[lbo-talk] South & North

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Feb 10 07:51:25 PST 2005


Patrick:
> Wojtek, since you're no US nationalist ignorant of the application of
> political concepts elsewhere, perhaps you'd qualify the use of the word
> reparations when you do these critiques in future, and indeed endorse the
> concept when applied to US companies that made profits from apartheid,
> against the desires of the South African people fighting apartheid. For
that

That is a very different meaning of the word from that circulating on this side of the pond. In my book, "reparations" denotes compensations for specific damages incurred by one identifiable party in the hand of another. It is the specificity of the claim that matters. Even in class action suits on this side of the pond, claimants must positively identify themselves as members of a class defined by the suit (users of a service x between dates y and z).

Nowhere in my writing I objected to the idea of corporate or governmental reparations for specific wrongdoings affecting large numbers of people. In fact I accepted an invitation from the civil rights attorney Michael Tigar to work on one such claim, helping to design measures of specific damages (I am not is a position to discuss this any further).

But that is a very different from the notion of "reparations for slavery" that circulates on this side of the pond. The biggest difference is that while slavery is an undeniable fact and its adverse effect can probably be defined and measured to some degree, neither specific perpetrators nor specific victims cane be identified.

Instead of wasting energy on claims that almost certainly would be thrown of any court of law, a more effective way to go is to fight for more funding for programs designed to overcome social and economic disadvantages faced by minority groups - under whatever slogan has currency, universal rights, equal opportunity, promotion of social capital, etc..

Wojtek



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