Commentary on “Framing Reparations Claims: Differences between the African and Jewish Social Movements for Reparations”

Abstract

Comment by Victor T. Le Vine Emeritus, Washington University in St. Louis First, in the interest of full disclosure and in deference to the authors of this essay, I admit to having reviewed the article last year and advising the editors of the African Studies Review not to publish it. I do, however, applaud their decision to make it available-with minor revisions by the authors-for open discussion in these pages and therefore agreed to add my comments to those of other reviewers. Two considerations prompted my negative review: one was what I saw were shortcomings in the analysis due to a failure to address the larger contextual issues raised by the original question, and the other, the willingness of the authors, in my view unwarranted, to accept the conjunction of Jewish Holocaust reparations with the demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism. My reading of the revised manuscript confirmed my earlier judgment, particularly with reference to the latter problem, raising serious questions about the authors' analytic logic and arguments. My comments focus on these matters. The authors are certainly correct in concluding that success in reparations claims depends to large extent on how the claim for reparations is framed. They then proceed to point out that the Jewish claims were successful because the event from which claims arose was comparatively recent, that survivors of the Holocaust, or members of their immediate families, or the families of victims, were/are present to make the claims; that appeals for compensatory justice resonated with those with strong moral convictions about genocide-or with residual feelings of guilt about the event. (It should be added the Holocaust itself, as a unique event, had a worldwide audience, at least after the end of World War II, to whom the appeal could be directed.) So far so good. The problem is that the original question, put as Why Africans can't imitate Jews? and also as Why did the Jews obtain reparations, yet we can't? is itself a complex loaded question (in logic, it begs the question) which presupposes definite answers to a previous set of unstated, loaded questions, such as (here), Q: Is the Holocaust the moral equivalent of slavery, or A: Yes. Q. Are not Africans as worthy of compensation for their collective injury, as were the Jews for theirs? A: Yes. Q: Should the Jews be privileged in getting reparations over Africans demanding compensation for the injury they suffered? A: No. All of these unstated questions and answers (which can also be restated as unstated premises) are worth examining on their own merits for the attitudes they imply and the historical-ideological context(s) in which they were raised. That is not, however, the analytical path taken by the authors: they accept the original question as their point of departure without looking at its implications or premises. In short, the original question, used as die conundrum for investigation, violates at least one canon of scientific inquiry: you cannot use a loaded question as the basis of analysis, at least not until it is rephrased without its hidden overload. Without losing the import of the authors' argument, or vitiating their conclusions, how could the issues they raise be put as a valid question(s) for analysis? For example, How have African demands for reparations been framed, and why? Can Jewish claims for Holocaust reparations be compared to African claims involving slavery and colonialism? If so, how? If not, why not? Once stated without its load, the main question could then subsume reasonable discussion of the comparative success (or lack thereof) of the Holocaust and black reparations campaigns. One further reservation directed at the authors' methodology. This study is based on seventy-five interviews with African ambassadors, academics, policymakers, and human rights activists, many [of whom] indicated awareness of the precedent of reparations to Jews. …