Fifth Global Conference

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Session 7: Panel
Issues of Reparations for Distant Wrongs

A growing literature both in philosophy and in law addresses the idea that monetary reparations are owed to the descendents of slaves and others whose ancestors were victimized by whites in earlier eras. The three papers proposed take up different aspects of this issue: the moral implications of unearned privilege, the epistemological requirements of reparations, and the concept of inherited collective guilt.

1. An Argument for the Moral Responsibility of Present-Day American Whites for the Inherited Legacy of American Slavery
Amy Hilden
Department of Philosophy, College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

In the discourse surrounding the question of the moral legitimacy of reparations for American Slavery, the claim is frequently made that since present-day American whites are not directly responsible for slavery, they bear no responsibility for slavery whatsoever. In this paper, I will argue that the inheritance of the privilege that accompanies whiteness by individual whites—a privilege that works like other unearned or undeserved social, economic, and cultural advantages—establishes a link with the historical arrangement of white domination over black slaves. Since it is the case that white privilege works in a way to establish de facto benefits to whites on the basis of skin color alone, and not on the basis of particular merit, the implication is established that white individuals are receiving something that they do not deserve. That these benefits and advantages furthermore were first achieved as the result of the institutionalized denial by early white Americans of moral status to African slaves, they constitute a kind of “stolen good” – the “good” being moral equality and personhood. Present-day American culture, I will argue, is a culture that is, in large part, still marked by the crime of this theft. It is the case, then, that white Americans like myself (a third-generation white-skinned Norwegian-American) are the recipients of the stolen good of institutionalized white superiority and concomitant black inferiority, and therefore are accomplices in the original crime. Present-day American whites therefore do bear moral responsibility, indirectly, for the historical origins of the legacy of white privilege that they inherit and illegitimately benefit from. They also, however, bear direct responsibility toward the descendents of the legacy of the original theft, as well as to those who inherit that legacy, on the basis of shared skin color with the original victims.

2. Truth Telling as a Tool to Repair Past Wrongs
Monica G. Janzen
Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, USA

Simone Weil writes that truth is an essential need of the soul. Just as humans will die if they do not have food, they will “fall little by little into a state more or less resembling death…” if they do not have truth. I want to explore one aspect of this idea that truth is an essential need of the soul; the idea that truth telling is a significant part of repairing past injustices, even when those injustices are long in the past. This raises two principal questions. The first is an epistemological question: how does one come to know the truth, especially when those who directly experienced the injustice are long dead? While we can come to know statistics and dates about certain historical facts, we may not be able to come to any real understanding of the suffering of others because of differences in our lives. Furthermore, we may argue about how to interpret facts in our effort to get to the truth. The second is a functional question: how does truth telling play a role in reparations to past generations when we consider that the people whose truth is told might already be dead? How does this truth affect those of us who are presently living? How is it that justice is achieved when the truth is told about past events?
In this paper, I will explore how one might begin to answer these important epistemological and functional questions about truth telling and its relation to repairing past injustices.

3. Individual and Collective Responsibility for Wrongs of the Past
William Andrew Myers
Department of Philosophy, College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Old atrocities such as the institution of slavery, forced removals of peoples from ancestral lands, and genocide, pose special problems of rectification, particularly when original perpetrators and their direct victims are no longer living. Controversies over reparations to dislocated Native Americans and descendents of slaves in the United States have focused in part on the question of inherited collective guilt; opponents of reparations deny that anyone now living bears responsibility for these distant evils. I agree that the concept of inherited collective guilt, like the concept of inherited victimhood, has the disadvantage that it dilutes our norms of actual culpability, essential in adjudicating criminal acts. I argue that contested issues of reparations for distant wrongs can be clarified by distinguishing between collective guilt and collective responsibility. While long dead but identifiable individuals bear the guilt for the wrongs they perpetrated directly or participated in, what we today inherit is not specifically their guilt but rather the responsibility for rectifying present unjust social arrangements and conditions their actions helped create. In this ethical framework there is a collective responsibility to rectify present unfair social arrangements which have resulted from wrongs of the past. Contested issues of present group membership—who counts as a victim and who counts as responsible for reparation—can be avoided by showing that collective responsibility springs from the nature of the present political community and its commitments to justice, rather than from inherited guilt. It is an irreducible part of the human tragedy that some wrongs ultimately cannot be repaired. Yet justice requires us to do what we can to create the institutions and political means to rectify injustices and to prevent their recurrence.