Reparations means compensation for government-caused or government-failing-to-prevent harm
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
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Brown’s operative definition of reparations — the crux term of the whole book.
Related
- Brown redefines reparations to include payments to white enslavers and Tribal Nations (similarity 0.90)
- Reparations are a completion of American democracy rather than a departure from it (similarity 0.84)
- Government-inflicted harm warrants a higher-order remedy than private harm (similarity 0.81)
- The United States has already compensated nonblack groups for comparable harms (similarity 0.80)
- Reparations can be framed as accountability for intrusive government, winning conservative support. (similarity 0.79)
- Redress legislation deliberately avoided the word reparations in favor of restitution. (similarity 0.79)
- The US government has paid reparations to non-black groups but never to black Americans. (similarity 0.79)
- Governmental harm merits the extraordinary remedy of reparations because government promises protection (similarity 0.78)
- Reparations are a federal societal obligation, not a punishment of individual whites (similarity 0.78)