Review: Reparations and Reparatory Justice: Past Present and Future, edited by Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Mary Frances Berry, and V. P. Franklin

Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Mary Frances Berry, and V. P. Franklin bring together a diverse group of scholars, activists, politicians, and public figures in this edited volume on the future of reparations both in the United States and internationally. The volume organizes itself around an expansive and internationalist history of the reparations movement stretching back into the early history of trans-Atlantic enslavement. The editors envision an inclusive approach of “reparatory justice as a composite of processes and policies that seek to repair the harm done to Black folk as people.” They state that reparations would involve government entities, “corporations and other U.S. institutions such as colleges and universities apologizing and atoning for the exploitation of the African American people, other colonized ethnicities/nationalities, and other oppressed social groups.” (6) The authors represented in this volume take different and sometimes contradictory approaches to reparations. Ron Daniels and V. P. Franklin argue for a...