Brown redefines reparations to include payments to white enslavers and Tribal Nations

Evidence

While the payments to Italy and Japanese Americans have previously been described as reparations, the other two instances were not. I define reparations, however, as compensation for governmental harm inflicted directly, or indirectly due to their failure to prevent others from inflicting injury. That definition also includes the payments to white enslavers for the “harm” of ending slavery and Tribal Nation members for stolen land. And if we could pay white enslavers for ending slavery, we can certainly pay black people for what the government did to them directly and indirectly after chattel slavery ended. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 30

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional move: reparations = compensation for governmental harm whether inflicted directly or via failure to prevent others’ injury. This expansion brings white-enslaver and Tribal payments under the same umbrella.
• QUESTION: The ‘failure to prevent’ clause makes the lynching-of-Italians case hinge on government inaction — worth testing how far that causal reach extends into, say, private labor-market discrimination.