Reparations function as unburdening from compulsory self-explanation.

Evidence

The point of getting to the other side of reparations is to finally enable black Americans to stop explaining. Stop explaining why there are racial disparities, why we are disproportionately poor, why we aren’t prone to criminal acts, why we aren’t further along economically. What’s more, it would bring about the long-overdue economic, political, and social inclusion of a people who never asked to come here but whose ancestors were forced here in chains and who (along with black immigrants) have been targeted for their blackness ever since. Instead of black Americans feeling like outsiders in our own country, reparations would invite us in, because getting reparations includes transforming policies and practices so that they no longer subordinate black people. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 604

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Builds directly on the Morrison quote at 603; the two passages form the closing argument of the book’s remedy arc.

Related

• Reparations’ central purpose is ending black Americans’ burden of self-explanation (similarity 0.92)
• Reparations offer white Americans relief from maintaining delusion and denial (similarity 0.84)
• Reparations are a completion of American democracy rather than a departure from it (similarity 0.82)
• Reparations shifted from fantasy to necessity for a scholar who once dismissed them (similarity 0.82)
• Reparations require confronting how slavery corrupted white beneficiaries, not just black victims (similarity 0.81)
• Reparations cannot be more divisive than the harms they would right (similarity 0.80)
• Reparations would not end racism but would strengthen monitoring against backsliding. (similarity 0.79)
• Racism’s defining harm is forcing black Americans into perpetual self-justification (similarity 0.79)
• Reparations should cover all black Americans, not just slave descendants (similarity 0.79)
• Any awarded reparations will fall short of the actual loss sustained (similarity 0.79)
• Non-black precedent plus post-slavery history can win majority support (similarity 0.79)
• Reparations must reform the tax code’s antiblack bias through credits and surtaxes (similarity 0.78)
• Black persecution under US race systems is historically unique. (similarity 0.78)
• Political will, not design, is the real obstacle to reparations (similarity 0.78)
• Structural systems, not individual prejudice, are the primary target of reparations (similarity 0.78)