks
Call Number: E185.89.R45 B76 2004
ISBN: 0520239415
Publication Date: 2004-10-07
Roy L. Brooks reframes one of the most important, controversial, and misunderstood issues of our time in this far-reaching reassessment of the growing debate on black reparation. Atonement and Forgiveness shifts the focus of the issue from the backward-looking question of compensation for victims to a more forward-looking racial reconciliation. Offering a comprehensive discussion of the history of the black redress movement, this book puts forward a powerful new plan for repairing the damaged relationship between the federal government and black Americans in the aftermath of 240 years of slavery and another 100 years of government-sanctioned racial segregation. Key to Brooks's vision is the government's clear signal that it understands the magnitude of the atrocity it committed against an innocent people, that it takes full responsibility, and that it publicly requests forgiveness--in other words, that it apologizes. The government must make that apology believable, Brooks explains, by a tangible act that turns the rhetoric of apology into a meaningful, material reality, that is, by reparation. Apology and reparation together constitute atonement. Atonement, in turn, imposes a reciprocal civic obligation on black Americans to forgive, which allows black Americans to start relinquishing racial resentment and to begin trusting the government's commitment to racial equality. Brooks's bold proposal situates the argument for reparations within a larger, international framework--namely, a post-Holocaust vision of government responsibility for genocide, slavery, apartheid, and similar acts of injustice. Atonement and Forgiveness makes a passionate, convincing case that only with this spirit of heightened morality, identity, egalitarianism, and restorative justice can genuine racial reconciliation take place in America.
Radical Reparations by Marcus Anthony Hunter
Call Number: E185.89.R45 H86 2023
ISBN: 9780063004726
Publication Date: 2024-02-06
A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers a radical and vital new framework going beyond the current debate over this controversial issue. For over a century, the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans has divided the United States. However, while the iconic phrase "40 acres and a mule" encapsulates the general notion of reparations, history has proven that the damages of enslavement on the African American community far exceed what a plot of land or a check could repair. While reparations are being widely debated once again, current petitions to redress the lasting and collateral consequences of slavery have not moved past economic solutions, even though we know that monetary redress alone is not enough. Not only would many wounds be left unhealed, but relying solely on economics would continue a legacy of neglect for African Americans. In this thoughtful and sure-to-be controversial book, Marcus Anthony Hunter argues that a radical shift in our outlook is necessary; we need more comprehensive solutions such as those currently sought by today's educators, historians, activists, organizers, Afrofuturists, and socially conscious citizens. In Radical Reparations, this conversation shifter, social justice pioneer, change agent, and inventor of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which redefined the global conversation on racism and social justice, offers a unifying and unconventional framework for achieving holistic and comprehensive healing of African American communities. Hunter reimagines reparations through a profound new lens as he defines seven types of compensation: political, intellectual, legal, economic, spatial, social, and spiritual, using analysis of historical documents, comparative international cases, and speculative parables. Profound and revolutionary, trenchant and timely, Radical Reparations provides a compellingly and provocatively reframing of reparations' past, present, and future, offering a unifying way forward for us all.
Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Call Number: KZ6785 .T35 2022
ISBN: 9780197508893
Publication Date: 2022-01-20
Reparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade. Most theorizing about reparations treats it as a social justice project - either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present; or, they focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs. Olúfemi O. Táíwò argues that neither approach is optimal, and advances a different case for reparations - one rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core. This view, which he calls the "constructive" view of reparations, argues that reparations should be seen as a future-oriented project engaged in building a better social order; and that the costs of building a more equitable world should be distributed more to those who have inherited the moral liabilities of past injustices. This approach to reparations, as Táíwò shows, has deep and surprising roots in the thought of Black political thinkers such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nkechi Taifa, as well as mainstream political philosophers like John Rawls, Charles Mills, and Elizabeth Anderson. Táíwò's project has wide implications for our views of justice, racism, the legacy of colonialism, and climate change policy.
Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade by Ana Lucia Araujo
Call Number: E185.89.R45 A73 2017eb
ISBN: 9781350010611
Publication Date: 2017-11-02
Slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are among the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the modern era. Yet, to this day no former slave society in the Americas has paid reparations to former slaves or their descendants. European countries have never compensated their former colonies in the Americas, whose wealth relied on slave labor, to a greater or lesser extent. Likewise, no African nation ever obtained any form of reparations for the Atlantic slave trade. Ana Lucia Araujo argues that these calls for reparations are not only not dead, but have a long and persevering history. She persuasively demonstrates that since the 18th century, enslaved and freed individuals started conceptualizing the idea of reparations in petitions, correspondences, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims, written in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In different periods, despite the legality of slavery, slaves and freed people were conscious of having been victims of a great injustice. This is the first book to offer a transnational narrative history of the financial, material, and symbolic reparations for slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing from the voices of various social actors who identified themselves as the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, Araujo illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations, including the period of slavery, the emancipation era, the post-abolition period, and the present.
Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States by Michael T. Martin (Editor); Marilyn Yaquinto (Editor); David Lyons (Contribution by); Michael K. Brown (Contribution by)
Call Number: E185.89.R45 R43 2007 ONLINE
ISBN: 9780822389811
Publication Date: 2007-07-16
An exceptional resource, this comprehensive reader brings together primary and secondary documents related to efforts to redress historical wrongs against African Americans. These varied efforts are often grouped together under the rubric "reparations movement," and they are united in their goal of "repairing" the injustices that have followed from the long history of slavery and Jim Crow. Yet, as this collection reveals, there is a broad range of opinions as to the form that repair might take. Some advocates of redress call for apologies; others for official acknowledgment of wrongdoing; and still others for more tangible reparations: monetary compensation, government investment in disenfranchised communities, the restitution of lost property and rights, and repatriation. Written by activists and scholars of law, political science, African American studies, philosophy, economics, and history, the twenty-six essays include both previously published articles and pieces written specifically for this volume. Essays theorize the historical and legal bases of claims for redress; examine the history, strengths, and limitations of the reparations movement; and explore its relation to human rights and social justice movements in the United States and abroad. Other essays evaluate the movement's primary strategies: legislation, litigation, and mobilization. While all of the contributors support the campaign for redress in one way or another, some of them engage with arguments against reparations. Among the fifty-three primary documents included in the volume are federal, state, and municipal acts and resolutions; declarations and statements from organizations including the Black Panther Party and the NAACP; legal briefs and opinions; and findings and directives related to the provision of redress, from the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 to the mandate for the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States is a thorough assessment of the past, present, and future of the modern reparations movement.
The Debt by Randall Robinson
Call Number: E185.615 .R525 2000
ISBN: 0525945245
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
"Randall Robinson makes a case for the enormous debt America owes to Africans and African Americans for the incalculable damage blacks have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of nearly two hundred and fifty years of slavery and segregation." "In Robinson's view, America must accept responsibility for the grievous wrong that has been committed against Africans and African Americans, and take steps to redress that wrong: and black Americans need to arm themselves with a more comprehensive awareness of their ancient history and a fuller recognition of their ongoing contribution to our nation and the world."
Long Overdue by Charles P. Henry
Call Number: E185.89.R45 H46 2007
ISBN: 0814736920
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
An investigation of America's failure to atone for the wrongs of slavery. Ever since the unfulfilled promise of "forty acres and a mule" after the Civil War, America has consistently failed to compensate Black Americans for the wrongs of slavery. Exploring why America has struggled to confront the issue of racial injustice, Long Overdue provides a history of the racial reparations movement and shows why it is more relevant now than ever. Through an examination of Americans' unwillingness to address economic injustice, Charles P. Henry crafts a skillful moral, political, economic, and historical argument for African American reparations, focusing on successful political cases. In the wake of successes in South Africa and New Zealand, new models for reparations have found traction in a number of American cities and states, from Dallas to Baltimore and Virginia to California. By looking at other dispossessed groups--Native Americans, Holocaust survivors, and Japanese internment victims in the 1940s--Henry shows how some groups have won the fight for reparations, and explores new ways forward for Black Americans. From Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Harvey, the events of the 21st century continue to show that the legacy of racial segregation and economic disadvantage is never far below the surface in America. As the issue of reparations is brought to the national stage by figures such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kamala Harris, Long Overdue provides a must-read survey of the political and legislative efforts made toward reparations over the course of American history, and offers a new path toward establishing equality for all Black Americans.
Reparations and Anti-Black Racism by Angus Nurse
Call Number: E185.89.R45 N87 2022
ISBN: 9781529216851
Publication Date: 2021-12-13
The Black Lives Matter movement has exposed the state violence and social devaluation that Black populations continue to suffer. Police shootings and incarceration inequalities in the US and UK are just two examples of the legacy of slavery today. This book offers a criminological exploration of the case for slavery and anti-Black racism reparations in the context of the enduring harms and differential treatment of Black citizens. Through critical analysis of legal arguments and reviewing recent court actions, it refutes the policy perspectives that argue against reparations. Highlighting the human rights abuses inherent to and arising from slavery and ongoing racism, this book calls for governments to take responsibility for the impact of ongoing racialized injustice.
From Here to Equality by William A. Darity; A. Kirsten Mullen
Call Number: E185.89.R45 D37 2020eb
ISBN: 9781469654980
Publication Date: 2020-03-03
Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the early days of Reconstruction, when the U.S. government temporarily implemented a major redistribution of land from former slaveholders to the newly emancipated enslaved. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household holds in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents. In From Here to Equality, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen confront these injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. After opening the book with a stark assessment of the intergenerational effects of white supremacy on black economic well-being, Darity and Mullen look to both the past and the present to measure the inequalities borne of slavery. Using innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs, they next assess the literal and figurative costs of justice denied in the 155 years since the end of the Civil War. Finally, Darity and Mullen offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. Taken individually, any one of the three eras of injustice outlined by Darity and Mullen--slavery, Jim Crow, and modern-day discrimination--makes a powerful case for black reparations. Taken collectively, they are impossible to ignore.
Racist America by Joe R. Feagin; Kimberley Ducey
Call Number: E185.615 .F387 2019eb
ISBN: 9781351388603
Publication Date: 2018-09-03
This fourth edition of Racist America is significantly revised and updated, with an eye toward racism issues arising regularly in our contemporary era. This edition incorporates many recent research studies and reports on U.S. racial issues that update and enhance the last edition's chapters. It expands the discussion and data on social science concepts such as intersectionality and gendered racism, as well as the concepts of the white racial frame, systemic racism, and the elite-white-male dominance system from research studies by Joe Feagin and his colleagues. The authors have further polished the book and added more examples, anecdotes, and narratives about contemporary racism to make it yet more readable for undergraduates.
Race Rights Reparations by Fernne Brennan
Call Number: K3242 .B74 2017
ISBN: 9781472452627
Publication Date: 2017-06-22
This book considers institutional racism as a problem that exists within modern societies. Its roots lie with the transatlantic slave trade and slavery and the solution involves ridding society of the problem. It is argued here that, first, there needs to be an acceptance of its existence, then developing the tools needed to deal with it and, finally, to implement those tools so that institutional racism can be permanently removed from society. The book has four themes: the first considers the nature of institutional racism, the second theme looks at instances of institutional racism through matters such as deaths in custody and skin lightening, the third considers the concept of reparations and the final area looks at the development of social movements as a way of pushing institutional racism up the political agenda. The development of a social movement is part of a social discourse which would, for example, push mentoring as a form of reparations. There is a need for more research on the manifestations of institutional racism and this book is part of that discourse. It is argued that the legacy of the slave trade and slavery is continuing and contemporary through the presence of institutional racism in society. This problem has not been addressed through legislation and policies devised to combat racial discrimination. Institutional racism needs to be understood as being located in the processes and procedures of societal institutions.
Should America Pay? by Raymond Winbush
Call Number: E185.89.R45 S56 2003
ISBN: 0060083107
Publication Date: 2003-01-21
Growing interest in reparations for African Americans has prompted a range of responses, from lawsuits against major American corporations and a march in Washington to an anti-reparations ad campaign. As a result, the historical link between slavery and contemporary race relations is more potent and obvious than ever. Lawmakers, distinguished academics, and grassroots organizers have embraced the idea that reparations should be pursued vigorously in courts of law and legislative bodies. But others ask, Who should pay? And how would reparations help heal the wounds of the past? This comprehensive collection -- the only one of its kind -- gathers together the seminal essays and key participants in the debate. Pro-reparations essays by an array of contributors, including Congressman John Conyers Jr., Christopher Hitchens, Professor Molefi Kete Asante, and activist Deadria C. Farmer-Paellmann, are balanced by counterarguments by Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams, and linguist John McWhorter, among others. Also included are important documents such as the First Congressional Reparations Bill of 1867 and the Dakar Declaration of 2001. Whether you are for or against reparations, Should America Pay? is the definitive sourcebook for future discussions on the subject and is invaluable to anyone looking for historical and legal insight into one of America's most urgent and passionate debates.
Racist Symbols and Reparations by George Schedler
Call Number: E540.N3 S34 1998
ISBN: 0847686752
Publication Date: 1998-04-02
This thought-provoking book offers moral and legal perspectives on the 2 legacies of the Civil War - the adoption of the Confederate battle flag by Southern states and the question of African American reparations.

Law Review and Scholarly Articles

Joe R. Feagin, Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation, and Contemporary Racism: Why Reparations Are in Order for African Americans, 20 Harv. Blackletter L. J. 49 (2004).
In this Article, I examine why large-scale reparations should be made to African Americans and how that task might be accomplished. In a pioneering 1973 book, The Case for Black Reparations, Yale law professor Boris Bittker argued that the oppression faced by African Americans was more extensive than that faced by other racial groups and required major reparations in compensation. At the time, almost no one paid any attention to his analysis. Today, however, many analysts have finally resurrected the idea of reparations and have begun to take action on that idea. There are many voices concerned about the high costs of anti-black oppression that have continued over four centuries. It seems ever more likely that reparations in some form will be paid to African Americans over the next half century.
Amy J. Sepinwall, Responsibility for Historical Injustices: Reconceiving the Case for Reparations, 22 J. Law. & Pol. 183 (2006)
The twentieth century ended with the vindication of many of its most mistreated victims' cries for reparation. Holocaust survivors retrieved over $8 billion in assets frozen in bank accounts or looted by the Nazis; Japanese Americans interned during World War II received compensation from the U.S. government; Chile compensated descendants of Pinochet's victims; Japan redressed Korean "comfort women"; and Canada paid damages to Aboriginals for forced assimilation of their children. Absent from the list was the longest suffering and most visible of groups seeking repair - African Americans.
Howard McGary, Reconciliation and Reparations, 41 Metaphilosophy 546 (2010).
This article provides an account of the meaning of reparations and presents a brief explanation as to why African Americans believe they are entitled to reparations from the United States government. It then goes on to explain why reparations are necessary to address the distrust that is thought to exist between many African Americans and their government. Finally, it rejects the belief that reparations require reconciliation.
Adjoa A. Aiyetoro, Why Reparations to African Descendants in the United States Are Essential to Democracy, 14 J. Gender Race & Just. 633 (2011).
This Article has democracy as its starting point. First, this Article will discuss the theories of democracy and argue that true democracy incorporates both majoritarian and substantive democracy. Next, this Article will argue that substantive democracy requires each citizen to be valued and heard equally, which cannot happen if some citizens are oppressed or languishing under the vestiges of oppression. This Article will then present a summary of slavery, the Jim Crow Era's de jure discrimination, and their continuing legacies. It will argue that the effects of the U.S. government's oppression of and discrimination against Africans and their descendants during slavery and Jim Crow persist today. This Article will also argue that because this oppression exists, the United States is not a true democracy. Next, this Article will outline the history of resistance to oppression and discrimination, as well as demands for reparations. The Author will assert that there is a need for assessment and remedy formulation for this oppression in the form of reparations and that substantive democracy requires reparations-a sincere effort to identify the continuing injuries and develop reparative remedies, both material and symbolic, to address these continuing injuries that result in U.S. society treating African descendants as citizens, yet, not equal to whites. This Article also argues that the United States' failure to make reparations maintains the myth of white superiority and black inferiority. This Article concludes that in making reparations, the United States can become a true democracy.
Carlton Waterhouse, Total Recall: Restoring the Public Memory of Enslaved African-Americans and the American System of Slavery through Rectificatory Justice and Reparations, 14 J. Gender Race & Just. 703 (2011).
This Article examines the relationship between public memory, rectificatory justice, and reparations. To accomplish this it explores how social memory studies, the philosophical examination of injustice and rectification, and reparations jurisprudence bear on the question of governmental accountability for America's two-century history of chattel slavery. Rather than a comprehensive study, this Article represents my initial effort to sketch the intersection of these areas of research in relation to the subject.
Bernard Boxill, Black Reparations, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edward N. Zalta ed., Summer 2016 ed.)
States have long demanded reparations from other states at the end of wars. More recently non-state actors such as the Aborigines of Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, and the Native Americans of North America are demanding the return of their tribal lands from Europeans as reparation; Eastern Europeans dispossessed by socialist governments are demanding the return of their property as reparation; and African Americans are demanding reparation for the injuries of slavery and its aftermath. The last of these demands is our subject.
Nkechi Taifa, Let's Talk About Reparations, 10 Colum. J. Race & L. (Special Feature) (2020).
In the spring of the 2019, the Columbia Journal of Race and Law invited activist, attorney and scholar, Nkechi Taifa, to Columbia Law School for a public lecture on the topic of Reparations for descendent of enslaved Africans in the United States. Reparations has been a subject to much public discourse over the years and, in the last decade in particular, there has been a renewed interest on the political viability of establishing a federal commission to study the harm caused by slavery and develop recommendations to repairing those lingering harms on living African Americans today. On June 19, 2019, the House of Representatives held a historic public hearing, where prominent African American scholars, activists, writers, lawyers, amongst others, shared their thoughts on the topic of reparations. This renewed interest is a culmination of over a century long struggle by the reparations’ movement in the United States.

Ms. Taifa offers that historical view of the reparation’s movement in the United States. In her captivating address to the Columbia Law School community, Ms. Taifa articulates the passions, courage, vision, successes, frustrations and resilience of the Reparations movement in the United States from the late 1800s to the present. At the conclusion of Ms. Taifa’s remark, it was obvious to us at CJRL that Ms. Taifa’s timely messages was much a much-needed intervention in the Reparations discourse. It is with that aim that the CJRL editorial board, in consultation with Ms. Taifa, decided to publish her remarks. Aside from the citations and annotation, the text below is largely as she delivered it a Columbia Law school audience on March 26, 2019. We are grateful to Ms. Taifa for allowing us to publish her speech and for working with us through the editorial process. We are overjoyed to be able to share her work with the world.
William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, Resurrecting the Promise of 40 Acres: The Imperative of Reparations for Black Americans, Nonprofit Q., Summer 2021, at 32.
Some reparations commentators are concerned that money is not enough, but we believe that money is exactly what is required to eliminate the black-white wealth gap—the most glaring indicator of racial injustice in America. Ultimately, respect for black Americans as people and as citizens—and acknowledgment, redress, and closure for the history and financial hardship they have endured—requires monetary compensation.
B.C. Third World L. J. Symposium Issue: Healing the Wounds of Slavery: Can Present Legal Remedies Cure Past Wrongs? (2004)
J. of African American History Special Issue: "African Americans and Movements for Reparations: Past, Present, and Future" (2012)

Resources for International Reparations and Transitional Justice at USD

In support of the San Diego Law Review's call for submissions on Reparations and Transitional Justice, these resources address the global aspect of the topic.

When Sorry Isn't Enough by Roy L. Brooks (Editor)
Call Number: HM671 .W48 1999
ISBN: 0814713319
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
"How much compensation ought to be paid to a woman who was raped 7,500 times? What would the members of the Commission want for their daughters if their daughters had been raped even once?" --Karen Parker, speaking before the U.N. Commission on Human Rights Seemingly every week, a new question arises relative to the current worldwide ferment over human injustices. Why does the U.S. offer $20,000 atonement money to Japanese Americans relocated to concentration camps during World War II, while not even apologizing to African Americans for 250 years of human bondage and another century of institutionalized discrimination? How can the U.S. and Canada best grapple with the genocidal campaigns against Native Americans on which their countries were founded? How should Japan make amends to Korean "comfort women" sexually enslaved during World War II? Why does South Africa deem it necessary to grant amnesty to whites who tortured and murdered blacks under apartheid? Is Germany's highly praised redress program, which has paid billions of dollars to Jews worldwide, a success, and, as such, an example for others?More generally, is compensation for a historical wrong dangerous "blood money" that allows a nation to wash its hands forever of its responsibility to those it has injured? A rich collection of essays from leading scholars, pundits, activists, and political leaders the world over, many written expressly for this volume, When Sorry Isn't Enough also includes the voices of the victims of some of the world's worst atrocities, thereby providing a panoramic perspective on an international controversy often marked more by heat than reason.
Reparations for slavery in international law : transatlantic enslavement, the maangamizi, and the making of international law by Katarina Schwarz
Call Number: K3267 .S34 2022 ONLINE
ISBN: 9780197636404
Publication Date: 2022
"The debate over reparations for transatlantic enslavement is not new. The movement for redress has a pedigree predating legal emancipation to the years of enslavement. It finds voice at the grassroots and filters up. It speaks through Belinda's 1783 petition to the Massachusetts legislature for an annual pension from the estate of her ex-captor. It underlies the thousands of signatures penned by previously enslaved persons on petitions demanding pensions for their years of unfree labour. It is written in André Rebouças' 1875 Democracia Rural Brazileira and in Brazil's 1884 Dantas Bill (No 48) calling for the granting of land to freed populations. It suffuses the continuing history of the transatlantic system of chattel enslavement from its inception. It is a persistent struggle championed by the subaltern against mainstream denials."
Slavery and Colonialism by Mwene Mushanga
Call Number: HT1322 .M874 2011
ISBN: 9789966031709
Publication Date: 2011-12-29
African historians documented the histories of their tribal people and have not investigated the role of slavery and colonialism in the shaping of the African personality; or how the two evils have in some way or other contributed to the slow economic growth of Africa. It is the belief of the author that reparations should be sought not to bring about economic development or to reduce dependence but redress wrongs the degradation, vandalism, terrorism and other inhuman treatment Africans have experienced nor is the demand racially motivated. The demand is for indemnity for inhuman acts committed against African people and is made in the belief that the international community will accept the reality of slave trade and later, imperialism and colonialism are crimes against humanity.
For Land and Liberty by Merle L. Bowen
Call Number: HD498 .B69 2021
ISBN: 1108936377
Publication Date: 2021-06-14
For Land and Liberty is a comparative study of the history and contemporary circumstances concerning Brazil's quilombos (African-descent rural communities) and their inhabitants, the quilombolas. The book examines the disposition of quilombola claims to land as a site of contestation over citizenship and its meanings for Afro-descendants, as well as their connections to the broader fight against racism. Contrary to the narrative that quilombola identity is a recent invention, constructed for the purpose of qualifying for opportunities made possible by the 1988 law, Bowen argues that quilombola claims are historically and locally rooted. She examines the ways in which state actors have colluded with large landholders and modernization schemes to appropriate quilombo land, and further argues that, even when granted land titles, quilombolas face challenges issuing from systemic racism. By analyzing the quilombo movement and local initiatives, this book offers fresh perspectives on the resurgence of movements, mobilization, and resistance in Brazil.
Historical Justice in International Perspective by Manfred Berg (Editor); Bernd Schaefer (Editor)
Call Number: JC578 .H57 2009
ISBN: 9780521876834
Publication Date: 2008-10-27
This book makes a valuable contribution to debates on redress for historical injustices by offering case studies from nine countries on five continents. The contributors examine the problems of material restitution, criminal justice, apologies, recognition, memory and reconciliation in national contexts as well as from a comparative perspective. Among the topics discussed are the claims for reparations for slavery in the United States, West German restitution for the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge's mass murders in Cambodia and the struggles of the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand. The book highlights the diversity of the ways societies have tried to right past wrongs as the demand for historical justice has become universal.
Jus Post Bellum and Transitional Justice by Larry May (Editor); Elizabeth Edenberg (Editor)
Call Number: JZ5538 .J86 2013eb
ISBN: 9781139628594
Publication Date: 2013-10-05
This collection of essays brings together jus post bellum and transitional justice theorists to explore the legal and moral questions that arise at the end of war and in the transition to less oppressive regimes. Transitional justice and jus post bellum share in common many concepts that will be explored in this volume. In both transitional justice and jus post bellum, retribution is crucial. In some contexts criminal trials will need to be held, and in others truth commissions and other hybrid trials will be considered more appropriate means for securing some form of retribution. But there is a difference between how jus post bellum is conceptualized, where the key is securing peace, and transitional justice, where the key is often greater democratization. This collection of essays highlights both the overlap and the differences between these emerging bodies of scholarship and incipient law.
Practices of reparations in international criminal justice by Cristoph Sperfeldt
Call Number: KZ1208.C36 S64 2022
ISBN: 9781009166478
Publication Date: 2022
Combining interdisciplinary techniques with original ethnographic fieldwork, Christoph Sperfeldt examines the first attempts of international criminal courts to provide reparations to victims of mass atrocities. The observations focus on two case studies: the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, where Sperfeldt spent over ten years working at and around, and the International Criminal Court's interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Enriched with first-hand observations and an awareness of contextual dynamics, this book directs attention to the 'social life of reparations' that too often get lost in formal accounts of law and its institutions. Sperfeldt shows that reparations are constituted and contested through a range of practices that produce, change, and give meaning to reparations. Appreciating the nature and effects of these practices provides us with a deeper understanding of the discrepancies that exist between the reparations ideal and how it functions imperfectly in different contexts.
International organizations and the fight for accountability : the remedies and reparations gap by Carla Ferstman
Call Number: HD60
ISBN: 9780191846144
Publication Date: 2017
This title analyses the challenges citizens face obtaining remedies and reparation for harm suffered as a result of the actions of international organisations. It encourages reflection on additional measures to strengthen accountability.
Reparations for Indigenous Peoples by Federico Lenzerini (Editor)
Call Number: K3247 .R47 2008 ONLINE
ISBN: 9780191553059
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Published in concomitance with the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, this volume brings together a group of renowned legal experts and activists from different parts of the world who, from international and comparative perspectives, investigate the right of indigenous peoples to reparation for breaches of their individual and collective rights.The first part of the book is devoted to general aspects of this important matter, providing a comprehensive assessment of the relevant international legal framework and including overviews of the topic of reparations for human rights violations, the status of indigenous peoples in international law, and the vision of reparations as conceived by the communities concerned.The second part embraces a comprehensive investigation of the relevant practice at the international, regional, and national level, examining the best practices of reparations according to the ideologies and expectations of indigenous peoples and offering a comparative perspective on the ways in which the right of these peoples to redress for the injuries suffered is realized worldwide.The global picture painted by these contributions provides a view of the status of relevant international law that is synthesized in the two final chapters of the book, which include a concrete example of how a judicial claim for reparation is to be structured and prescribes the best practices and strategies to be adopted in order to maximize the opportunities for indigenous peoples to obtain effective redress.As a whole, this volume offers a comprehensive vision of its subject matter in international and comparative law, with a practical approach aimed at supporting legal academics, administrators, and practitioners in improving the avenues and modalities of reparations for indigenous peoples.
Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century by Jeremy Sarkin; Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes
Call Number: KSY2695 .S27 2009
ISBN: 9780313362569
Publication Date: 2008-11-30
More and more, the descendants of indigenous victims of genocide, land expropriation, forced labor, and other systematic human rights violations committed by colonial powers are seeking reparations under international law from the modern successor governments and corporations. As the number of colonial reparations cases increases, courts around the world are being asked to apply international law to determine whether reparations are due for atrocities and crimes that might have been committed long ago but whose lasting effects are alleged to injure the modern descendants of the victims. Sarkin analyzes the thorny issues of international law raised in such suits by focusing on groundbreaking cases in which he is involved as legal advisor to the paramount chief of the Herero people of Namibia. In 2001, the Herero became the first ethnic group to seek reparations under the legal definition of genocide by bringing multi-billion-dollar suits against Germany and German companies in a number of U.S. federal courts under the Alien Torts Claim Act of 1789. The Herero genocide, conducted in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) between 1904 and 1908, is recognized by the UN as the first organized state genocide in world history. Although the Herero were subjected to Germany's First Genocide, they have, unlike the victims of the Holocaust, received no reparations from Germany. By machine-gun massacres, starvation, poisoning, and forced labor in Germany's first concentration camps, the German Schutztruppe systematically exterminated as many as 105,000 Herero women, and children, composing most of the Herero population. Sarkin considers whether these historical events constitute legally defined genocide, crimes against humanity, and other international crimes. He evaluates the legal status of indigenous polities in Africa at the time and he explores the enduring impact in Namibia of the Germany's colonial campaign of genocide. He extrapolates the Herero case to global issues of reparations, apologies, and historical human rights violations, especially in Africa.

Other Online Sources

Roy L. Brooks, Opinion, Reparations Are an Opportunity to Turn a Corner on Race Relations, L.A. Times, Apr. 23, 2019.
An editorial by Professor Brooks summarizing the main points of Atonement and Forgiveness.
Proposals for Reparations for African Americans: A Brief Overview by Congressional Research Service
Discusses historical background and legislative proposals concerning reparations for the enslavement of African Americans, including H.R. 40, to establish a commission to study the institution of slavery and racial discrimination against African Americans and to recommend remedies to Congress; and H.Res. 194 to apologize for the enslavement of African Americans and their racial segregation. Reviews arguments for and against issuing reparations to African Americans.
Why we need reparations for Black Americans - Brookings Institute
This policy report from the Brookings Institute "provide[s] a history of reparations in the United States, missed opportunities to redress the racial wealth gap, and specific details of a viable reparations package for Black Americans."
National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC)
Established in April, 2015, the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) is a group of distinguished professionals from across the country with outstanding accomplishments in the fields of law, medicine, journalism, academia, history, civil rights and social justice advocacy.
An Historical Timeline of Reparations Payments Made From 1783 through 2021 by the United States Government, States, Cities, Religious Institutions, Universities, Corporations, and Communities By Allen J. Davis, Ed.D.
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, H.R. 40, 117th Cong. (2021)
This bill establishes the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. The commission shall examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.

The commission shall identify (1) the role of the federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, (2) forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants, and (3) lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.
UN Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner on Reparations and Transitional Justice
Homepage for Reparations and Transitional Justice from the OHCHR.
Report on Reparation, Racial Justice, and Equality from the Special Rapporteur on Racism (2019)
Stanford Center for Racial Justice, California Reparations Task Force Details Proposals in Interim Report (June 28, 2022)

Credits

This research guide was originally written by USD Law student Jack Wells.