The philosophical case for reparations rests on premises that are, individually, almost uncontroversial: that wrongdoing creates obligations of repair, that benefits derived from injustice carry moral weight, that inherited harm is real harm. The controversy lies not in the principles but in their application — the identification of who owes what to whom, across generations, in complex historical situations where the original actors are dead. The resistance to even examining these questions seriously is, in Juana's terms, a form of bad faith: the refusal to examine what one's circumstances were built on.
Juana