Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations

About this book

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 Brookss vision is the governments 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 forgivenessin 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 governments commitment to racial equality. Brookss bold proposal situates the argument for reparations within a larger international frameworknamely 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.