Reparative Justice
There are also differences between the way people who are further down the economic ladder are treated compared to people who are at, or near the top of the economic structures that are set up in this country.
There is the story of David Milgaard and the 23 years he spent in prison for a crime that he did not commit, and the juxtaposition of Marco Muzzo (grandson of a billionaire) who drove drunk and killed three children and their grandfather and spent only four years in prison. He will come to end of his sentence on July 28, 2025.
David Milgaard and Family
The term Economic Justice conjures up a lot of emotions for me. I really wasn’t sure if I should do this topic, but the thought of the injustices that my ancestors faced in being brought to the “New World” was something I felt that I had to explore. The citizenry of countries that profited off the backs of people of colour face an ethical dilemma. Should they pay for what their ancestors did? After all, they were not alive when their ancestors committed many of the atrocities that were meted out against many Indigenous peoples all over the world.
However, if the descendants of former perpetrators of oppression and degradation of other people, still benefit from the proceeds of the their ill-gotten wealth—whether they are still living on the land as a descendant of a homesteader, or they are royalty, or governments, church bodies, or they are descendants of oppressors who still live on their estate as an heir to a title of a bygone era, or they are a company that extracts minerals, crude oil, gem stones, clear cut trees, or they still sell insurance as they used to do to cover the losses of human cargo crossing the world’s oceans, then they should pay restitution—in the form of an added tax—to the descendants of those poor souls that were harmed.
What is the financial amount/restitution that African descendants should be compensated for the past and continued discrimination we face? How much is reparative justice worth? After all, the former slave owners and their descendants in the United Kingdom were paid until 2015 for their losses after slavery ended.