When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (Critical American Series)

557 Pages·1999·0.96 MB·English

by  Roy Brooks

When Sorry Isn’t Enough
Critical America
General Editors: RICHARD DELGADO and JEAN STEFANCIC
White by Law:
The Legal Construction of Race
Ian F. Haney López
Cultivating Intelligence:
Power, Law, and the Politics of Teaching
Louise Harmon and Deborah W. Post
Privilege Revealed:
How Invisible Preference Undermines America
Stephanie M. Wildman
with Margalynne Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis, and Trina Grillo
Does the Law Morally Bind the Poor?
or What Good’s the Constitution When You Can’t Afford a Loaf of Bread?
R. George Wright
Hybrid:
Bisexuals, Multiracials, and Other Misfits under American Law
Ruth Colker
Critical Race Feminism: A Reader
Edited by Adrien Katherine Wing
Immigrants Out!
The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States
Edited by Juan F. Perea
Taxing America
Edited by Karen B. Brown and Mary Louise Fellows
Notes of a Racial Caste Baby:
Color Blindness and the End of Affirmative Action
Bryan K. Fair
Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas:
A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State
Stephen M. Feldman
ToBe an American:
Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation
Bill Ong Hing
Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism:
The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America
Jody David Armour
Black and Brown in America:
The Case for Cooperation
Bill Piatt
Black Rage Confronts the Law
Paul Harris
Selling Words:
Free Speech in a Commercial Culture
R. George Wright
The Color of Crime:
Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police
Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions
Katheryn K. Russell
The Smart Culture:
Society, Intelligence, and Law
Robert L. Hayman, Jr.
Was Blind, But Now I See:
White Race Consciousness and the Law
Barbara J. Flagg
American Law in the Age of Hypercapitalism:
The Worker, the Family, and the State
Ruth Colker
The Gender Line:
Men, Women, and the Law
Nancy Levit
Heretics in the Temple:
Americans Who Reject the Nation’s Legal Faith
David Ray Papke
The Empire Strikes Back:
Outsiders and the Struggle over Legal Education
Arthur Austin
Interracial Justice:
Conflict and Reconciliation in Post–Civil Rights America
Eric K. Yamamoto
Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality:
A Critical Reader
Edited by Devon Carbado
When Sorry Isn’t Enough:
The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice
Edited by Roy L. Brooks
When Sorry
Isn’t Enough
The Controversy over Apologies and
Reparations for Human Injustice
Edited by
Roy L. Brooks
a
N E W Y O R K U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S • N e w Yo r k & L o n d o n
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
© 1999 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
When sorry isn’t enough : the controversy over apologies and
reparations for human injustice / edited by Roy L. Brooks.
p. cm.
“This anthology is a collection of essays, written by both
internationally renowned and emerging scholars, and of public
documents that concern claims from around the world that seek
redress for human injustice.”—Preface.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-1331-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8147-1332-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Social justice. 2. Claims. I. Brooks, Roy L. (Roy Lavon),
1950–
HM671 .W48 1999
303.3'72—dc21 99-6248
CIP
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ToJoe Feagin
and in memory of A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

Contents
Preface xix
PART 1 Introduction
1 The Age of Apology 3
Roy L. Brooks
Suggested Readings 12
PART 2 Nazi Persecution
Introduction
2 A Reparations Success Story? 17
Roy L. Brooks
The Scope of Persecution
3 The German Third Reich and Its Victims: Nazi Ideology 23
Alan Davies
Holocaust Narratives
4 Memories of My Childhood in the Holocaust 33
Judith Jaegermann (née Pinczovsky)
5 The Human “Guinea Pigs” of Ravensbrück 43
Wanda Poltawska
6 Stranger in Exile 47
Ruth Levor
ix