Seeds Planted in Contested Space: Transitional Racial Justice in the U.S. Post Civil War

• In Event: Positive Peace, Global Transformations, and U.S. Contestations: Decolonial, Ecological, Economic, and Democratic Pathways in Education (Part 2)

Proposal

This paper situates transitional justice (TJ) as a critical framework for understanding how societies can respond to structural injustice and human rights violations in ways that foster positive peace—a state defined not merely by the absence of conflict but by the presence of justice, equity, and inclusive social relations.

What is “transitional justice (TJ)”? According to the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), transitional justice is one strategy used is post-conflict societies to respond to the legacies of massive and serious human rights violations. It asks some of the most difficult questions in law, politics, and the social sciences and grapples with innumerable dilemmas. It can involve investigative research, truth-telling, public education, public dialogue, criminal prosecution/accountability, reparations and mediation and reconciliation efforts. It has been practiced in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, South Africa, etc and it has always been a struggle, with results partially realized.

In this presentation, the author uses the transitional justice frame to look back over post Civil War US history for examples of TJ responses to the massive and serious human rights violations stemming from white supremacy and racism toward Black Americans. The presentation will provide an historical overview of some of the various ways the US government has responded to the legacy of the slave trade and slave plantation system, including the abolition of slavery and restoration of rights following the war, the pattern of renewed discrimination, exploitation and repression of Black American rights that followed, and then the more recent advancements of rights and further patterns of backlash which have occurred.

Within this historical framing, the presentation will highlight several key civil society TJ efforts of note that illustrate key principles of TJ and serve as anchors and springboards for renewed efforts to weather the current re-assertions of white supremacy and racist values and policy. These examples of Transitional Justice are what we at The Alternatives Project define as “alternatives” – illustrations in practice of new policies and practices that show another (more just) world is possible. The presentation will end with some reflections on ways a new wave of transitional justice efforts could build more consciously on this set of anchors and springboards our ancestors left for us.

Author

• Michael Gibbons, The Alternatives Project