Reparations: A Neglected Argument

 

The U.S. government was a bad Samaritan in that it was grossly negligent as it for generations stood by and permitted southern states to flourish not only under slavery, but under Jim Crow. Recall also that it took the federal government over a century subsequent to U.S. slavery to pass (and eventually enforce!) civil rights legislation, primarily to combat Jim Crow and other forms of racist segregation throughout the United States. That the U.S. government was a bad Samaritan along these lines is important, as such bad Samaritanism serves as part of the moral basis for the claim of reparations owed by the same government responsible, in one way or another, for both the evils of slavery and of Jim Crow, and how much reparations are owed.

 – J. Angelo Corlett, "Reparations for African Americans?" (emphasis mine) 

Part of Corlett's point here is this: A can owe reparations to B for reasons that go beyond A's complicity in B's harms or losses. Negligence is a distinct source of remedial responsibility. So, for example, if A is negligent with respect to her duties to guard and protect B, and B suffers harms and losses that could have been averted or mitigated had A not been negligent, then A bears some responsibility to repair B's harms and losses (edit: although, as others have pointed out to me––and I agree––the use of "bad Samaritan" is a weird fit here. Samaritans are generic helpers with no special responsibilities, unlike the U.S. gov't. State neglect of racial injustice is not bad Samaritanism, then––but it is still neglect, and that's the point I want to focus on). 

Unfortunately, this is an under-explored argument in the philosophical literature. Even Corlett's argument above fails to go into any depth about the concept of negligence and its connection to reparations. Part of the reason for this vacuum is that philosophers have tended to overlook the nature of neglect (in a recent paper Shauna Shiffrin calls this the "neglect of neglect"). They tend to focus either on complicity or, more recently, on "forward looking" responsibilities that bypass the question of fault and complicity altogether. Additionally, I think the under-explored connection between reparations and negligence has to do with the under-explored nature of reparations in recent philosophical research more generally. The most recent flurry of philosophical work on reparations came out of the 90s and early 2000s (for example, see the edited volume, Injustice and Rectification; also, Redress for Historic Injustice in the U.S., is a notable mention, although it more of an interdisciplinary look at the reparations debate). Since then, unfortunately, there has tended to be a lot of silence (neglect?) on the issue. 

But times are changing. At least, we have reason to be hopeful. Since the publication of Ta-nehisi Coates article on reparations in the Atlantic, interest in the reparations debate has resurfaced in circles outside of philosophy. Moreover, in what is perhaps one of the most important works on reparations in the 21st century, William Darity and Kristen Mullen offer really helpful policy proposals (what they call a "portfolio for reparations") for discharging the debt of past injustices against African Americans. Their book, From Here to Equality: Reparations for African Americans in the Twenty-First Century, is expansive, covering history and economics (Darity is an economist) while also being clear and precise about exactly what is owed, who owes it, and to whom it is owed. Will philosophers participate in this resurgence of interest in the reparations debate? [1] 

A lot of people say that "silence is complicity" (I analyze this claim here). We might need to add a new slogan to the mix: "silence is negligence"...and negligence is grounds for repair. Let's not be negligent. 

Footnotes:

[1] John Torrey is an inspiration here. He is helping to reinvigorate the reparations debate in philosophical circles. On my own part, some of my unpublished work explores the connection between negligence and the responsibility of religious institutions and individuals to participate in reparations. With some development, a similar argument could apply to institutions and individuals more generally. Finally, my dissertation explores the argument that benefitting from injustice is a source of responsibility to repair injustice. Perhaps more than the negligence argument, reparationist literature is deeply committed to the premise that those who benefit from injustice have obligations to repair injustice. For push back against this view, see Anwander's really clever paper, "Contributing and Benefitting: Two Grounds for Duties to Victims of Injustice." Also, in his paper, "The Case for Reparations," (see Redress for Historic Injustice in the U.S.) Fullinwider argues that incorporating facts about the way whites have unjustly benefitted from anti-Black racism and injustice invites complications to the reparationist argument. He recommends leaving that fact out of the argument. My dissertation addresses these and other challenges to the "unjust benefits argument."

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