The Reparative Ideology: The Limits of Liberal Antiracism

This paper critically examines the ideological underpinnings of two prominent municipal reparative programs initiated in the wake of the George Floyd Rebellion: Minneapolis’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and St. Paul’s Community Reparations Commission (CRC). Through a rigorous analysis of official texts, public statements, and interviews with key stakeholders, the paper interrogates the explanatory frameworks and causal assumptions that shape these programs. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, including Marxist critiques, critical race materialism, and liberal egalitarianism, this study explores the inherent tensions between race and class in reparative politics. While acknowledging the limitations of both liberal antiracism and race-reductive frameworks, this paper argues for a reparative planning approach that refuses the decoupling of race from political economy. In advancing the constructive view of reparations as a form of “worldmaking” (Táíwò, 2022), it proposes a reparative justice agenda capable of transforming the social, political, and economic structures responsible for the (re)production of racial inequality.