Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism

by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Reparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade. Most theorizing about reparations treats it as a social justice project - either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present; or, they focus on the past, emphasizing
restitution for historical wrongs. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argues that neither approach is optimal, and advances a different case for reparations - one rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core. This view, which he calls the
constructive view of reparations, argues that reparations should be seen as a future-oriented project engaged in building a better social order; and that the costs of building a more equitable world should be distributed more to those who have inherited the moral liabilities of past injustices.

This approach to reparations, as Táíwò shows, has deep and surprising roots in the thought of Black political thinkers such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nkechi Taifa, as well as mainstream political philosophers like John Rawls, Charles Mills, and Elizabeth Anderson. Táíwò's project has wide implications for our views of justice, racism, the legacy of colonialism, and climate change policy.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Race, Philosophy, Social Justice, Environment

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2022

About the author

Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He completed his Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. Before that, he completed BAs in Philosophy and Political Science at Indiana University.

His theoretical work draws liberally from German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, histories of activism and activist thinkers, and the Black radical tradition. He is currently writing a book entitled Reconsidering Reparations that considers a novel philosophical argument for reparations and explores links with environmental justice. He also is committed to public engagement and is publishing articles in popular outlets with general readership (e.g. Slate, Pacific Standard) exploring intersections between climate justice and colonialism.

Reviews

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

So Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is my latest discovery slash crush ❤ So, the guy didn’t just publish one book this year but already two (the second one which I am very excited about “Elite Capture
How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)” is coming out in May 2022 and has dutifully been pre-orded). He also guest hosted a The Dig podcast episode on ‘Financial Empire’ last month so there’s really no way to escape this guy in my bubble. For people who know Mel from Flight of the Conchords, that’s a very good reference to describe my level of fandom.

Anyhow, his latest book ‘Reconsidering Reparations’ (Oxford University Press, January 2022) was an excellent read and the premise of the book is probably among the most profound insights to approaching any social or political issue, so this goes well beyond ‘reparations’. A few take-aways:

#1 – I would very much make chapter one ‘reconsidering world history’ a mandatory read, especially for people in my own profession (…). It’s a great intro on how today’s world – global racial empire - was built and remains structured by colonialism and slavery of the Atlantic order in the 15th century. We continue to live in a world of global racial empire, in which laws and norms maintain the unjust distributions of racial capitalism. This reading of history counters the mainstream view of history and development in which some parts of the world that are ‘still poor’ and need ‘our help’ to catch up to the ‘developed west’. On the contrary, we continue to live in a system (‘global racial empire’ or global capitalism, imperialism, call it what you wish, really) that continues to systematically impoverish some parts of the world for the benefit of others. There are many amazing reads on 21st century imperialism, from an economic perspective on how value is being systematically transferred from the global south to the north. Etc. So the premise is precisely a reconsideration of world history in a way that maps where the social advantages and disadvantages of the global economic and political system have accumulated to lead us to a world of both obscene misery and abundance. Obviously, this in itself is not a new perspective.

#2 I see at least two original conceptual shifts in the book: one is to link this reading of word history with the ongoing debate on repatriations for slavery. Btw, I haven’t engaged too much with the (US) public debate on reparations so this book was also a great read on the background to these debates and philosophical (the author’s background is philosophy) underpinnings of the various schools of thought vis-à-vis repatriations. While most concepts of reparations treats it as a ‘social justice project’ - either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present or, they focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs - the author, suggests a future oriented, indeed ‘world making’ approach to address the still existing system as such “injustice, when it comes to the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, was more than just an inappropriately split pie of wealth. It was a planetary-sized system of politics that makes some people disposable, that makes some places sites of pollution and trash, in both literal and figurative terms ... That system is itself something that needs to be addressed — the system that cages people in the millions, that sends people to wars for the profits of those who are protected from having to serve on the front lines. That system is a problem as well, and that's not something we can fix just with checks, even though we still need to give people checks.”

#3 This suggested ‘constructive’ approach to repatriations aims at building a better social order while the costs of building a more equitable world should be distributed more to those who have inherited the moral liabilities – and accumulated the advantages - of past injustices. This would then not only include direct cash transfer within and among countries but also issues of global trade, MNCs paying taxes, migration etc. It’s a shift in the lens and responsibilities through looking at reparations through acknowledging that the ‘west’ continues to benefit to this day from the legacy of colonialism. Of course, as this is not really in the interests of ‘the elites’ (the latter generally prefer to address this through often tokenistic identity politics measure rather than a structural material redistribution but that’s another book 😊 so there is also a discussion on the forms of power, democracy, organization required

#4 The second original shift is the linking of repatriations with climate justice (Chapter 5). While the author admits that there is no obvious conceptual connection between climate crisis and repatriations for trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism, but given the particular distribution created by this era of global politics and their ecological consequences, our response to the climate crisis will deeply determine the possibilities for justice. Had the global north acted on climate change a few decades ago (and had fossil fuel interests not worked along with coal and freight rail companies to orchestrate misinformation protecting their financial gains at the cost of their and our collective future), the relationship between repatriations and climate crisis could have been very different. Since this didn’t happen, the entire possibility of keeping justice alive in our time hinges on our response to the reality of global warming.

#5 Also, the references/ bibliography are absolutely impeccable and provide reading materials for decades. I have put in some good orders for follow-up reads. Olúfhemi O. Táíwò also sent me down the James Baldwin rabbit hole.

[Vik M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the most compelling and accessible pieces of writing about reparations that I have read. Táíwò does a masterful job of detailing the limitations of the more prominent harm-repair and relationship-repair reparations frameworks, clearly articulating the value of the constructive view in a world where colonialism and imperialism have complicated notions of responsibility. I appreciated the attention to the climate crisis in the final chapter, but wish the book had dug deeper into the other implications of the constructive view (e.g., on how we challenge institutions that exacerbate unequal relationships between countries).

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this for my environmental ethics class. I appreciate this approach to reparations. one of my favorite parts is when he maps step by step how colonial conquest directly leads to climate catastrophe. really profound way of understanding the interconnectedness of domination systems and their lasting impact on both ppl and the earth

[Matthew Sun · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was absolutely out of this world, not necessarily because any of the information was mind-blowing or completely new, but because of a synthesis of elements: intellectual rigor, clarity of writing, a clear-eyed appraisal of history in the full breadth of its ugliness, a resolute future-orientedness, and a willingness to engage with competing arguments on both the right and the left. ill say for sure that the aim and scope of the book is nothing less than global justice and climate crisis - which, at least for me, was not adequately captured by my initial impression based on the title alone. taiwo is one of my new favorite writers and i will surely be ordering a physical copy of this book for my bookshelf!

shout-out to my bestie vikas for letting me steal his copy

[jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

edit: bro i thought i struggled to read but some of these other reviews from self-proclaimed marxists are making me feel really good about myself bc these mfs actually CANNOT read. most of these issues are addressed in the actual introduction where Táíwò lays out who the perceived audience is and explicitly states that this will NOT be a logistical roadmap of details of what should be done. so if you were expecting that then sorry?? but this book isn't even trying to do that. i just read 2 supposed "critiques" that are so unserious and are issues that are directly addressed in the book.

one person attempts to say that Táíwò is undermining class solidarity amongst races by arguing that white people as a race OWE something to Black people which is the kind of airbrushing that Táíwò argues against. the author even spends multiple pages arguing against moral purity of certain groups, even going so far as to lay out the complexity of his own family history and how many of us have ancestors both on the "right" and "wrong" side of history. truly THIS reviewer's lack of reading comprehension skills has done more to dissuade me from cross-racial class solidarity than Táíwò's book ever could.

another person attempts to dismiss reparations as a liberal project because elites are now taking it up. isn't that literally interest convergence which Táíwò talks about? also, just because elites take something up doesn't mean it's not worth doing? Táíwò demonstrates this perfectly by discussing the advances made by the civil rights movement (from which key pieces are then taken up by US elites). the last chapter is literally all about how it would be very nice to end global racial capitalism within our lifetimes, and we should definitely move like it's possible, we also have a responsibility to advance struggle in the now. i feel like this critique is coming from an "all or nothing" perspective that legitimately just leads to nothing. like maybe you could say that Táíwò is just a liberal academic if he was pushing the normie line of reparations (which from my experience has mostly been about a single cash payment?) but he spends most of the book arguing for a much broader vision than the one that exists in the mainstream.

--

i will say that this book is relatively short and does A Lot. in particular, the first couple of chapters lay out a reframing of world history that emphasizes the development of global racial empire. thus, reparations is not about a 1 time payment addressing a 1 time event, but instead, reparations is about remaking the world & building a future. that's a big intellectual lift, and i found these chapters important and also the most difficult to get through because it was so dense. i feel like i also already knew these things (as i expect most of the audience to?) so i felt like this was the chapter that could have been cut down a bit or had more commentary rather than straight up facts. my only other gripe is that there are a few really noticeable typos/errors in the printing which is a bummer.

other than that, i always appreciate the interventions that Táíwò makes in conversations that are happening at such a large scale that the details start to get muddled. i'm probably just not paying attention but Táíwò is the first person i've seen argue for the centrality of addressing climate change as a part of reparations. what's the point of closing the racial wealth gap if Black residents in a city have all of their homes/belongings destroyed in the natural disasters to come? the focus on climate change & the future was the most appealing to me. Táíwò makes an interesting call in the end for us to consider what kind of ancestors we will be. i thought it was refreshing to read an author still demand that we struggle to remake the world while also being realistic(?) that we will probably not achieve that in our lifetimes. however, we still have a moral responsibility to advance that future and create an inheritance for the people who come after us.

again, i think Táíwò provides such timely interventions to a lot of topics that become "mainstream" discourse especially amongst social justice circles and movements, so i appreciated this book! i just struggled to read it lol which could be more about me than the book itself tbh

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a thoughtful argument for reparations, tying it to the defining issue of our generation--Climate Change--and emphasizing that this could and should be a global project. The writing here is generally more accessible than other works in the field, which I appreciated. I wish the ending chapters were he outlines the different approaches to how reparations might work in the modern work were a little more fleshed out -- I understand that wasn't ever the author's intention, but *shrug*. I also was distracted by a number of editing errors/typos, which I always feel a bit churlish pointing out, but if you're publishing something, I do think there has to be an expectation of rigorous line-editing. Still very much enjoyed, and I thought the approach of making climate change a central issue tied to reparations made a lot of sense and isn't something I've seen done quite so explicitly.

[Raja · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book connects two very important topics, reparations and climate justice, by offering a philosophical argument for a "constructive" view of reparations, as opposed to harm-repair or other perspectives. This view of reparations implies that a broad "worldmaking" project is needed to address both issues in a philosophically and materially satisfactory way. In other words, the fundamental relationships of power (but also goods, liabilities, environments, and such) between people, countries, the wealthy and the poor, etc. all need to be reworked in order to address the most important issues of our time. I really liked the short parts of this book that actually addressed this topic, but felt the rest, while interesting, just encumbered the book.

In particular, a lot of the book suffered from a common problem in popular leftist non-fiction, which is wayyy too many quotes and paraphrases! I want to know what the author thinks. Hide the literature review from me and just let it inform the arguments! Use excessive footnotes or a long narrative bibliography if you have to.

[Chris Wright · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't believe the hype. Here's the review I posted on Amazon:

It's a rather dull and unconvincing book. He barely addresses any of the critiques of the "reparations" idea from Marxists such as Adolph Reed, and much of the book consists of a pretentious exposition of "his" version of the arguments for and conceptualization of reparations, which he calls "the constructive view of reparations." I say it's pretentious because a good deal of what he says is little more than truism and is quite unoriginal, but it's presented as if it's important, sophisticated, and new. Even the notion he repeatedly invokes of "worldmaking," which he takes from Adom Getachew, is of little interest, being just another name for what revolutionaries have desired since the 19th century, namely the creation of a new, just world. None of his proposals, such as a universal basic income, divestment from fossil fuels, global climate funding, and elimination of tax havens, requires the political framework of reparations, since these have all been proposed by Marxists who ground their arguments in the necessity of class solidarity among races -- an imperative Taiwo barely mentions, preferring to argue (like all reparationists), at least implicitly, that the white race owes reparations to other races. To which one might reply: sure, yeah, okay, there's a lot of truth to that. But why not frame it in the more radical and Marxist terms of the capitalist class owing reparations to the working class? White people have suffered enormously under capitalism too, a fact Taiwo prefers to gloss over.

In short, it's a mediocre book (like his other book "Elite Capture"), a regression from Marxism. It's bizarre that so many of these recent identity politics exponents seem to consider themselves Marxists, since they appear unaware of the fundamental Marxist tenet that CLASS struggle, class solidarity among all races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, religions, etc., is the most revolutionary form of struggle. When you foreground, say, racial grievances, you might succeed in making gains -- especially in the past, as with the Civil Rights Movement -- but sooner or later these gains have diminishing returns, as we can see today, and ultimately will never lead to the revolutionary goal of overcoming the horrors of capitalism. In the end, Taiwo and other writers like he are simply capitalizing on the fashionable nature of the "reparations" concept but are wholly unpersuasive regarding its political feasability. (No concrete path is ever spelled out about how we're supposed to get the U.S. government, and governments worldwide, to transfer immense amounts of wealth and resources to descendants of slavery. And what about the nightmarish logistics of deciding who will receive reparations?? Etc. None of this is delved into.)

The whole project is intellectually and politically unserious -- which is why, doubtless, the mass media is willing to discuss reparations and other notions of identity politics, knowing that, despite the illusions of various left-liberal "public intellectuals," these demands don't pose a real challenge to central capitalist power structures. They distract from class, since they revolve around race. It's really that simple (no matter how much left intellectuals would insist class and race are "imbricated," dialectically related, and so on).

If you want to achieve genuine systemic change, you need an interracial mass base. This is achieved by demanding *universal* programs, universal changes, such as Bernie Sanders represents (which is why he grew so popular). You have to appeal to the self-interest of not only Blacks but also working-class whites. Is it likely we'll ever convince most white Americans to support, out of the altruistic goodness of their hearts, enormous transfers of wealth to descendants of slavery? No. It's impossible. What's not impossible is to build an interracial movement that eschews the terminology of "reparations" and simply makes anti-capitalist demands -- of social democracy or, preferably, much more: worker control over the economy, socialization of the corporate sector, nationalization of the fossil fuel industry, close cooperation with more impoverished countries to counteract global warming and build up their own economies, etc. The reparations talk is a stupid red herring that will go nowhere politically and is doubtless beloved by the Bill Gateses and Warren Buffetts of the world because, despite the intentions of some of its spokespeople, it draws attention away from *present-day capitalism* (focusing instead on the past, especially slavery and colonialism).

In short, while it's a good career move for left intellectuals to talk about reparations -- they'll get a lot of media attention, they'll be taken seriously (sort of) by liberals who want to feel good about themselves and assuage their white guilt, they'll be tolerated by the powerful because they're not *directly* challenging capitalism -- it's a very unserious intellectual and political move.

Oh, one last point I almost forgot: its verbosity and repetitiveness are also somewhat annoying. Intellectuals typically value verbiage for its own sake (they love to hear themselves talk, because it's a sign of status), and many of their books would pack a greater punch if they were shortened. That's certainly true of this one.

[Dayton Martindale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely thoughtful and stimulating read arguing that reparations must be forward looking and grapple with the climate crisis. It made me think differently ("reconsider," as the title suggests) about what reparations are for and what they should aim to accomplish.

Listen to my interview with the author here: https://shows.acast.com/storytelling-...
or
https://open.spotify.com/episode/11On...
or
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

[Mark Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò goes beyond the usual justifications and proposals for reparations to descendants of enslaved people, to straightforwardly propose a world making project. Táíwò calls it the Constructive view. "Reconsidering" does not mean tossing out reparations, and instead expands the scope of the reparations formula to the broader effects of colonialism—both historical and current. This view takes in the long arc of history from the first Portuguese slave traders to the remnants of colonialism in our own contemporary society.

Táíwò traces the history of slave trading and slave rebellions through Haiti, Brazil, and the US South to address the core moral issues of transatlantic slavery and colonialism. The author demonstrates that capitalism as we know it today would not and could not exist without the chattel slavery that established it—remove the lower cost of slave labor in preceding centuries, and there would be a different world economy today. That economy is one aspect of today's society that Táíwò proposes changing. The solution can include market activities without the dominance of an elitist class.

A key point that Táíwò emphasizes is that the solution is not a simple binary, that of all wronged and all doing the wrong. In many respects everyone is part oppressed and part oppressor—however none of that negates the degree to which that is so between the circumstances of those who are economically white and others who are not. In the end we're all human, and that's the key—it's time we act like it.

To accomplish that goal, Táíwò asserts that we need new translocal ways of thinking and acting across separate geographic and political contexts and boundaries—outside the formal levers of power. Táíwò properly insists that reparations for global racial empire should make tangible differences in people's lives. This involves a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, based on the relationship of each to the core moral wrongs. Protection from elite capture of public movements is essential—cultural appropriation should be guarded against along the way.

This is not a zero sum winners and losers proposal. Although it will take a long arc to repair the damages from colonialism, it's imperative to proceed on this journey now. We should advance this Constructive view as much as possible in each generation—the result is to enlarge the humanity of all of us.

[Asher · Rating 4 out of 5]

What Táíwò is trying to do in the book has a fairly high degree of difficulty: he is trying to lay out in a succinct enough way why reparations are a sensible idea and how we might think of them without coming across as radical or ridiculous. As far as I can tell, he's writing for a liberal, elite or elite-adjacent audience, and so he cannot take as given that the reader will already be open to anti-capitalist ideas. That's a hard course to thread given that it becomes pretty clear that it is baked into much of what modern capitalism is that the exploitations of the past continue to the future.

So, how does he do at that task? I think he does well. The prose is lively and readable, the arguments coherent and linear, and the ideas well characterised. I think I would find myself moved by his arguments if I was a person that needed to be moved by them, and as someone that already was on board with the ideas, this has been educational and has helped me to articulate some things I hadn't properly understood.

My critique of this may sound like damning with faint praise, but I found that for a book that advocated for a world making project, there wasn't enough ideas about the world we might want to make. I would have definitely appreciated some more specific ideas about what reparation might look like in different contexts and some thought about the implications of those ideas, but alas that seems to be pretty firmly the realm of speculative fiction. If you, like me, take as a given that the modern system of capitalism, what Táíwò calls the Global Racial Empire, needs fundamental changes for the world to experience justice, you may find that the primary thing you get from this book is a better theoretical understanding of the thinking about reparations and a well articulated argument for their importance. That's probably still worth the read.

[Daniel Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò offers a persuasive analysis that reframes reparations for colonialism and slavery as a global “worldmaking” project. In contrast to a discourse marked by cultural and historical amnesia, this worldmaking project takes a long view of the present system, focusing on its historical birth and development into a global empire of inequality. The fissures of this system are particularly visible now at the intersection of racial and climate justice.

Importantly, Táíwò conceives reparations not as a one-time act that magically settles a one-time score, but as a comprehensive transformation of our received reality. This worldmaking transformation uses a constructive approach to set about actually building the world we wish to see.

At the end of the book, Táíwò leaves the reader with reflections on how to fight the fires of what he calls Global Racial Empire, while resisting the amnesia that allows this system to continue unchecked. One such tactic that carries deeply spiritual implications is that of “acting like an ancestor.” Cultivating this attitude links us across time and space with those who have come before us and those that will come after us, to whom we now bear responsibility.

Against accelerationism and apocalypticism, acting like an ancestor requires a “revolutionary patience” that accepts the challenge of making small changes for a just world that may reverberate long after we are gone. There are no final, immediate solutions, and the world will not be remade only upon the condition of obliteration. We can only take up the tools we have now and start building.

[Julia Crocodile · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The ability of our social systems to respond to climate crisis may increasingly become definitive of what forms of freedom and security are available and who has them.” (pg. 9)

I read this for a paper on how California's carceral system is responding to the climate crisis (lobbying for increased funding and capacity for the control of surplus labor) — and how we should respond instead. I read this book for its framework on how society (particularly the societies of the Global North) should address the injustices and harms of the global racial empire. While global in its scale and focused specifically on political reparations projects, I think Táíwò's framework for constructive reparations focused on self-determination and redistribution of capacities should be applied to basically every political/social project.

[Aurea Cunanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tangible and meaningful information on how to even consider reparations in a real way! First part of the book was gaining context and latter was operational actions for reparations so the first bit just bummed me out and was a slog. However obvs I get why the author included it. I really enjoyed this book I really loved how comprehensive it is, I’d really love further meditations on sexual violence and reparations!!!!

[Patrick Murray]

For class

[Jere · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can't imagine a more philosophically vigorous + impassionate + aimed at the general public case for reparations/world remaking than this

[Halle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taiwo's "constructive approach" to reparations encourages us to remake the world we live in. He provides extensive historical explanation of the "global racial empire" and proposes tangible suggestions for reaching racial/climate justice. I read this for my political science seminar and learned a lot. Would recommend!

[Zoe Seymore · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this book for a PODS class for my MSW degree. it was very interesting perspectives and resulted in good discussions in class

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is, at the end of the day, a book that feels like it is written by a liberal academic philosopher.

Its first problem is the repeated and unexplained use of a "we" in claims like "we need to X." Who, exactly, is this we? It certainly does not include the capitalists that control the "global racial empire" that he describes. This appeal to an un-named "we" suggests a technocratic solutionism and passive diagnosis of the current problems that face the vast majority of people living on this planet. There are real systems (capitalism) and real people (capitalists) that shape the world and its trajectory with accumulated power. This book is hesitant to acknowledge this, indicated by its list of "tactics" and "targets" that are meant to be some list of things "we" are meant to try.

There are several other problems, including its (absurd, in my opinion) sort-of-passing claim that "all people just want some sort of equality". This is, of course, untrue unless your definition of "equality" is stretched to meaninglessness. Nazis do not want equality; libertarians do not really want equality etc., etc. This, again, lends itself to a sort of liberalism that refuses to take a stand on issues of power and violence.

It also introduces a concept of "distributive justice", ironically preceded with a Marx quote from the 18th Brumaire. It does not, at any point, discuss the dialectical nature between distribution and production, or really, the fact that production should be seen as the primary driver of this relationship. This leads, again, to a sort of technocratic view of things where we Just Need To Fix The Distribution Of Society's Gains - without considering the nature of what / why society is producing.

It ends with what is ultimately a pessimistic and, again, liberal view of the project going forward. It explicitly tells us to lower our expectations, encouraging us to take a "generational view" of things. If we fail to get rid of capitalism quickly, well, that's just fine! In fact, we might not even have to do it at all!

While this book may offer some useful intervention in discussing reparations amongst academics (the "constructive view" vs. other prevailing views), it does not offer much more than that.

[Ashley Donohoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe my views on this story are quite contingent on the context in which I read it. I'm a university undergraduate student, and I read this book for my political philosophy class. As a text for a wider, more general audience, I love how clearly written the book is. The word choice is accessible and it made its points clearly. I want to reemphasize how important that is, as I've read a lot of philosophers in my life who seem to forget their sentences are supposed to be understood by more people than just PhD candidates. However, I did rate this three stars because I feel somewhat lost by the call to action the argument hinges upon. So many of the demands involved, such as the call to world-building and matching the strength those who advantage from the global racial empire bring to tearing down justice reform, appear to directly appeal to the idea of revolution. Yet, the final two chapters seem to draw away from that idea. While the historical construction provided in the earlier part of the book makes it accessible, interesting, and provides important context to how the argument is framed, I found myself much more drawn to this later debate brought up by Táíwò's conception of reparations. Enacting meaningful climate change, to my knowledge from the sources I have read, do seem to lean heavily on an idea of revolution. Táíwò's defense against this scientific side of the argument, that the world will have irreparable damage within my lifetime, did not seem to hold up within the idea that reform can be slow moving. So much of this argument I agree with and is articulated in ways I could only ever dream of, but I do push back on the notion that we can merely act as an ancestor without significant structural change now. I'd love a further discussion of this side of Táíwò's argument, as I find it incredibly interesting and clearly, as I am an undergraduate student, he is going to have a much stronger expertise to draw on and guide me with.

[Burton DeWitt · Rating 1 out of 5]

In the fourth and fifth paragraphs of the introduction, Taiwo discusses and quotes from an article by Adolph Reed entitled “The Case Against Reparations.” There’s just one problem: Unless you read the footnote, Taiwo never makes explicit that Reed is against reparations. And to the extent that his discussion may imply that Reed is so, he focuses primarily on Reed’s argument about how reparations can be merely symbolic in a way that distracts from more important goals. In short, the book starts off with an at-best disingenuous presentation of Reed, and at worst a lazy or distorted view. The rest of the book follows the same path.

The book is riddled with things that are just not true, or are so oversimplified or haphazardly presented that there is no way to analyze their veracity.

Let’s start with the just plain wrong. Many of these might seem like nitpicking, and no doubt they are, but they raise credibility questions. For example, on pages 35-36, Taiwo writes about the global impact on the US Civil War and alludes to “a farmer . . . [in] the Belgian Congo,” never minding that Henry Morgan Stanley was actually fighting in the US Civil War at the time and was still more than a decade off beginning his exploratory forays on behalf of King Leopold in central Africa. Then there was the un-cited declaration of Toussaint L’Ouverture as “a leader in Haiti’s late eighteenth century war of independence against” France, which ignores that L’Ouverture very explicitly sought autonomy within the French Empire and consistently eschewed demands for independence (those came after he was deposed). And then there is the point that Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 storm to argue that the levees were not built to withstand it. Except by the time of landfall, wind speed had decreased to 125 mph, rendering it a Category 3 storm — the very level the levees (if properly maintained) were designed to withstand. These and other mistakes may be small, but they add up, and leave me questioning whether Taiwo is correct about things I am not familiar with.

Which leads to the oversimplification. Most the book can fit into this category, but the most glaring example comes on page 169, where Taiwo manages to condense the entire history of post-colonial governance down to three sentences whereby states, predominantly in Africa, “often inherited relatively weak legislatures, deeply autocratic political structures, and the dictatorial institutional memory of colonial management,” which in turn “affected the trajectory of legislative power development even after formal independence was won.” At a basic level, that very well may be true. But it is contestable, and entire books have been written that would contest one or all of those premises. It ignores that the “independence [that] was won” was almost without exception on the colonizer’s terms, and often remained subject to the interference of the (ex-)colonizer thereafter. We can’t conclude that Mobutu’s rise in the then-Zaire was because of a weak legislature without addressing Belgian and American interference in the early-60s that was intended to disempower the legislature and to reorient power toward a pliable executive. Just the same, we can’t say Ahmadou Ahidjo was able to consolidate absolute control in French Cameroon without accounting for the French refusing to allow legislative elections because they knew that the communists would win if they did. At the very least, the causes of the weakness of African legislatures in the 1960s is not crystalized fact that can be written through in three sentences.

Which gets to the nub of the problem with this book. Nothing here is original or new. The book is a mix of overly specific anecdotes and broad generalities that support a view that the global north has extracted and is extracting innumerable benefits from the global south, and that a redistribution of that order is called for. And that is fine to some extent: there should always be room for someone to repackage other arguments and present them to a wider audience in a more accessible way.

But Taiwo doesn’t do that. Taiwo meanders through and between various different academic disciplines, cherry picking scholars to present a view that is entirely devoid of nuance and that amounts to virtue signaling for virtue’s sake. He then synthesizes all of that to relabel as reparations what is in reality an argument for a broader reorganizing of global power. And he does so without ever explaining what that should look like, with merely a brief rundown in the penultimate chapter of what some types of “reparations” could be. That simply is not good enough.

Taiwo tries to account for the shortcomings of the book by stating in the introduction what the book doesn’t address. He says he is not going to try to “design a particular reparations proposal or dive into the weeds of specific criteria for who does and doesn’t deserve reparations.” But these questions aren’t ancillary to a justification of reparations, no matter how broadly he defines reparations. They need to be answered in order to justify reparations. On a global scale, should reparations be given to states or people, and if the latter, is that even possible? No doubt, those who are effectively the state in much of the global south are individually amongst the winners of what Taiwo calls global racial capitalism, and they stand to win even more if they control the levers of reparations. But even domestically within the US, it is hardly clear, which Taiwo himself acknowledges in discussing a mixed-race individual descended both from formerly enslaved people and former enslavers.

These questions are many of the same questions that leading critics of reparations spill much of their ink dealing with to question the merits of reparations in the first place. Taiwo’s explicit exclusion of these questions from the scope of the book by necessity also excludes any grappling with critics of reparations. It leaves Adolph Reed, for example, co-opted, not corrected or refuted. It leaves the book incomplete. It leaves it unable to get anywhere close to its mission of considering — let alone reconsidering — reparations fully. 1.5/5.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I was smart enough to explain why this book is so good

[Karen Adkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is simply brilliant. Taiwo's argument is original--that we think of reparations as a *constructive* project, as in constructing a juster world. In making it, he deals charitably and efficiently with a host of scholarly literature (in particular, differentiating his constructive approach from the moral harms and relationship repair models), but does so without it feeling tediously academic. He looks backwards and forwards in the book; he argues that reparations are too often cause- or country-focused, but that in the case of chattel slavery (his particular example), the injustices are so clearly drawn from world systems (the slave trade was global, and had a host of structural forces). My poor summary makes it sound like the book is unfocused, but quite the opposite is true; his argument is so clear that he's able to cut through enormous swaths of information to focus our eye on what we owe future generations. The book is written for academics, in that he cites his sources, but its prose and efficiency make it absolutely appealing for a general audience. He is positively lyrical in the final chapter, where he pulls together the threads of his argument by asking us, in essence, to think like ancestors.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely incredible moral dialogue with some of the most fundamental questions of our existence: what we inherit and what we leave behind. While packed with historical narrative, research and analysis, it is also deeply personal and profound.

I preordered this audiobook after hearing Táíwò interviewed on Democracy Now, and thought I was in for a dry but educational read. This (at least the “dry” part) couldn't be further from the truth. Táíwò builds concrete academic arguments supported by research and deep historical narrative, yes. He introduces conceptual frameworks for understanding and evaluating reparations, yes. But he also asks us to shift our orientation to time, to envision our place within centuries. He reaches for the very human core of what it is to be in personal relationships with these things, with the existential horror of global empire, with being an inheritor (blood or otherwise) of lineages that are both aggressor and victim, and what that means for our responsibility and actions. This is a book about how to conceive of one's own life, one's ancestors chosen and inherited, and one's own role in ancestry and building the future.

It will be a top contender for my most definitive read of 2023, and it's only February.

[Vaidehi Bhardwaj · Rating 5 out of 5]

[philosophy honors thesis reading]

God, I love Dr. Táíwò. Wonderful introduction to the world of reparations. I say "introduction" because as someone a little more familiar with reparations theory, I found some of his philosophical reasoning a little lacking- in particular, his explanations and responses to the harm repair and communicative views (although I personally take the communicative view, so perhaps I'm biased). I do understand, though- to get the point across to a lay audience, you often can't tackle the more complex social philosophy metaphysics and logic. Also, I didn't immediately understand why you can't fold the constructive and communicative views together for an ironclad theory of reparation- although this is what my own thesis tries to do, so I guess we'll see how that goes.

Overall, a wonderfully-researched, well-written, and extraordinarily compelling case for reparations and political action in general. I always return to Chapter 6, Moral Arc of the Universe, when I need a little hope. I hope he someday writes a book in itself on thinking like an ancestor- such a small section of this work that has had such an outsize impact on the way I see revolutionary action.

[Neil Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, and basically agree with the thesis that the author wants to advance. Obviously colonialism shaped the world in ways that continue to play out, and we can't talk about a just world while pretending that didn't happen. The best parts of the book are where he gets very concrete about history, and describes specific mechanisms by which the past has brought us to the present (and will bring us to the future).

But I find it a little unsatisfying. It doesn't dive into practical specifics, but it's also not quite rigorous enough that I feel like we're really working through something on the abstract plain. Honestly, this isn't Táíwò's fault. It's how I feel about popular nonfiction as a genre. I always find myself feeling I'd rather read straight-up philosophy, or nitty-gritty history, or unabashedly subjective quasi-memoir. I don't like the feeling of being Hansel-and-Gretel'd toward a Very Neat Thesis, even if (as in this case) the idea seems genuinely good.

But if you, my friend, read popular nonfiction, you will probably like this! It is extremely accessible without dumbing anything down, and you will walk away with something intelligent to say at a party.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book had been on my to-read for a while after reading Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s work for my political theory class last year.
history, the present, and the future are interconnected. the colonial legacy remains today, and underlies many of the inequities we see. taiwo shows how slavery and colonialism has accumulated and impacted the lives of americans so that we can’t just blame inequality on individual choices. i knew most of this already, but what was illuminating was how to address these inequities. taiwo walks through several schools of thought and advocates for the constructive view with practical policy guidelines such as debt relief for developing countries to address climate change.

But what if the project for reparations was the project for “safer neighborhoods and better schools,” for a “less punitive justice system,” for “the right to a decent and dignified livelihood”? What if building the just world was reparations? Indeed, this book will ask, what other form of reparations could even be meaningful in the context of our reality?

A version of the phenomenon that Toni Morrison is explaining is this: racism keeps you answering other people’s questions.

[april melo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taiwo’s book was a challenge for me to read, I found myself having to reread or listen to chapters or paragraphs within the chapters. Despite it being a challenge, this book contains important lessons and insights that are worth the reader’s time. As a white person living in a country where we are slipping backwards, it is imperative to me to understand why we are where we are, and how to mend and move forward. If you want to gain knowledge and understanding of our history and think about how to move forward, this book is well worth your time.

[Cana McGhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

“for better or for worse, our ancestors constructed this world in our image. we owe it to our descendants to rebuild it, in a new one,” with climate justice at the forefront of this rebuilding. this was such a clear and straightforward discussion about enacting reparations simultaneously with the fight for environmental justice. must read!

[Niklas Braun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the history and current state of reparation politics. I love that it refused to placate the layman and instead was catered to an educated audience. The history of reparations was interesting. My only ding was that I felt the chapters discussing modern iterations of reparations were a bit short, I feel like I don't fully understand how they would work.