This is a brief summary-review of Janna Thompson's Should Current Generations Make Reparation For Slavery? published by Polity Press, 2018. I bought it from Amazon.in few months back.
This is a monograph and so it's a small book. It has three chapters and a conclusion. The three chapters are titled as:
1. Slavery and Reparation
2. Should Current Generations Make Reparation for Slavery?
3. What is Owed?
In the first chapter, the author briefly discusses about slavery and reparation. Since slavery is something that is known to most of us, she does not discuss it in great length what it is. She instead focusses on the impact of slavery on the slaves and what reparation is. Some might say that the slave traders and owners did not know that it was wrong, but she argued that there were people then who used to say that such things were wrong. So they were not really innocent. She goes on to say that "reparative justice consists in the obligations and entitlements that result from the commission of an injustice". Thus, reparative justice is different from retributive justice and distributive justice. Retributive justice is about giving punishment to the wrongdoer; but reparative justice is about giving "their due" to the victim.
In the second chapter, she presents arguments why reparation is morally required. At the risk of over simplifying it, let me state it: The slave owners made people work without pay, so the slave owners owe something to the slaves. Now one may argue and say that since the slave owners are all dead, there is nothing owed now. She says that the heir of the slave traders and owners have enriched themselves through slavery, and the descendants of these folks have what they have partly because of the enrichment that they inherit, and the descendants of the slaves who are in bad situation today are so partly because of the legacy that they inherit. She also says that slaves who were forcefully taken away from their cultural root felt lost and disconnected in the strange new land and therefore this loss damage their identity. This loss to their identity which is rooted in slavery continues to affect the descendants of these slaves, and therefore reparation must be made.
In the third chapter, she asks what is really owed. She does not work the monetary value, but she gives certain formula or principle for how, say, Haiti may be given in reparation or how the Blacks in the US could be compensated. When Haiti fought and got independence from France in 1802, as a price for recognition of Haiti as an independent state, France asked her to pay "150 million gold francs as reparation to the slave owners who had lost their property-- ten times Haiti's annual revenue at that time". To pay this amount, Haiti took loan from French banks who charged them high interest rate. Haiti paid this reparation till 1947. The author argued that for this kind of money that Haiti was forced to pay, France could provide reparation today.
Overall I find the argument persuasive. Getting to know the damage slavery wrought upon the slaves was a key point. If this factor is understood clearly, and due action taken to mitigate this effect, much damage could be minimised today. I would recommend this book to students of moral and political philosophy or political history or moral theology or those who work on race relations.
