Reparations Addresses Needs of the Aggressed. Transitional Justice Deals with Ongoing Problem of the Aggressors
Truth commissions are not just bureaucratic mechanisms, but a site of communal, participatory learning. They aim to facilitate not only new narratives but a transformed environment. Arising out of the field of conflict transformation, they bring together buried or suppressed information—- but also cultural-competency and other relational skills along with strengthened creative and imaginative capacities. When successful, they facilitate new understanding and the so-called “third way” out of hardened polarities, which was previously undiscerned.
Building on a long history of black and indigenous claims against the integrity of the United States, the project uses a transitional-justice lens, as has been used in other countries dealing with histories of violence. This allows a spectrum of politics to meet at the site of past events; it also asserts that white people are joined not only by identity but by membership in a perpetrating group, whether or not our individual family history was tangibly involved. Most importantly for this project: it allows white people to imagine a future outside of the false-refuge of denial, in which we thrive as part of a multi-ethnic society.