The move towards reparations is a necessary extension of the black radical tradition against racial capitalism.

In the face of all these strong and substantiated arguments, why is the payment of reparations to Black people and nations not more common? One reason is the denialism of slaver countries. Consider British policy of denial (Beckles, 2013, Chapter 14). It can be characterised as ‘No apology, no reparations’ (Beckles, 2013, p. 194). That position is telling because there were some 2 million enslaved African people uprooted and enchained in West African forts (Beckles, 2013, p. 195). On the contrary, the British state compensated the 45, 000 slavers who requested compensation when slavery was formally abolished (Beckles, 2013, p. 195), not because they endured the horrors of racism and enslavement, but because they lost ‘property’. The amount of compensation to the slavers has about 40% of British GDP (Beckles, 2013, p. 179). Britain did not only refuse to compensate the freed formerly enslaved Black people but also, when the formerly enslaved people demanded land as part of their settlement, they were murdered (Beckles, 2013, p. 196). Such murders of enslaved Black people and formerly enslaved Black people were common, but Britain still refuses to pay reparations as a national policy. Both liberal and labour toe the same lines, both White and Black labour MPs, including David Lammy, Dianne Abbort, Baronness Amos, and Lord Morris (Beckles, 2013, p. 197), all support the British state's policy. Slaver countries also took steps to further impoverish formerly enslaved peoples. Not only did the American state refuse to honour the promise of ‘40 acres and a mule’ demanded by emancipated enslaved people, the land accumulated by Black farmers was confiscated through force and fraud (Darity & Mullen, 2020, pp. 209–210). Apart from the ‘sins of the sons and daughters’ (Chapter 10, From Here to There), Black people continue to suffer indignities and dispossession of their assets. ‘The failure to grant ex-enslaved people an initial stake in American property ownership and the subsequent land taking from Blacks has contributed to the comprehensive denial of Black wealth accumulation…Apart from the barriers to landownership, Black home ownership was restricted throughout the twentieth century by discriminatory redlining, differential access to government finance for home mortgages, and, most recently, by the subprime mortgage crisis induced by the banking system's loan-pushing schemes’ (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 212). A third obstacle is African opposition and so-called alternatives provided by African and Black leaders in Africa (Beckles, 2013, p. 194). Some African countries oppose reparations, too. At the World Congress on Racism, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa voted against the case for reparations (see, Beckles, 2013, pp. 164, 166). Collin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Black republicans representing the American state, also questioned the reparations case. Today, it appears that JA Kufour, a former President of Ghana, is also against the case for reparations. But President Kufour's position is more personal rather than partisan. Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, a member of the same political party as Kufour's and the current President of Ghana, is a strong supporter of the reparations movement3. Other Black power brokers like Bernio Grant (see Beckles, 2013, p. 198) are for reparations, too, but the power players are quite fractured. A fourth hindrance relates to the sheer extent of slavery. So, when slavery was ultimately abolished, through the abolitionist work done first by Black enslaved people themselves, by other Black activists and intellectuals, and a handful of White abolitionists (see, for detailed contribution of Black people, and Black women, especially, Opoku-Agyemang, 2008; Dadzie, 2020), the demand for ‘slave owners’ reparations’ received a groundswell of support. With slave states in power, propped up by a largely pro-enslavement publics, compensation for former slave owners was fait accompli. As MCD Beckles (2013) argues in Chapter 11 of his book, 20 million pounds was paid then, that is, 200 billion pounds in 2010 values went to former slavers, and slave institutions such as British banks. This £200-billion compensation excludes interest payments. The emancipated enslaved people got nothing. Rather, they had to serve for a further 4–6 years before obtaining freedom. This ‘cooling off’ period was to enable the slavers to unlearn their dependence on slavery. Still, the formerly enslaved people received nothing, no reparations, no land, no mules. The non-payment of reparations to formerly enslaved people, Beckles argues, was a deliberate attempt to force them to remain in servitude, this time, by ‘choice’. Myths constitute a fifth hurdle. Darity and Mullen (2020) contend that opposition is softening, but there are still many questions and concerns. In chapter 12 of From Here to Equality (2020), they review and rebut common myths about reparations such as Slavery is long gone, Reparations would only create more animosity between races, a point forcefully argued by Glenn Loury (2007), African countries should be the ones paying for reparations because they did the selling, and has welfare/affirmative action not been enough ‘reparations’ already? African complicity is one common myth. Yet, the books under discussion show that the resistance of enslaved people was widespread and persistent during enslavement. Many enslaved people committed suicide in protest. There were fights of emancipation on slave voyages. African kings abolished kidnapping for enslavement. But Britain kept using force, fraud, and assassination of kings who opposed slavery. The British also used divide and rule to perpetuate enslavement (Beckles, 2013, chapter 2). By this ‘King James's version’ (Beckles, 2013, p. 37) of slavery (the Duke of York later became King James II, see p. 229), slavery had to be expanded by all means possible. After all, as MCD Beckles (2013) argues in Chapter 4 of Britain's Black Debt, Black people were property, not human (for a detailed account of women's contribution to, and leadership of, anti-slavery resistance, see also Opoku-Agyemang, 2008; Dadzie, 2020). The question about redesigning or formulating reparations has three aspects (see, for an implicit discussion, Obeng-Odoom, 2022a, pp. 436–438). The ontological basis for valuation is fundamental. Usually, either a profit-based approach (emphasising what the slaver gained from slavery) or a wage-based approach (emphasising what enslaved people lost using wages for free labour as proxy and adjusting for the harder work of slaves) could be used. Alternatively, a land-based approach (emphasising the present value of land which could have been given to enslaved people upon liberation) could be applied (Craemer et al., 2020). William Darity Jr and A Kirsten Mullen (2020) propose the wealth gap as a bolder and more comprehensive starting point for formulating reparations. The reason is that ‘it captures, better than any other disparity, the cumulative disadvantages visited upon the present generation’ (Craemer et al., 2020, p. 219). This wealth gap approach reflects all cumulative disadvantages. A second aspect of the formulating reparations question relates to how the resulting reparations will be paid, whether in cash, in infrastructure, or in terms of something else, incrementally or as a lumpsum. A third is how the reparations programme can be financed.in addressing all three aspects, it is important to reassert the case for reparations: “the core reason that a comprehensive plan for reparations is needed is that the ‘other programs’ have not been up to the task of eliminating ‘those disparities’. The objective of a reparations project is precisely ‘to redress the socioeconomic inequalities associated with race’” (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 240). In the final chapter, 13, of From Here to Equality (2020), Darity and Mullen provide a detailed discussion of various approaches to estimating adequate reparations. They ultimately state their (a) own basis for the calculation –‘the racial gap in per capita wealth’ (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 265) – and (b) how the money can be paid. In their words:…since today's differential in wealth captures the cumulative effects of racism on living Black descendants of American slavery, we propose mobilizing national resources to eradicate the racial wealth gap. The magnitude of ongoing shortfalls in wealth for Black people vis-à-vis White people provides the most sensible foundation for the complete monetary portion of the bill for reparations (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 264).It seems these could amount to between $15 and $20 trillion (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 265). There are many ways to pay these reparations, but Darity and Mullen note that they should not necessarily all be paid out at one go. Reparations could be paid incrementally. Reparations could also be placed in a trust to which qualified Black people could make regular applications. Or, the payments could be used for endowments for Black colleges and universities, which currently face financial challenges. However, they are paid, Darity and Mullen (2020) contend that reparatory payments must include direct cash transfers to the victims of historical and present inequalities. Beckles (2013) addresses the same question of design in chapters 12, 13, 14, and 15 of Britain's Black Debt. ‘The case for reparations should be made against the British state and a select group of its national institutions, such as merchant houses, banks, insurance companies and the Church of England4. These institutions exist today. Their slave-derived wealth is not in question’ (Beckles, 2013, p.163). He contends that the case for reparations should be made against the British state: for its involvement, for being a tax beneficiary, for aiding and abetting other institutions of slavery. Estimates show that, for Caribbean Black people alone, Britain owes 7.5 trillion pounds (Beckles, 2013, pp. 170–171). This amount could be paid in terms of infrastructural support by Britain to meet its obligation to assist Caribbean right to development. This point was recently emphasised by David Commissiong, the Deputy Chair of the Barbadian National Taskforce on Reparations (Allison, 2023, p. 17). Hilary Beckles (2013) summed up the case at the 2001 UN Conference against Racism. ‘The call for reparations is the call for collective healing and closure’. At the heart of this argument is land. As Darity and Mullen, (2020) note, when enslaved people were asked directly what it was that they desired to have upon their liberation, the overwhelming answer was ‘land’ (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 9). ‘40 acres and a mule’ was what was then officially promised, but this was never honoured. As Darity and Mullen (2020) argue, not only was this promise not progressed, even the land that the freed enslaved people actually obtained by themselves were taken away from them by force and fraud. The current state of glaring stratification in the US is exactly due to this non-payment, dispossession, and more recent challenges such as Jim Crow and neoliberalism. Reparations, in short, are to be paid not only for the past, but also for the present and the future. ‘We seek a new tomorrow that will enable the nation to realise the long-unfulfilled dreams of the freedmen. Reparations for Black America, finally, will open the door to that new tomorrow. At last, reparations will move America from here to equality’ (Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 270).‘What's Next?… ‘Why Reparations Require Climate Justice’ (Táíwò, 2022, p. 149)? The answer, according to Olufemi Táíwò (2022), seems to be because various conjunctions in world history have led to the current uneven distribution of climate harms. So, there is definitely the need for climate reparations, an argument Táíwò makes forcefully: People are usually surprised when I make this argument. The confusion makes sense - after all, they point, there's hardly an obvious conceptual connection between climate crisis and reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism. They’re right. The connection is largely contingent: it just so happens, given the particular distributions created by this era of global politics and their ecological consequences, that our response to climate crisis will deeply determine the possibilities for justice (and injustice) in what remains of this century – and if we survive to the next. Had some things gone differently even decades ago – had the countries and corporations of the Global North polluted less, had the fossil fuel interests not worked along with coal and freight rail companies to orchestrate misinformation campaigns, protecting their short-term financial gains at the cost of their and our collective future – the relationship between reparations and climate crisis could well have been quite different (Táíwò, 2022, p. 158). There are historical reasons, stretching from the invasions of the Global South and how such colonialism and imperialism were central to the industrial revolution. It is the Global North transformation that, to this day, is responsible for most of the accumulated emissions over time. The model continues to this day, but while the benefits are in the North, the harms are disproportionately in the South. For Olúfẹmi Táíwò, ‘what matters from the standpoint of justice is how these ecological phenomena affect people's capabilities – what lives they are or are not empowered to live. This is determined not only by what happens to the ecological systems, but also by the interaction of those impacts with a host of other factors that are determined by our social and political systems’ (Táíwò, 2022, p. 163). Thus, inequalities in capabilities constitute a critical reason to demand reparations. Reconsidering Reparations (Táíwò, 2022), therefore, offers ‘targets’ (aspirations) and ‘tactics’ (specific steps) for climate reparations. Táíwò's reparations would (a) provide unconditional cash transfers at a national level like the Darity and Mullen model but, in addition, Táíwò's would be on a global scale like the demand for a ‘global universal basic income’ (b) Global climate funding involving debt reliefs, using public funding for climate purposes, asking the rich to pay more towards a global climate fund because they have inherited more from the racial empire of fossil fuel and similar strategies aimed at redistributing ‘burdens and benefits’ (Táíwò, 2022, pp. 174–178). A third target is (c) opening up tax havens in the world where money often unjustly taken from the poor are hidden so that the money could be put to climate change purposes. ‘One of the targets of a just world must be to access these caches of illicitly hoarded wealth, so they can be used to reshape the world through unconditional cash transfers and global funding’ (Táíwò, 2022, p. 180). Finally, Táíwò's model includes a target of (d) community control with protections against external aggression and imperialism. Olufemi Táíwò's tactics are similarly broad-ranging. Not only should the world divest from fossil fuel investments, green investments must be planted in these communities which the fossil companies underdeveloped (Táíwò, 2022, pp. 182–183). The point is that activists should not only be content with opposing more investment in fossil. Activists should also promote that the divested resources be invested in green institutions in Black and Indigenous communities. Finally, Olúfẹmi Táíwò advocates citizen science, a collaboration of lay and learned to hold the powerful to account, to make a sustained environmentalist investigation for a renewal (Táíwò, 2022, pp.185–187), a new grassroots struggle based on politicised science of climate. Regarding, Climate Reparations, Táíwò puts the case for building clear standards that must be met for a reparations programme to be truly reconstructive (see Táíwò, 2022, pp. 140–143). These are as follows: 1.Reparations for global racial empire should make tangible differences in the material conditions of people's lives; 2.Reparations for global racial empire should address the core moral wrongs of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism, to the extent possible; and 3.Reparations for global racial empire should discriminate: should distribute benefits and burdens based on the different relationships of persons and institutions to the core moral wrongs (Táíwò, 2022,p. 140).Olúfẹmi Táíwò asks ‘how do we decide on any of this?’ (Táíwò, 2022, p. 187). He answers that not just by representative democracy, but also by community control, public funding of deliberation and learning from how activists make decisions. Other approaches could be taking inspiration from unions, sometimes called ‘bargaining for the common good’ (Táíwò, 2022, p. 189). So, not only should negotiations be with employers but also negotiations must be between unions and communities. Whether these arguments by reparationists – Beckles, Darity and Mullen, and Táíwò - can keep the gap closed is hotly contested. The critical questions appear to be what happens after reparations are paid? Why is climate justice necessary, but not sufficient for ecological justice? How could we move from ‘here’ to ‘there’? In short, Can we get and remain there from here? Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed Jr have provided a fundamental critique. According to them (Michaels & Reed, 2020), the dominant basis for the reparations claim – racial wealth gap - is fundamentally inadequate. Not only does this measure confuse symptoms for causes, it also provides the basis for the wrong policy. Even more fundamentally, the racial wage gap approach is a pro-capitalist path to addressing inequality. By asserting the resolution of racial discrimination, class differences receive no attention. Instead of social democracy, racial democracy is promoted. The former aspires for a generalised social inclusion, whereas the latter advances a proportional representation of racial minorities among both the rich and the poor. Without class, therefore, the case of racial wealth gap arguments can advance racial democracy without questioning working class inequalities. For Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed Jr (2020), these concerns must lead to a singular focus on class as a measure of inequalities (see also, Reed, 2018). As they ask rhetorically, ‘why not just use class’? These arguments have a long-standing place in progressive circles. There, concerns are recurrently raised about ‘class politics’ versus ‘identity politics’. Advocates of class politics claim that a focus on class should address ‘mere’ identity issues that are symptomatic of ‘deeper’ structural and class problems. From this perspective, focusing on race is the wrong way. Aime Cesaire (1972) disputed these claims and, instead, advanced the case that a strong focus must also be placed on race. In the end, he had to leave the Communist Party because of its insistence on class politics over identity politics. Similar debates arose in the days of W.E.B. Du Bois. Indeed, in Socialism and the Negro Problem, W.E.B. Du Bois (1913, points 1–3) made a classic distinction between socialists interested in ending capitalism and socialists focused on addressing the social structures that oppress Black people. The former were dominant and their approach to the Black problem docile: ‘let the question wait; when the objects of Socialism are achieved, this problem will be settled along with other problems’ (p.3). According to Du Bois, ‘ there is a logical flaw here… Can the problem of any group … be properly considered as “aside” from any program of Socialism? Can the objects of Socialism be achieved so long as the Negro is neglected? Can any great human problem “wait"? (Du Bois, 1913, p.4). Du Bois even suggested that class-only socialists lack consistency: ‘If Socialism is going to settle the American problem of race prejudice without direct attack along these lines by Socialists, why is it necessary for Socialists to fight along other lines? (Du Bois, 1913, p.4). Can a race-blind socialist system redistribute the fruits of labour from White to Black? ‘Does the history of the world justify us in expecting any such outcome? ‘ (Du Bois, 1913, p. 6). Du Bois (1913, p6) provided a categorical answer: ‘Frankly, I do not believe it does.’ He went on to state a positive preference for race and class analysis:I have come to believe that the test of any great movement toward social reform is the Excluded Class. Who is it that Reform does not propose to benefit? If you are saving dying babies, whose babies are you going to let die? If you are feeding the hungry, what folk are you (regretfully, perhaps, but nonetheless truly) going to let starve? If you are making a just division of wealth, what people are you going to permit at present to remain in poverty? If you are giving all men votes (not only in the “political” but also in the economic world), what class of people are you going to allow to remain disfranchised? (Du Bois, 1913, p. 6) Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to bifurcate these analyses. For instance, Gunnar Myrdal's (1944) approach to racial inequalities in the US, drew a sharp response from Oliver Cox (1945) who pointed out Myrdal's inattention to class analysis. Today, the lines can be similarly fraught. While Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed Jr (2020) demand a singular focus on class (see also Reed, 2018), many Black economists advocate a primary, even singular, focus on race (see, for example, Darity et al., 2020; Hamilton, 2021; Paul et al., 2022a). But, the latter group of economists need to be understood in context. Historically, the focus on class has invisibilised or marginalised the race problem. The claim that social democracy addresses racial dictatorship is not borne out of the evidence: whether in Australia, in Finland, in Sweden …or in any other social democratic countries (Piketty, 2014; Stilwell, 2019; Fina et al., 2021). In Australia, for example, even after years of social democracy, of every 4 people, 3 show ‘racial bias’ against the Black Aboriginal people of the country (The Economist, 2020b, p.44). Stratification economists (see, for example, Darity, 2022; Paul et al., 2022b) are increasingly recognising intersectionality of identities (Crenshaw, 1989). But they correctly point out that multiple, intersectional identities are not simply additive. Such identities like race, class, and gender could compound inequalities, as in the case of Black women, but such intersectionality could take many forms: some might even be subtractive. This holistic approach seems more compelling, but it also raises the broader issue of a just ecological political economy (Obeng-Odoom, 2021a, pp. 203–208). Táíwò's (2022) contribution to resolving ‘climate injustice’ is a helpful start. But, its contingent, tentative, and indirect nature weakens his arguments. They, in turn, appear rhetorical rather than empirical, neglecting the actual demonstration of actions that triggered biodiversity loss, for example, but also (in) actions related to economic resource losses that trigger ecological problems. Economic analysis by Tyler Hansen and Pollin (2022, p. 449) shows that concerted and systematic anti-fossil fuel campaigns for divestment for more than a decade has led to limited partial divestment. Full divestment commitments amount to only 0.2% of the entire market value for all oil transnational corporations. Both partial and full divestment commitments amount to a mere 0.7% or less than 1% of total market value of all fossil fuel assets. As fundamentally, we need to go beyond ‘climate’ and anthropocentric analysis to consider ecological imperialism more widely (Crosby, 1986/2009). Whether concepts such as ‘wealth’, ‘income’, and ‘catch-up’ are used consistently and carefully in Reconsidering Reparations is debatable (Obeng-Odoom, 2022b), as is whether the book strikes a helpful balance between emphasising specific moral wrongs and the structures that shaped them (Lambrecht, 2022). Certainly, though, a broadening out of the structures of philosophy into wider social scientific concerns of underdevelopment is needed (Mueller, 2022). One concrete step in this direction is to open up Táíwò's (2022) critique from social and climate relations to ecological and property relations more broadly. The ecological crisis is not reducible to emissions and pollution. Climate change is not only a product of climate warming. Biodiversity loss, dispossession, displacement, extinction, ecocide and ecosystem crisis are as critical (United Nations, 2022). Beyond wage theft, modern slavery can be more comprehensively analysed using the concept of rent theft. This arises when more and more income is paid out as rent. This way, the labour share of total output keeps declining, while the share of profit continues to rise. Rent, as used here, refers to the price of land monopoly and speculation, privilege and power. Cast within the surplus approach to rent, this payment is not simply income – earned or unearned – in competitive markets, as typically conceived in mainstream economics. Rather, this specific rent is privately extracted from what is socially and publicly created (see, for a discussion of the surplus approach to rent, Obeng-Odoom, 2021c). A ‘rent theft’, it is also prevalent in the fossil industry. While the International Slave Trade had officially ended before the fossil industry started, the rent theft model became quite useful in the fossil industry which developed subsequently. Consider, the Niger Delta area. It was a major place of enslavement (Afigbo, 2006). When slavery officially ended, the people were further exploited. Not only were they coerced by the British coloniser to abandon their subsistence farming, they were also obligated to develop palm oil plantation to support British industrial development with its well-known ecological problems (Heblich et al., 2022). The subsequent ‘legitimate’ trade was fossil fuel extractivism. Its development was led by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Shell whose activities created serious ecocide in the Niger Delta (Whyte, 2020, Obeng-Odoom, 2021a, 2021b). To this day, the people of the area remain marginalised. So, ‘The institution of slavery ended, but the underlying prejudices remained’ (Nwaubani, 2019, online). The subsequent years of weakening public environmental authorities and the resulting ecocide entailed not only socio-economic devastation but also destruction of flora, fauna, and water bodies in the Niger Delta. The degradation of the land complements the picture, while oil transnational corporations siphoned off the net benefits to Britain. This ecological imperialism (Crosby, 1986/2009) continues to this day. Ecological reparations must be paid for all these and the loss of African land around the world. There is the straightforward case of African migrants. They tend to be located in Naomi Klein's (2014, p. 310) ‘sacrifice zones’ with crumbling infrastructure and corrosive ecological and economic conditions for the dominantly Black populations. They own little land and control much less value. The idea that their remittances prevent them from building economic wealth to enable them control land and live in safer areas is diversionary, masking the systemic barriers they face all over the world as migrants, Black migrants, a point more systematically developed in Global Migration Beyond Limits by Franklin Obeng-Odoom (2022a). Barriers to the rental markets, rooted both in history and contemporary society, deprive them of the keys to decent homes. For most of them, death in a decent home is a pipe dream. Forced African migrants, often the descendants of enslaved people, have continued to experience these problems in the world. Several books have been written on the subject. Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia: Massacre at Bellavisat-Bojaya-Choco (Vergara-Figueroa, 2018) is one example. Another is The African Presence in Santo Domingo (Andújar, 2012). A third is Black Women Against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil (Perry, 2013). Elsewhere, Black lives have not mattered either. The US is a case in point. Black people have been dispossessed of their land by force and fraud (see Hinson, 2018). There is the well-documented institutionalised devaluation of Black people's real estate in the Jim Crow years (Connolly, 2014). But, even today, the value of White land is much higher still. The limited land for Black people is systematically undervalued. For the same land, Black people can receive only 58% of the value given to White families (Kamin, 2022).Similar comments apply to the experiences of Black people in Australia, South America, and South Africa. In Australia, Indigenous peoples’ land is grossly undervalued. Sometimes, their land is even regarded as terra nullius. That does not only mean that the land is ‘no man's land’, it also means that it is of little or no economic value. The Economist (2019, pp. 37–38) claims that African land tenure systems drive the persistent deprivation in Colombia's Afro communities, but systematic analysis of the evidence by experienced Colombian economists (Peña et al., 2017; Vélez, 2019; Vélez et al., 2020) fundamentally challenges such claims. Instead, the evidence shows a transfer of wealth from Black to White societies. In South Africa, too, apartheid shifted the incomes and wealth of Black South Africans to White South Africans (Price, 2003). Tembeka Ngcukaitobi (2021) shows how White minority economic rule is based on land. White people make up only 8% of the total South African population, but they own 72% of the agricultural land in South Africa. Coloured peoples and Indians own 24% of South African land, while Black people, the majority of the population, constituting 81% of the nation, own only 4% of land (Ngcukaitobi, 2021, p. 110). Physical inequalities in landownership aside, there are also inequalities in terms of land value. White South Africans privately appropriate value which has been socially created by the state and Black South Africans who constitute the majority of the South African population. In turn, the economic advancement of Black South Africans has been stifled and that of White South Africans supported through a persistent and systematic process of land devaluation and valuation. These inequalities and social stratification have had dire consequences on Black lives in South Africa, whether socially, economically, or ecologically. Rigorous econometric analyses (Price, 2003) demonstrate that reparations are urgently needed by Black South Africans to bridge the current racial wealth gap (Price, 2019; Darity & Mullen, 2020). Ecologically, greater economic inclusion could better enable Black people to mitigate and adapt more effectively. Economically, a more inclusive society could reduce the mimicry, consumerism, and the pressure for ecologically destructive growth linked to maintaining status.The critical issue, then, is how to address this land question? The most common approach is the willing seller/willing buyer model. Advanced mostly by White South Africans, the argument is for the government to buy back land from White landowners (Ngcukaitobi, 2021). They cannot be compelled to sell, however, because, under this model, the free market decides. This approach has failed, partly because the South African state cannot afford it, partly because White landowners do not easily sell land to Black women, and particularly because this only increases, not diminishes, the racial wealth gap. A well-known Marxist alternative is to physically redistribute land. Yet, this approach does not solve the problem of value: obtaining the same plots of land does not mean sharing the same value of land. A second approach is Proudhonist. This entails the nationalisation of all land banks such that people help themselves whenever they need land. Again, this national land grab does not address the question of value.An approach that is centred on land value could entail assessing the present value of land promised, but never given, to formerly enslaved Black people. The resulting value could be multiplied by 4, an adjustment to make up for what the freed enslaved people should have been paid at the time. Another adjustment could be adding four times the present value of the ‘mule’ that the freed enslaved people were promised but were never given (for a review of such studies, see Darity et al., 2020; Darity & Mullen, 2020). Stratification economists (see, for example, Darity & Mullen, 2020, pp. 264–270) argue that the compensable amount could be paid incrementally from new money printed by the central bank. Some reparations might also be used to create endowments. A critical question is what happens to the racial wealth gap when it is closed this way? Chances are that it will reopen. The private appropriation of socially created value cannot be addressed by the payment of reparations. Neither can rent theft be addressed by reparations alone. Indeed, even though the support for paying reparations has substantially risen in the US for example, the idea of printing new and more money for only reparations can face stiff resistance. The political economy of inequalities tends to overlook the case for reparations. Grounded in the need to address the persistent legacies of slavery, colonialism, imperialism, neoliberalism, capitalism and its many variants, the books examined in this paper have made a more compelling case for reparations than any other. These insights do not exist in any one discipline. Rather, the books reviewed reflect economic history, economics, and philosophy, the disciplines in which the key writers of the books have been educated. Could any one school of economic history, economics, or philosophy embrace the holistic political economy that these insights produce? A full answer is beyond the scope of this article because it would require a careful analysis of these various disciplines. What is quite clear is that analytically, at least, these insights can more easily percolate the new science of stratification economics, ‘The specific focus of [which] is on group-based inequality, particularly inequalities between ethnic and racial groups’ (Mason et al., 2022, p. 464). Defined (see Darity et al., 2015, p.2) ‘as a subfield of the wider discipline of economics … designed to improve our understanding intergroup disparity (e.g., racial, ethnic, caste and religious disparity)’, designing and demanding reparations are central to the study of stratification economics. Yet, the expansive scope of this subfield could be broadened even more. As the authoritative survey of the field by its most eminent pioneer and exponent, William Darity Jr. shows, the current ‘implications and extensions of stratification economics’ (Darity, 2022, p.15) are in six key areas, immigration, public goods, explaining the origins of intergroup wealth differences, various approaches to addressing disparities, political responses to stratification, and explanations of individual productivity (Darity et al., 2020, pp. 42–50; Darity, 2022, pp. 15–21). These areas overlap and intersect, of course (Darity et al., 2020; Darity 2022). Studying discrimination and privilege is a crosscutting theme. Many other permutations could be derived from these areas, including explaining the support many White women give to Whiteness. Or how increasing number of White women support dictators, showing less attachment to gender, class, or gender and class, the standard emphases of western feminism (Darity, 2022, pp. 5–6). However, as this article suggests, this framework must be widened. William Darity Jr himself called for more analytical holism in his Theodore W. Schultz Memorial Award Lecture, for the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association on 3 January 2021 (see Darity, 2021). For this purpose, urban and regional economics requires a place. Most ‘global cities’ are built on slavery. It continues to shape urban form and structure. So must just ecological political economy be wired into this school of thought, extending its present focus on differential environmental harms and ‘public goods’ (Darity et al., 2020, pp. 42–44), to the commons and just ecological political economy more widely (Obeng-Odoom, 2021a, pp.203–208). Black feminism already flourishes within stratification economics (Darity et al., 2020; Lewis et al., 2021; Obeng-Odoom, 2022a), although more can clearly be done to centre stratification economics as intersectional and intersectionality as stratification economics. Georgist political economy accepts 40 acres and a mule as a start, but stratification economics shows that even that premise is biased. White people obtained four times more (Craemer et al., 2020). Yet, stratification economics has not developed the full science of ‘progress and poverty’ in Georgist political economy intended to keep the gap closed. So, a fusion to fix the fission might be desirable, but a fuller consideration is beyond the scope of this paper. Additional symbiotic relationships between stratification economics and other schools of political economy could be fostered or deepened, if such interlinkages are fledgling. The goal is to build a wider and deeper approach to Black political economy.