Reparations for the Future

Survivors of the Holocaust demand reparations from the German state. The families of the disappeared require reparations in Argentina. In the United States, African Americans claim reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, while Japanese Americans receive an apology and compensation for the wartime internments. Former colonies press for reparations from former colonial powers. The indigenous populations of North America and Australia assert entitlements for compensation for the dispossession of their lands, as those dispossessed by the communist governments of Eastern Europe assert entitlements to their former property. All of these claims for reparations have mobilized popular support, and all share a degree of intuitive plausibility. The challenge to the theorist is to judge whether and which of such demands are grounded in sound principles of political normativity, so as to be able to select out the valid claims and to measure how the urgency of these claims compares with other demands on the public agenda. The most basic question for those considering the justifications of reparations is how to orient their theories within the space of reasons. Do valid claims for reparation rest at the deepest level on reasons we have for redressing a past injustice? Or do they rather rest on reasons we have to improve our current relations so that we can get along better in the future? Are valid reparative demands backwardor forward-looking? Here I will explain my suspicion that—beyond a limited principle of reparation whose justification is overdetermined—backward-looking considerations add no weight to claims for reparations. Only forward-looking factors give us reasons to repair historical injustice. This may appear a surprising result, but it seems to me unavoidable once we become alert to the reasons why some reparative demands get a hold onto us while others do not. Reparations, when they are due, are reparations not for the sake of the past, but for the sake of the future.