Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism

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A pathbreaking book about world history, global justice, and the climate crisis—featuring a new preface by the author.“Coursing with moral urgency and propelled by brilliant prose, this is more than argument. It's how we build the power needed to win.” Naomi KleinA clear, new case for reparations as a “constructive,” future-oriented project that responds to the weight of history’s injustices with the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens. Centuries ago, Táíwò explains, European powers engineered the systems through which advantages and disadvantages still flow. Colonialism and transatlantic slavery forged schemes of injustice on an unprecedented scale, a world order he calls “global racial empire.” The project of justice must meet the same scope.Táíwò’s analysis not only discourages despair, it demands global resistance. Reconsidering Reparations suggests policies, goals, and organizing strategies. And it leaves readers with clear and powerful advice: act like an ancestor. Do what we can to shape the world we want our moral descendants to inherit, and have faith that they will continue the long struggle for justice. This understanding, Táíwò shows, has deep roots in the thought of Black political thinkers such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cedric Robinson, and Nkechi Taifa.Reconsidering Reparations is a book with profound implications for our views of justice, racism, the legacies of slavery and colonialism, and climate change policy. About the Author Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Climate and Community Institute. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Elite Capture, a contributor to Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book, and a past recipient of a Marguerite Casey Freedom Scholar fellowship. Táíwò’s public philosophy, including articles exploring intersections of climate justice and colonialism, has been featured in The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, Boston Review, Dissent, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Hammer & Hope (where he is a member of the Editorial Team). His writings have been translated into Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and Korean, among other languages. What People Are Saying “Weaving together the long-held redistribution demands of revolutionary movements for racial justice and decolonization with the scientific imperative for immediate climate action, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò builds the irresistible case for decarbonization through reparation. Coursing with moral urgency and propelled by brilliant prose, this is more than argument. It's how we build the power needed to win.” Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger“Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Reconsidering Reparations is an urgent and eloquent reflection on our agency as moral beings, asking the related questions of what can we do about the past and how we can make for a better future? It is full of brilliant insight and complexities, but this book's most essential lesson can be distilled in one phrase, a powerful summons: beware in all that we do, that we, too, are ancestors.” Howard W. French, author, Born in Blackness“In Reconsidering Reparations, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò writes, ‘Our prognosis is bleak if... political decisions are left to the great powers that have shaped the present moment and today’s climate crisis.’ But in this pathbreaking work, Táíwò offers a map for how international movements for justice can reclaim and repair our broken world.” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation“Reconsidering Reparations is an essential book for anyone who wants a better world. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s argument for reparations as a construction project is urgent in the times we are facing. Táíwò makes clear the connections between colonialism and the climate crisis in a way that is both rigorously backed with research and extremely practical. This is a book I devoured the first time I read it and have revisited again and again since. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s work is transformational.” Mikaela Loach, author of It's Not That Radical “While close reading history, philosophy and journalism, Reconsidering Reparations zooms out from contemporary debates so that readers can see how the case for reparations extends beyond the year 1619 and the boundaries of the United States, urging us to include indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, the colonization of Africa, and ‘global racial empire’ in our thinking. In this imminently readable yet philosophically substantial book, Olúfẹ́!mi O. Táíwò gives readers a constructivist framework for imagining relationships of repair into being. With a thrilling economy of language which matches Táíwò's equally brilliant Elite Capture, this slim volume packs a punch as powerfully as a knockout from Muhammad Ali.” Steven W. Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass“In Reconsidering Reparations, Taiwo challenges and dismantles the dominant narratives about the world we live in and how it was built—and for whom. In so doing, he unveils a brave and bulletproof case for climate reparations as not only the moral solution, but as the only logical solution. Still, as he reminds us that all of the systems that have brought us to this crisis-point have been man-made, he manages to make the task of repair look not only possible, but desirable. Exciting, even. If you care about this world and the remaking of it, this book is a must-read.” Mary Annaïse Heglar, author of Troubled Waters and The World is Ours to Cherish“In this sweeping, subtle, and sophisticated analysis, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò presents an iron-clad case for why colonialism's end must coincide with a reparative transformation in relations between the colonizer and colonized, in the Global North and South. It's required reading for anyone looking for the arguments to support a just, and healing, future." Raj Patel“This is the rare book of moral, economic, and political philosophy that has urgent, real-world stakes and implications. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s incisive and visionary accounting reveals that meaningful reparations are less about tallying debts and credits and apportioning blame than forging new communities and building a more livable world. This insightful book can help us chart a path toward a democratic, decarbonized, and decolonized future we all need and deserve.” Astra Taylor, author of Remake the World“In this forcefully argued book, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò grounds the case for reparations in a sweeping yet synthetic account of the historical origins of our starkly unequal world order. Weaving together multiple traditions of radical thought and attuned to the most pressing debates of our moment, Táíwò reveals reparations to be world-making in two potent senses of the term." Thea Riofrancos, author of Resource Radicals“Olúfẹ́!mi O. Táíwò is remarkable at connecting what happens in our neighborhoods with what’s happening on a planetary scale. Without downplaying the challenges ahead, Reconsidering Reparations is an antidote to despair—it is an essential, hopeful, and galvanizing read.” Gerald Torres, Founder, Yale Center for Environmental Justice“Olúfẹ́!mi O. Táíwò makes a compelling case for reparations as a determinedly forward-facing agenda of revolutionary worldmaking. Arguing that we should begin with distributive analysis of the global socio-economic arrangements forged by colonialism and slavery, Taiwo advances a vision that will resonate with the spirit of anti-racist struggle from wide ranging traditions—from the halls of Bandung and the Combahee River Collective of previous generations, to the Black Lives Matter marches and climate justice movements of the current moment. This book’s trenchant analysis is a call for a radically, transnational political imagination of reparations—a call that is both urgent and inspiring.” Vasuki Nesiah, founding member, Third World Approaches to International Law“Táíwò’s clarity and radical grounding has enabled him to take the most urgent issue of our age, and offer us a vision which is measured, hopeful, and revolutionary—attributes that are as rare as they are crucial in our current political moment.” Adam Elliott-Cooper, author of Black Resistance to British Policing“In Reconsidering Reparations, the philosopher Olúfẹ́!mi O. Táíwò makes an extraordinary intellectual pivot. In a book motivated by the historic injustice of colonialism, analyzed in conversation with contemporary political theory, and animated by vignettes of the anti-colonial Malê revolt in Brazil, Táíwò argues that the best redress for centuries of racial capitalist harm is an investment-forward politics of global climate justice. It’s a brilliant book, whose argument is so clear and elegant that over 200 pages, this shocking thesis comes to feel intuitive.” Daniel Aldana Cohen, Founding Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute“An extremely welcome intervention into the contemporary debate about reparations.” Vanessa Wills, author, Marx's Ethical Vision“[Táíwò] presents an undeniable link between the climate crisis and racial injustice. It’s an argument of enduring importance that it is clearer than ever that climate injustice is inextricably linked with racial, socioeconomic, and geopolitical injustices.” The Independent“Illuminating… Calling upon intellectual legacies far beyond the analytic canon—from anticolonial activists to the Black radical tradition to legal scholarship to lessons from the nineteenth-century Malê slave rebellion in the Empire of Brazil—Táíwò returns the discourse on reparations to its rightful, radical roots… His work is a particularly welcome salve to tired debates about race, class, and identity politics.” Natasha Lennard, Bookforum“Táíwò’s voice has become increasingly forceful, establishing him as one of the leading contemporary thinkers to consider racial and climate justice together.” Benjamin R. Cohen, The Believer“[Táíwò is] one of the country’s most publicly prominent philosophers, and … certainly the most vocal philosopher working on issues related to climate change.” John Thomason, Grist“Táíwò’s ‘constructive’ view of reparations, with its focus on the material world and lived reality, has achieved mainstream salience.” Alexandra Tempus, The Progressive“Táíwò is an accessible writer and skilled storyteller, whose fascination with the past and its ongoing significance shines in the historical narratives that are woven through the book.” Megan Blomfield, Mind“[A]mbitious and brilliant… I give my highest recommendation to Táíwò's philosophically rich and important book.” Jennifer M. Page, Radical Philosophy Review Show more