Who Owes Reparations?

This chapter answers the question, posed in Chapter 3, of who owes reparations for the wrongs of the past. The chapter defends the view that people in the present can be responsible for the actions of people in the past if we share a kinship or association with those people. The chapter discusses a distinction between core and penumbral agency and argues that we can be morally responsible for what happens in our penumbral agency even if we do not take responsiblity for these occurrences. Relying first on discussions of moral luck, the chapter aims to show that we are morally responsible for areas beyond our active agency already. Then the chapter discusses some alternative conceptions of agency, first relying on some Indigenous views of kinship, then relying on one reading of agency during the transatlantic slave trade. The chapter does not defend this conception of agency against more narrow views, but rather presents them as an important alternative to narrow, will-based views of agency.