Telling Lies, Telling Tales and Telling (and Doing) the Truth

Racism, Moral Repair and the Case for Reparations

Bibliographic Data

ID21593855
AuthorsMichael Banner (0000-0002-7916-5208, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume35
Issue1
Pages41-62
Publication date2022-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Christian Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0953-9468 • E-ISSN: 1745-5235
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/09539468211051197
OpenAlexW3212682825
LanguageEN
Citations received2

First, in the section ‘Telling Lies’, this article attempts to illustrate recent everyday racism. Racism has a history and takes many different forms. I describe a particular practice of racism (found in Britain, circa 1970), which relied, for its doctrine, on supposedly scientific assumptions about biology and breeding—and received a confirming fillip through the celebration of monarchy, empire and rose-tinted history. Second, in ‘Telling Tales’, the story of Zacchaeus is taken as exemplifying a form of moral repair in which telling and doing the truth are intimately related. Third, in ‘Telling and Doing the Truth’, I contend that telling and doing the truth in relation to racism requires not only a clear naming of racism’s lies but also the making of reparations, for the reason that the lies of racism subtended manifold injustices, of which Atlantic slavery and the exploitation of colonies are notable instances. I take the history of the West Indies as providing a clear case where moral repair is (over)due, and I consider the form that reparations might take

Aesthetics · Doctrine · Political science · Racism · Sociology · Theology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

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