The Politics of Repair: Making Ready for Reparations

• In Event: Dangerous Desires: Dreams of Otherness

Abstract

Robin D.G. Kelley counts the dream of reparations among those “freedom dreams” that animate the struggle for Black liberation and reparations are included in Policy Platform published by the Movement for Black Lives. Critics though warn that reparations could never be enough to address the harms of US slavery. They cite the history of racial justice measures, which suggest reparations would be reformist rather than revolutionary, falling short of ushering the new day or consciousness so many advocates call for. If reparations could preserve and even strengthen white supremacy rather than abolish it, under what conditions should reparations go forward? In this paper, I argue for a process of repair to “make ready” political subjects and norms for reparations. I outline how repairing injuries that have their origins in slavery and racial domination, but which are expressed and felt in the family and in workplaces as internalized anti-blackness, for example,”makes ready” habits and norms required to ground legal reparations in everyday practices. Without such practices and norms, reparations that focus only on juridical reforms will fall short of reaching their transformative potential.

Author

• Ali Aslam, Mount Holyoke College