History is full of examples of nations paying out to compensate for slavery. But the money never went to those who suffered under the system, only those who profited.
The Port of Savannah used to export cotton picked by enslaved laborers and brought from Alabama to Georgia on slave-built railways. Cotton is still a top product processed through this port.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Geographers are documenting slave-built infrastructure, from railroads to ports, in use today. Such work could influence the reparations debate by showing how slavery still props up the US economy.
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade on display in Montgomery, Alabama.
Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.
Efforts to build wealth for Black Americans could focus on property ownership.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Some calls to resolve racial inequities in the US have raised an idea with roots more than a century old: community land trusts to assemble property for the benefit of Black Americans.
Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer receiving Charles X’s decree recognizing Haitian independence on July 11, 1825.
Bibliotheque Nationale de France
After enduring decades of exploitation at the hands of the French, Haiti somehow ended up paying reparations – to the tune of nearly $30 billion in today's money.
Pub owner Greene King’s founder was connected to slavery.
There is unlikely to be a strong legal claim for reparations from China for COVID-19.
Barkandji Elder Uncle Badger Bates explaining traditional plant use. Indigenous Australians have unrivalled knowledge of their Countries.
Zena Cumpston
The recent bushfire horror exposed fundamental flaws in the way we treat the land. First Peoples know the way out of this ecological crisis – if only Australia would listen.
A human skull on display in Berlin in 2018. Germany handed back human remains seized during the Namibia genocide from 1904 to 1908.
EPA-EFE/Hayoung Jeon
The upcoming Supreme Court session will address notable cases about the rights of different groups. The cases go to the heart of how U.S. laws protect both individual and group rights.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are among the 2020 presidential hopefuls in favor of reparations.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Several presidential hopefuls have offered proposals to close the racial wealth gap, from baby bonds to reparations. A simulation suggests policies short of direct aid to blacks won't do the trick.
Slavery is not so far removed. Anderson and Minerva Edwards met in the 1860s as enslaved laborers in Texas, had 16 children and lived into their 90s in a cabin a few miles from the plantations they once worked. They are photographed here in 1937.
U.S. Library of Congress
Old injustices don't simply disappear with time – they tear a nation apart.
Carvings and barbed wire illustrate the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial on Bainbridge Island, Wash. The site, designed by architect Johnpaul Jones, opened in 2011.
(AP/Seattle Times/Jordan Stead)
Social movement theory helps to explain why Japanese-Americans received reparations but the same will be much more challenging to provide for African-Americans.
Five generations on Smith’s Plantation Beaufort at South Carolina in 1862.
Timothy H. O'Sullivan/Library of Congress
Although financial reparation for African-Americans may be complicated to achieve, steps such as accurate acknowledgement of atrocities as well as public apologies and memorials can be enacted.
Chen Yabian, 74, of Hainan Province, southern China, testifies during the International Symposium on Chinese ‘Comfort Women’ in 2000 in Shanghai that she was 14 when Japanese Imperial Army soldiers forced her to work as a sex slave during the war.
AP/Eugene Hoshiko
US agreements with Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria provide reparations to WWII victims. But an international law scholar writes that the US has failed to address war crimes in Asia.
A racial wealth gap is persisting after centuries enslavement and systemic discrimination.
Hyejin Kang/Shutterstock.com
Reparations has emerged as a hot topic among Democratic candidates hoping to replace Trump in 2020. But until now, the issue has only rarely received national attention.
A family of Ahiarmiut, including David Serkoak pictured behind his mother Mary Qahug Miki (centre) at Ennadai Lake in the mid-50s before the Canadian government forcefully relocation them.
Once we understand genocide as something that can take awhile, with victims dying of starvation and disease rather than outright murder, we can recognize the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Demonstrators in Berlin demand justice for Namibian victims of German genocide.
Joachim Zeller