Respect and Love in Reparations and Repair for Chattel Slavery and Its Legacy

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 10 illustrates how the distinction between attitudes of the will and attitudes of the heart can inform debates about ethically appropriate responses to chattel slavery and its legacy that generally go under the heading of “reparations.” Although the focus is on chattel slavery in the United States, the general issues extend internationally throughout the history of racial capitalism, colonialism, and its aftermath. The aim is to illustrate the helpfulness of a distinction between “reparations,” on the one hand, and “repair,” the sense that is in play in the kind of heartfelt forgiveness that Baldwin speaks of, on the other. Only love can heal personal wounds. That is poignantly the case with the horrific harms created by chattel slavery and its legacy institutions and practices.