Demands for reparations for slavery and its legacies are
not new. In the U.S., these demands were long dismissed as divisive, impractical, or simply unthinkable; recently, however, calls for reparations have been embraced by a wide range of mainstream political figures and organizations. In the book project of which this talk is a part, I consider three pitfalls of reparations’ newfound respectability: 1) proposals to close the wealth gap without addressing the racially predatory nature of U.S. capitalism; 2) proposals that frame reparations in integrationist terms without requiring the reordering of white political imaginations; and 3) proposals that rely on and/or reinforce narratives of national redemption. Each approach, I contend, explicitly or tacitly binds reparations to features of the present that undermine their capacity to dismantle racial injustice. My talk focuses on the third pitfall: reparations arguments that domesticate transnational struggles and idealize the nation. I conclude with a brief reflection on what David Scott calls “a politics and poetics” of reparations as articulated by Black radical activists and artists whose imaginations are not confined by what is conceivable within existing political, legal, or economic structures.