Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T16:05:34.996Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

UNTHINKING RACIAL REALISM: A FUTURE FOR REPARATIONS?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2014

Lawrie Balfour
Lawrie Balfour*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Virginia
*
Corresponding author: Professor Lawrie Balfour, Department of Politics, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400787, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4787. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Considered costly, divisive, and backward-looking, reparations for slavery and Jim Crow appear to have no place in the politics of the “postracial epoch.” This essay proposes that the dismissal of reparations concedes too much. First, I contend that the conjunction of postracial discourse, on the one hand, and deepening racial inequalities, on the other, demands a counter-language, one that ties the analysis of the present to the historical conditions out of which it was produced. I explore reparations as a political language that (1) situates political claims within the historical framework of slavery, reconstruction, and segregation; (2) links past to present to future in its demand for concrete forms of redress; and (3) has played an important role in African American political life and in contemporary democracies in transition. Second, in contrast to much of the reparations scholarship, I focus on the demands of democracy rather than justice. Doing so both helps to evade some of the technical questions that have prevented full consideration of the political work of reparations and provides a vehicle for redefining both governmental and civic responsibility in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow.

Keywords

ReparationsPostracialPolitical ResponsibilityReconstructionEgalitarianism
Type
Race in a “Postracial” Epoch
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 43 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aiyetoro, Adjoa A. and Davis, Adrienne D. (2010). Historic and Modern Social Movements for Reparations: The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and Its Antecedents. Texas Wesleyan Law Review, 16: 687–766.Google Scholar
Baldwin, James (1984). Notes of a Native Son. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Glenn (2009). Is Massive Health Care Plan Reparations? <http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/28317/> (accessed January 3, 2012).+(accessed+January+3,+2012).>Google Scholar
Bell, Derrick A. Jr. (1995). Racial Realism. In Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Gotanda, Neil, Peller, Gary, and Thomas, Kendall (Eds.), Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, pp. 302–312. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Berry, Mary Frances (2005). My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Biondi, Martha (2003). The Rise of the Reparations Movement. Radical History Review, 87: 5–18.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2006). Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Boxill, Bernard (2010). Black Reparations. In Zalta, Edward N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition). <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/black-reparations/> (accessed April 16, 2012).Google Scholar
Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2007). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chapelle’s Show (2003). Reparations 2003. Comedy Central, February 12.Google Scholar
Civil Rights Cases (1883). 109 U.S. 3.Google Scholar
Cose, Ellis (2004). Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge. New York: Atria Books.Google Scholar
Davis, Adrienne D. (2007). The Case for United States Reparations to African Americans. In Martin, Michael T. and Yaquinto, Marilyn (Eds.), Redress for Historic Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies, pp. 371–378. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. (2011). Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. and Popoff, Rovana (2004). Reparations: Justice and Greed in Black and White. Du Bois Review, 1(1): 47–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Greiff, Pablo (2007). Justice and Reparations. In Miller, Jon and Kumar, Rahul (Eds.), Reparations: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, pp. 153–175. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
de Greiff, Pablo (Ed.) (2006). The Handbook of Reparations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1997). The Souls of Black Folk. Blight, David W. and Gooding-Williams, Robert, (Eds.). Boston, MA: Bedford Books.Google Scholar
Fullinwider, Robert (2000). The Case for Reparations. Philosophy & Public Policy, 20(2/3): 1–5.Google Scholar
Gross, Ariela (2008). When is the Time of Slavery? The History of Slavery in Contemporary Legal and Political Argument. California Law Review, 96(1): 283–321.Google Scholar
Hayner, Priscilla B. (2011). Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Henry, Charles P. (2007). Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations: From 40 Acres to Atonement and Beyond. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Darren Lenard (2009). Racial Exhaustion. Washington University Law Review, 86(4): 917–974.Google Scholar
Johnson, Walter (2007). Slavery, Reparations, and the Mythic March of Freedom. Raritan, 27(2): 41–67.Google Scholar
Katznelson, Ira (2005). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D. G. (2002). Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
King, Desmond S. and Smith, Rogers M. (2011). Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
King, Martin Luther Jr. (1986). I Have a Dream. In Washington, James Melvin (Ed.), Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., pp. 217–220. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Klinkner, Phillip (1998). The ‘Racial Realism’ Hoax. The Nation, December 14, pp. 33–38.Google Scholar
Lipsitz, George (2011). How Racism Takes Place. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Loury, Glenn C. (2007). Transgenerational Justice—Compensatory Versus Interpretive Approaches. In Miller, Jon and Kumar, Rahul (Eds.), Reparations: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, pp. 87–113. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Matsuda, Mari J. (1987). Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 22: 323–399.Google Scholar
McGary, Howard (2010). Reconciliation and Reparations. Metaphilosophy, 41(4): 546–562.Google Scholar
Melville, Herman (2008). Benito Cereno. Kelly, Wynn (Ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Nobles, Melissa (2008). The Politics of Official Apologies. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Norton, Michael I. and Sommers, Samuel R. (2011). Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3): 215–218.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha (2011). Foreword. In Young, Iris Marion, Responsibility for Justice, pp. ix-xxv. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Obama, Barack (2008). A More Perfect Union. Wall Street Journal: Washington Wire, March 18. <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/03/18/text-of-obamas-speech-a-more-perfect-union/> (accessed December 27, 2013).Google Scholar
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). 163 U.S. 537.Google Scholar
Roberts, Neil (Ed.) (2012). Symposium – Trayvon Martin. Theory & Event, 15(3). <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae.15.3.html> (accessed September 2, 2012).Google Scholar
Rubio-Marín, Ruth (2008). Gender and Collective Reparations in the Aftermath of Conflict and Political Repression. In Kymlicka, Will and Bashir, Bashir (Eds.), The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies, pp. 192–214. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Thomas M. (2004). The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2011). Reparations, Leadership, and Democracy: A Comment on Balfour and Gooding-Williams. Du Bois Review, 8(2): 395–399.Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret R. (2007). Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sparks, Holloway (1997). Dissident Citizenship: Democratic Theory, Political Courage, and Activist Women. Hypatia, 12(4): 74–110.Google Scholar
Sugrue, Thomas J. (2008). Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Torpey, John (2007). Modes of Repair: Reparations and Citizenship at the Dawn of the New Millennium. Political Power and Social Theory, 18: 207–226.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (2000). Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era. Interventions, 2(2): 171–186.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Jack (2012). Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban (2006). Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrongdoing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban (2007). Reply to Govier, MacLachlan, and Spelman. Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy, 3. <http://web.mit.edu/sgrp> (accessed January 17, 2012).Google Scholar
Wells, Ida B. (1999). Class Legislation. Rydell, Robert W. (Ed.), The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, pp. 17–22. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Westley, Robert (2005). The Accursed Share: Genealogy, Temporality, and the Problem of Value in Black Reparations Discourse. Representations, 92(1): 81–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Melissa S. (2003). Citizenship as Identity, Citizenship as Shared Fate, and the Functions of Multicultural Education. In McDonough, Kevin and Feinberg, Walter (Eds.), Education and Citizenship in Liberal Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, pp. 208–247. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, William Julius (2012). Race and Affirming Opportunity in the Barack Obama Era. Du Bois Review, 9(1): 5–16.Google Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. (1989). The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion (2011). Responsibility for Justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Whitney M. Jr. (1964). To Be Equal. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar