Restitution & Reparations

Now & Then

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Society & Culture, History, News Commentary

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How should the American government take responsibility for past actions that have caused significant harm? On this episode of Now & Then, “Restitution & Reparations,” Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman discuss the tangled history of restitution, with a specific focus on how the federal government wronged certain classes of people. They talk through the early debates over slavery reparations, the late-19th century indemnity payments to Italian and Mexican victims of vigilante violence, and the long reckoning over the damage caused by Japanese internment during World War II. How does democracy benefit from governmental acknowledgment of wrong? How can we measure pain in morality or money? And how can these historical debates inform the current controversy over restitution for families separated from their children at the Southern border? Join CAFE Insider to listen to “Backstage,” where Heather and Joanne chat each week about the anecdotes and ideas that formed the episode. Head to: www.cafe.com/history For more historical analysis of current events, sign up for the free weekly CAFE Brief newsletter, featuring Time Machine, a weekly article that dives into an historical event inspired by each episode of Now & Then: cafe.com/brief For references & supplemental materials, head to: cafe.com/now-and-then/restitution-reparations The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The editorial producer is David Kurlander. The audio producer is Matthew Billy. The Now & Then theme music was composed by Nat Weiner. The Cafe team is Adam Waller, David Tatasciore, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, and Jake Kaplan. Now & Then is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:02.4	From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is now and then.
1:07.2	I'm Heather Cox Richardson. And I'm Joanne Freeman. Today we're going to talk about a topic
1:16.3	that came to mind because of something that happened recently. And that is on December 16th
1:23.7	after 10 months of negotiations, the Department of Justice walked away from talks to pay
1:29.3	monetary damages to families who were forcibly separated at the border during the Trump
1:35.2	administration. What happened at the border was that people who came across illegally
1:39.8	were separated. Families were separated and adults were imprisoned in one place. Their
1:44.3	children were taken away and imprisoned in another place. In some cases, it has been
1:50.2	difficult to reunite parents and children. So when President Biden was running for office,
1:59.0	he said to the parents of these children, you deserve some kind of compensation no matter
2:04.1	what. So because of that sense of the government owing something to these people, apparently,
	...

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