Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations

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University of California Press, 2004年10月7日 - 342页
Roy L. Brooks reframes one of the most important, controversial, and misunderstood issues of our time in this far-reaching reassessment of the growing debate on black reparation. Atonement and Forgiveness shifts the focus of the issue from the backward-looking question of compensation for victims to a more forward-looking racial reconciliation. Offering a comprehensive discussion of the history of the black redress movement, this book puts forward a powerful new plan for repairing the damaged relationship between the federal government and black Americans in the aftermath of 240 years of slavery and another 100 years of government-sanctioned racial segregation.

Key to Brooks's vision is the government's clear signal that it understands the magnitude of the atrocity it committed against an innocent people, that it takes full responsibility, and that it publicly requests forgiveness—in other words, that it apologizes. The government must make that apology believable, Brooks explains, by a tangible act that turns the rhetoric of apology into a meaningful, material reality, that is, by reparation. Apology and reparation together constitute atonement. Atonement, in turn, imposes a reciprocal civic obligation on black Americans to forgive, which allows black Americans to start relinquishing racial resentment and to begin trusting the government's commitment to racial equality.

Brooks's bold proposal situates the argument for reparations within a larger, international framework—namely, a post-Holocaust vision of government responsibility for genocide, slavery, apartheid, and similar acts of injustice. Atonement and Forgiveness makes a passionate, convincing case that only with this spirit of heightened morality, identity, egalitarianism, and restorative justice can genuine racial reconciliation take place in America.

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目录

THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE BLACK REDRESS MOVEMENT
1
HARMS TO SLAVES AND FREE BLACKS
20
HARMS TO DESCENDANTS
36
THE TORT MODEL
98
THE ATONEMENT MODEL
141
OPPOSING ARGUMENTS
180
EPILOGUE
207
SELECTED LIST OF OTHER ATROCITIES
213
SUMMARY OF THE NEGOTIATIONS THAT LED TO GERMANYS FOUNDATION LAW
218
NOTES
221
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
273
CASES
299
STATUTES
303
INDEX
307
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第5页 - Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.
第174页 - The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty.
第50页 - ... so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.
第172页 - We doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision.
第26页 - What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
第62页 - Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life...
第104页 - Courts, as the case may be, of all causes where an alien sues for a tort only, in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States...

作者简介 (2004)

Roy L. Brooks is Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Structures of Judicial Decision Making from Legal Formalism to Critical Theory (2002), When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (1999), Integration or Separation? A Strategy for Racial Equality (1996), and Rethinking the American Race Problem (California, 1990).

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