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In a recent paper, Thomas Carnes develops a novel argument for reparations for historical injustices. This Reply shows that Carnes succeeds only at the cost of invoking an implausible formalism. The Reply also presents in brief a simpler argument for reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global interest in research on the political economy of reparations has been rekindled by recent developments in the United States of America, but much of this renewed investigation is misinformed, distorted, or limited to recycling what is already known. Recent work by Darity and Mullen is an exception. They have contributed eloquently to age‐old debates on reparations for emancipated enslaved Africans. This essay examines their work in the context of historical movements against economic apartheid in the United States, its origins, and how it can be overcome. The focus of this essay is on how reparations should be considered as a response to the entire history of racism‐cum‐discrimination, which has consistently blocked economic opportunities for African Americans. Reparations , if adhered to, will either directly or indirectly modify the economic injustices that continue to face African Americans in their adopted nation (America). Central to any new case for reparations is the power of land, which offers to breathe new life into the broken, old promise of "forty acres and a mule" as a means of addressing long‐term social stratification in modern America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capp returns to the ideological disparity between historical ideas on Mahgrebi enslavement and its transatlantic counterpart; even "People who endured slavery", we hear, "also failed to condemn slavery and the slave trade" (p. 177). Whilst there was no "typical" experience of captivity, Capp is convincing that there was "evidence of extreme cruelty", countermanding suggestions by other scholars that most captives may have been "well treated" (pp. 39-40). It has become popular, as the entangled histories of enslavement and empire occupy an increasingly prominent position in public historical discourse, for some writers to lean on elements of "whataboutery". [Extracted from the article]

An editorial is presented in which the author discusses the significance of social work, particularly in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic and issues of social inequality, economic and difficulties, and health disparities in the U.S., identified as a syndemic. The article also discusses white supremacy, collusion, and racism within the social work profession, in addition to the concepts of restorative justice and reparations.

This paper brings into conversation truth telling and compensation as forms of reparation for historical injustices in the Canadian settler colonial context. I examine how settler bureaucracy engages with stories of Indian residential schools and former students through analysis of the Common Experience Payment program's application form and final evaluation. This program, which provided former students with compensation for their collective experience in residential schools, erases survivor-centred forms of truth telling within the records and practices of the public service. I argue that the Common Experience Payment process both produces a new Indigenous population to be governed and perpetuates longstanding settler colonial rationalities that attempt to manage and marginalize the emotion and voices of Indigenous peoples and racialize them as inferior by way of being a 'challenge to overcome' for the bureaucracy. I emphasize that assimilation is not located simply in the spectacular or brute acts embedded in settler colonial policy, but in the everyday procedural instruments and mechanisms of the public service such as application forms and final evaluations which are largely taken for granted as benign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Programs providing monetary redress for historical injustices are often heralded as praiseworthy acts of national accountability. However, critics tend to judge their implementation harshly. Those unfavorable judgments respond, at least in part, to trade‐offs between important values that are "hard‐wired" into the basic tools of assessment. Exposing those trade‐offs can help observers understand the compromises inherent in program design and, hopefully, support policy makers in creating more rational programs. Related Articles: Kahn‐Nisser, Sara. 2018. "Constructive Criticism: Shaming, Incentives, and Human Rights Reforms." Politics & Policy 46 (1): 58‐83. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12240 Ryan, Susannah. 2015. "White Gold and Troubled Waters in Southern Africa: Hydropolitical Policy's Effect on Peace in Lesotho and South Africa." Politics & Policy 43 (2): 239‐255. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12114 Woessner, Matthew, and April Kelly‐Woessner. 2006. "Slavery Reparations and Race Relations in America: Assessing how the Restitutions Debate Influences Public Support for Blacks, Civil Rights, and Affirmative Action." Politics & Policy 34 (1): 134‐154. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2006.00007.x [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These Reflections present an overview and take stock of the German-Namibian bilateral negotiations how to come to terms with the genocide committed by the German empire in the colony South West Africa between 1904 and 1908. The main actors and their specific positions/approaches are identified since in 2015 a spokesperson of the German foreign ministry recognised the term genocide as applicable. As shown, more than four years of negotiations since then have not yet produced an amicable solution based on a mutual understanding and viable compromise. The pending negotiations have also failed to include significant agencies of the Nama and Ovaherero communities, who feel not represented by the Namibian state. While progress might have taken place behind closed doors, representatives of the German state have during 2019 not advanced credibility among Namibians. In contrast, a local initiative among members of the German-speaking community in Namibia for the first time entered a dialogue with some descendants of the victim groups in an effort to come to terms with the past. There is also progress in the German discourse over the need for restitution of cultural artefacts in German museums stolen during colonial times. But counter tendencies include a reactionary backlash in German policies and public opinion with the revisionism dismissing any historical obligations for colonial crimes as promoted by the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and other proponents questioning the notion of genocide. Colonial amnesia remains a significant phenomenon and challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the reparative possibilities of representing subjugated voices in historical narratives. It examines, first, the onto-epistemic conditions under which this representation becomes possible. Further, it demonstrates that the possibility of representation is contingent upon the reproduction of the subjugated subject as a signifier of onto-epistemic difference. This form of representation fails to repair the harm underlying subjugation. The paper concludes by demonstrating the need for telling more 'surprising' stories that unravel material and symbolic attachments to the given onto-epistemic order. The argument proceeds through an engagement with the figure of the woman as she circulates in the histories of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. In particular, it engages the figure of the martyred woman and the abducted woman as they emerge in testimony and film, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2020, as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) shocked many health experts and world leaders with its ease of transmission and slow but unyielding spread from Wuhan, China, the initial state response centered on how to contain an epidemic and help those who are infected. Many months later, as some states enjoy a flattened curve following austere social distancing measures, many states may turn their attention from health response to legal response for China's initial mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak. China is certainly not alone in implementing containment measures that were not maximally prompt or effective. Still, China occupies a special place in the outbreak as the source of the virus, and, therefore, the crucial first responder to this global pandemic. This Article first describes the initial outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Next, and more importantly, it highlights the many ways that China's response to the outbreak on its home soil was mismanaged because Chinese Communist Party leaders reflexively prioritized secrecy and censorship over transparent and universally accepted public health measures. As a direct result, the toll on the infected snowballed, resulting in devastating political and economic crises that cascaded to every corner of the globe. In such a context, states are beginning to demand a finding of Chinese responsibility and reparations for China's gross mismanagement of the viral spread. Finally, this Article explores the pressing issue of China's liability to other states and methods by which harmed states can seek reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the East Timor Alert Network's (ETAN) claims‐making strategies regarding support for human rights and self‐determination of East Timor during the Indonesian occupation from 1975–1998. This research seeks to understand how ETAN attempted to persuade Canadians to care about a geographically distant horror. I examine various claims‐making strategies that ETAN used to encourage Canadian audiences to evaluate the problem as an object of public concern, the Timorese as victims deserving of their sympathy, and Canadian government as condemnation‐worthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are we talking about when we talk about decolonization? In this article, we differentiate between epistemic and reparative decolonizing approaches and then consider the differences between postcolonial and decolonial modes in two fields: histories of science and, separately, museology. Touring these fields leads us to affirm the need for scholars to consider the consequences of their allegiances to different critical movements and moments. Whatever it will mean to decolonize history, we conclude, it is both a necessary and necessarily relational enterprise with material and conceptual excesses to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussion has drawn out some important differences between postcolonial and decolonial theories. The former are associated primarily with the work of South Asian scholars working in cultural, literary, or historical studies; decolonial scholarship, by contrast, is located in Latin America and has emerged from sociological critiques of dependency theory. Shifting the locus of debate to the Pacific centers another subject in globalizing critiques of colonialism: the historian in indigenous communities. In this article, I examine how the role of the researcher is conceptualized in Linda Tuhiwai Smith's landmark work Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999). Revealing tensions between objectivity and intersubjectivity, on the one hand, and between essentialist identity and hybridity, on the other, I ask why Smith's book hinges on dichotomizing nonindigenous and indigenous researchers, who are by turn enabled or constrained in a colonial present. I situate this late twentieth‐century subject in a genealogy of indigenous engagement with history and anthropology in New Zealand and contemporary problems of historical justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the African American demand for reparations that continue to call to the significance of the Black Manifesto, the fire-brand statement produced in Detroit in the spring of 1969. Topics include considered the political-economic treatise from the National Black Economic Development Conference (NBEDC) that was of a fluid document that challenged the American social conscience.

The article discusses a reparation-based approach to remedy the cancellation by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019 of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Haitians in the country. Topics include the lawsuits against the TPS cancellation like Ramos v. Nielsen and Saget v. Trump and the history of exclusionary racism within U.S. immigration law, particularly against Haiti and Haitians.

Historical trajectories of explicit disregard contribute to current day biases related to the health and well-being of Black women and girls. In the current study, a multi-faceted analysis is used to examine linkages between historical mistreatment, twenty-first-century health disparities and specific problems with quality of care, access to resources and a lack of regard for the personal agency of Black women and girls. Considering systemic biases, the author asserts six core components of intersectionality to guide six practical solutions for reducing sexual health disparities experienced by Black women and girls in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I offer the opposing view (con-side) against reparations for American slavery, as if in a forensic debate before a moot court: I presume the American public will judge the merits of my opposing arguments. I oppose reparations for slavery based on: 1) the legal standard of culpability, 2) the "cleanhands doctrine, " 3) Black people who were themselves slave owners, and 4) fairness in the administration justice. While anyone else is welcome to argue the pro-side, I argue the con-side of the following proposition: America owes Black Americans reparations because of its history of plantation slavery, which has privileged White Americans economically over Black Americans. I provide a plethora of evidence that reparations and justice are incompatible in the application of American justice. Moreover, any law requiring reparations for slavery could create an unintended liability for far too many Black Americans whose ancestry extends far beyond Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, black former professional footballer, Howard Gayle, was awarded an MBE, in recognition of his work in anti-racist education. He rejected the accolade due to its colonial associations and the experiences of his African ancestors under the British Empire. This article analyses and theorizes the geographical, cultural, political, historical and temporal contexts and consequences surrounding this refusal. While highlighting the fluid and reciprocal spatial and temporal positionalities that guide Gayle's articulations, it argues that it is essentially through and in the local spaces and places of his home city of Liverpool – a pivotal location in the historic international slave trade – that his anti-imperial consciousness is forged and enacted. The article addresses the possibilities that emerge from demands for social and reparative justice by public figures such as Gayle, in terms of decolonial thinking, anti-racist pedagogy and their status as a source rather than an object of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2009 to 2012 the author lived and worked in Whitehorse as a lawyer for Justice Canada. One of her responsibilities was to attend Independent Assessment Process hearings in the role of “Canada’s Representative.” The experience of hearing from survivors and working within the limits of a tortsbased process sent the author on an exploration of how harms are classified and remedied in Canadian law. The disconnect she felt between the narrow parameters of the legal process and the ongoing effects of historic harms that were evident in many aspects of northern life needed to be reconciled. Building on previous work that identified and classified harms, the author reviews the thirteen reparations that have been provided for the harms caused by the Indian Residential Schools policy in order to assess how well these reparations, when taken together, are able to address the full range of harms expressed by residential school survivors. The author then suggests additional mechanisms of responsibility, drawn largely from transitional justice theories, which could bring Canadians, as individuals and as a polity, into their role within the intergenerational legacy of the Indian Residential Schools policy and recognize the full range of harms experienced by survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reparations reappeared in the news even before the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others made headlines as modern-day lynchings. As data continue to show the perpetuation of social and economic harm and hardship that Black Americans suffer for being Black Americans, notions of fairness and justice suggest redress for slavery and its rippling harms should be possible. But is it? Generations of powerful Black Americans have spoken against the bitter realities of American law, from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Ta-Nehisi Coates, yet the history of reparations and response by the courts show that moral wrongs do not create legal rights. This Note revisits reparations to examine past efforts and considers how reckoning with and atonement for the past might be successful today. Older models of reparations focused on monetary compensation, but race-conscious remedies are unlikely to survive the Supreme Court's scrutiny. Instead, reparations emphasizing rehabilitative benefits may be a more effective vehicle today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the urgency of redressing South Africa's unjust legacies of the past, we interrogate the nature of support and opposition to restitution in South Africa. Informed by responses to the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), we contend that South Africa remains deeply polarised when it comes to addressing these unjust legacies, with race being the major fault line. When it comes to restitution, South Africans are worlds apart on three levels. We are worlds apart across racial groups; we are worlds apart within racial groups, and we are worlds apart in the kind of language we wish to use in framing our pursuit of equality. In the final analysis, while South Africans may be unified in the acknowledgement that the inequality gap is too high, and perhaps even unified in a desire for change, there is a fundamental disagreement about the desirable vehicles we hope to employ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses a lecture by Justice Patrick Robinson, a member of the International Court of Justice, in 2019 that focused on the development and passage in 1960 of Resolution 1514 in the United Nations General Assembly, the Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. She explains Robinson's perception that the granting of independence to colonies was not an act of benevolence. She also describes the reemergence of the topic of reparation in the U.S.

The article explores transitional-justice processes by scrutinizing the Irish state's responses to historical institutional abuse. it mentions state actions through the lens of truth-telling, accountability, redress and reparations, and guarantees of nonrecurrence. It also mentions relationship between the state's performance of this shame in these legal responses and its need to preserve its sovereignty and series of epistemic injustices against people.

Colombia's 2011 Victims' Law aims to return land to millions of internally displaced people and assist survivors in the difficult process of rebuilding their lives through individual and collective reparations. This article analyses the expectations, experiences and needs of two campesino communities involved in this process. Drawing on nine months of fieldwork using ethnographic and participatory visual methods, the article critically engages with transitional justice theory on transformative reparations, and identifies key lessons for the Colombian government to make the Victims' Law live up to its promise of transforming survivors' lives and restoring their trust in the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A history of colonization inflicts psychological, physical, and structural disadvantages that endure across generations. For an increasing number of Indigenous Australians, environmental epigenetics offers an important explanatory framework that links the social past with the biological present, providing a culturally relevant way of understanding the various intergenerational effects of historical trauma. In this paper, we critically examine the strategic uptake of environmental epigenetics by Indigenous researchers and policy advocates. We focus on the relationship between epigenetic processes and Indigenous views of Country and health—views that locate health not in individual bodies but within relational contexts of Indigenous ontologies that embody interconnected environments of kin/animals/matter/bodies across time and space. This drawing together of Indigenous experience and epigenetic knowledge has strengthened calls for action including state-supported calls for financial reparations. We examine the consequences of this reimagining of disease responsibility in the context of "strategic biological essentialism," a distinct form of biopolitics that, in this case, incorporates environmental determinism. We conclude that the shaping of the right to protection from biosocial injury is potentially empowering but also has the capacity to conceal forms of governance through claimants' identification as "damaged," thus furthering State justification of biopolitical intervention in Indigenous lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, Colombia signed a peace agreement with the FARC-EP, thus creating The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) to prevent the impunity of actors involved in the armed conflict for serious human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law. In this context, the JEP is cognizant of case 001, which involves nearly 208,000 members of the military forces, victims of the armed conflict. It is evident that there are differences when guaranteeing the rights of a civilian victim and a military victim. Here, the JEP's process is addressed, determining the recognition, participation, and reparation given to victims that are part of the Military Forces in contrast to the typical guarantees of protection given to other victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal armed conflict of Peru (1980–2000), a struggle which saw the rise of various guerrilla movements, notably Shining Path, against the State, left an estimated 69,280 fatalities and countless survivors of human rights violations. Among the victims, particularly toward the end of the conflict, were over 300,000 indigenous, predominantly illiterate, women in impoverished rural communities who had been targeted by State officials and forced into undergoing sterilisation surgeries. To date, no reparation has been enacted in response. This article reviews acts of truth telling, in particular the use of oral testimony within the project of Quipu, of the victims of these enforced sterilisations, as a nonviolent method of historical justice. The article finds that calls for violent social justice (that is, the internal armed conflict) have not protected the rights of the most vulnerable (among them, indigenous women), though arms may have been taken up in an attempt to do so, but have in fact increased the forms of violence within the armed conflict. By contrast, testimony as nonviolent action protects victims' right to the truth and their right to resist, as it turns against violent histories and toward possible reparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]