Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective eds. by Jacqueline Bhabha, Margareta Matache & Caroline Elkins (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective eds. by Jacqueline Bhabha, Margareta Matache & Caroline Elkins Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann (bio) Jacqueline Bhabha, Margareta Matache & Caroline Elkins, eds., Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (University of Pennsylvania Press 2021), ISBN 9780812253306, 396 pages. This collection of essays addresses reparations writ very large. Depending on the chapter, reparations appear to include trials, acknowledgement of suffering, apologies, the right to memory and memorials, the right to know the truth, financial and material compensation, the right to proper documentation, and citizenship rights. The volume is divided into four sections entitled "Addressing the Legacy of Slavery," "Reparations: Precedents and Lessons Learned," "Outstanding Issues," and "Ways Forward." Readers might prefer, however, to read about particular issues regardless of the sections the essays are in; for example, to read the two chapters on the Roma together, although one is in the third section and one is in the fourth. In the first section on slavery, Mireille Fanon Mendes France's essay on "French Justice and the Claims for Reparations by Slave Descendants in Guadeloupe" is very difficult to follow. It appears to be taken from a larger work about the right of descendants of enslaved people in the French Overseas Territories to ownership of land, and reads like a legal brief presented to a French court. There is insufficient explanation of context and of the particularities of French law for readers from the English-speaking world. In addition, Mendes France cites extraordinarily high infant mortality rates of 8.3 percent (Guadeloupe/Martinique), 16.1 percent (Guyane/Mayotte), and 3.6 percent for the rest of the country of France. As infant mortality rates are measured as numbers of deaths per thousand children under the age of one, this would mean that 83 children per thousand in Guadeloupe/ Martinique, 161 children per thousand in Guyane/Mayotte, and 36 children per thousand in the rest of France die each year. Mendes France exaggerates these figures by a factor of ten. They should read .83 percent, 1.61 percent, and .36 percent respectively.1 The most unusual chapter on enslavement is Tiya Miles' description of claims by African descendants of freed slaves to citizenship in the Cherokee community in the United States (US). The Cherokee held about 4,000 Black slaves in 1860, not freeing them until after the US civil war.2 Among these slave-holding Cherokees were the grandfather and father of the famous early twentieth-century comedian, Will Rogers.3 But despite much intermarriage, [End Page 722] some contemporary Cherokee authorities wish to deny tribal membership to the enslaved African-Americans' descendants. Here, reparation appears to be the right to citizenship, and the debate concerns whether citizenship should be confined to those who are "Cherokee by blood." This debate has relevance to discussions among other Indigenous peoples about the legitimacy of "blood quantum" in deciding who can be considered a genuine member of an Indigenous group. Among other chapters on slavery, the legal scholar Makau Mutua contributes an historical and legal study of various cases and aspects of reparations claims for slavery, the slave trade, and colonialism. Two chapters discuss the role of universities in enslavement and reparations. Adam Rothman presents a history of Georgetown University's attempt to repair relations with the descendants of the 272 slaves whom it had sold in 1838 to pay its debts, by offering the descendants preferential admission to the university. This is an interesting case study of the many US sub-state and non-state efforts to offer reparations to African-Americans today, despite the resistance of state and federal governments to any form of reparation. Sir Hilary Beckles, one of the leaders of the Caribbean demand for reparations from Britain for the slave trade and slavery, describes how the University of the West Indies was constructed on the site of a former plantation that contained slaves' burial grounds. Another article by a Caribbean contributor is Bert S. Samuels' "The Jamaican Case for Reparations against the British Government for Slavery and Colonization." Samuels, a lawyer, argues that reparations to the British Windrush generation and to Kenyan nationalist victims of British atrocities in the 1950s are precedents for reparations to...