Towards a theory of reparative multiculturalism

Abstract

Contemporary liberal states must provide an answer to the “question of cultural diversity”, requiring a principled way to determine which minority cultural practices a state must accommodate and support. (Liberal egalitarian) multiculturalism answers this question neatly by creating a dichotomy between national minorities and ethnic minorities (the national/ethnic “dichotomy”). Where national minorities are entitled to extensive and far-reaching cultural rights, ethnic minorities are entitled to significantly fewer cultural rights and accommodations. This dichotomy is enacted through a distributive logic that allocates cultural rights to achieve equal individual autonomy. But the dichotomy is also influenced by the ways these groups were incorporated into the state. Their modes of incorporation are different and, thus, they have different requirements to achieve equally autonomous lives.

Critics have challenged multiculturalism by questioning this dichotomy. They have suggested that the dichotomy does not adequately capture differences in kinds of minority groups and their entitlements. This paper defends the dichotomy by offering a supplementary principle to liberal egalitarian multiculturalism: the reparative multicultural principle. This principle allocates cultural rights as part of reparative entitlements for historical and ongoing injustices committed against minority groups. Supplementing multiculturalism in this way more accurately captures the idea of the historical mode of incorporation that inspires the dichotomy and can help resolve some the objections to multiculturalism.

Introduction

Contemporary states are made of up of many diverse cultural groups. Often these groups’ beliefs and practices conflict with one-another, with those of the dominant group, and with liberal principles more generally. This presents a puzzle for liberalism. On the one hand, intuitively we might think a state ought to accommodate and permit cultural practices. Doing so seems required by principles of toleration and liberty and doing so may provide salutary benefits to society. On the other hand, a state cannot possibly support every cultural practice of every potential cultural group. Doing so requires unfeasible resources and may be impossible when cultural beliefs conflict with one-another or liberal principles. Liberalism must, therefore, answer the following question: which cultural practices and beliefs must a state accommodate, permit, and support? Call this the “question of cultural diversity”. The multicultural project tries to answer this question in a way that both permits cultural minorities to adequately practice their cultures and maintains stability and liberal values. ¹

Will Kymlicka’s liberal egalitarian multiculturalism (“multiculturalism”) answers this question by distinguishing between two kinds of groups: national minorities and ethnic minorities. Call the distinction between national and ethnic minorities and the differences in multicultural policies each group is entitled to “the national-ethnic dichotomy” (“the dichotomy”). Critics have challenged multiculturalism by questioning the dichotomy (Young, 1997; Barry, 2000; Choudhry, 2002; Rubio-Marin, 2003; Vertovec, 2010; Patten, 2017; 2020). The dichotomy’s inability to answer the question of cultural diversity is supposed to indicate a deeper failing of the multicultural project generally.

In this paper, I defend the multicultural project. I do so by offering a supplementary principle to Kymlicka’s multiculturalism. Kymlicka’s multiculturalism uses an equality-based distributive logic to determine which groups receive cultural policies (1995: 101, 108–118). I suggest that in some cases we should supplement this account with a reparative principle. This is meant as an internal critique to the theoretical structure of Kymlicka’s multiculturalism. A directly reparative principle helps capture an idea already present in his theory: The historical fact of how minority groups are incorporated into the state should matter when it comes to the kinds of cultural policies minorities are owed. My reparative principle better captures this idea by directly allocating cultural rights in response to historical injustices. This principle is most useful in cases of largescale historical injustice, such as settler colonialism, and these are my focus. But I also suggest that adding this reparative focus can address objections critics of the multicultural project have raised and for a range of cultural groups and questions on which Kymlicka’s theory remains silent.

Multiculturalism and the dichotomy

Kymlicka’ multiculturalism justifies multicultural policies on broadly Rawlsian grounds. ² Access to one’s “societal culture” is a primary social good. It is necessary for individuals to be able to live autonomous lives. Societal cultures are broad, comprehensive social systems that encompass a culture’s shared social, religious, recreational, economic practices and institutions (1995: 78). These provide individuals with what Kymlicka refers to as a “context of choice” (83) – options for individuals to choose from and context that gives meaning to these options (83). One’s societal culture provides the options and meaning in which individuals can exercise their autonomy. Thus, individuals must have equal access to their societal cultural goods to live autonomous lives (101).

In diverse polities, societal cultures will come into conflict with one another. There will often be majority and minority societal cultures. Moreover, by virtue of the fact that societal cultures are large encompassing systems with institutions, norms and practices, not every group will have the size or concentration required to maintain its societal culture. Yet, the same time, societal culture is what provides the context of choice for individuals to exercise autonomy. Therefore, members of minority cultures with societal cultures different than that of the majority culture they inhabit will face significant burdens making meaningful choices. To ensure that members of minority cultures can live autonomous lives, justice requires the state allocate cultural resources to individuals from minority cultures (for instance by creating cultural accommodations or funding programs). Multicultural policies (MCPs), therefore, are allocated along principles of distributive justice to address the benefits and burdens associated with accessing cultural practices that provide the meaningful choices required for autonomy. As Kymlicka states: “What matters from a liberal point of view, is that people have access to a societal cultural which provides them with meaningful options encompassing the wide range of human activities.” (1995: 101). This is what Kymlicka refers to as the “equality argument” (108–115).

This equality-based allocation of MCPs is the characteristic feature of liberal egalitarian multiculturalism. More specifically:

Liberal egalitarian multiculturalism (multiculturalism)

(1) Access to societal cultural is a primary good to be fairly distributed to ensure individuals live equally autonomous lives.

There will be differences in the policies required to achieve equal access to culture. This will reflect the differences between the minority and majority societal culture. Some cultural practices will conflict drastically with the societal culture of the dominant state. This might include culturally significant governance structures (religious or political) that differ immensely from the structures of the dominant culture. We can distinguish between “extensive MCPs” and “basic MCPs”. Extensive MCPs demand more resources from the state and depart more from the dominant societal culture. ³ Examples of extensive MCPs include self-governance or territory rights. Basic MCPs require significantly fewer of resources and usually correspond to mere accommodations (exemption from neutral rules). Examples of basic MCPs include religious exemptions from motorcycle helmet laws, labour vacation days for religious celebrations, or multilingual voting ballots. ⁴

A state cannot possibly provide resources for all extensive MCPs. A state neither has the resources to do so, nor does justice intuitively seem to require, for example, self-governance for all minority cultural groups. Doing so might even be precluded by justice, since it may undermine the unity and strength of the state. Accordingly, a theory of multiculturalism must provide some principled way to distinguish between the kinds of groups that have justified claims to extensive MCPs and those that do not.

Multiculturalism distinguishes between two types of groups: National minorities and ethnic minorities. National minorities are entitled to more extensive MCPs, while ethnic minorities are not. The difference between these two groups is “the national-ethnic dichotomy” (Kymlicka, 1995: 20, 24–25). The dichotomy is supposed to provide a principled way of determining the MCPs a group requires to live equally autonomous lives as stipulated in Principle (1). The dichotomy tracks qualitative differences between the two kinds of group, specifically in terms of the relation between their own and the majority societal culture. It tracks qualitative differences and quantitative costs integration into the dominant culture would impose and, thus, informs what is needed to achieve the good of cultural access on a principle of equality (79, 80–85, 101, 108).

National minorities are groups of individuals whose cultural community makes up a concentrated, historic community within the larger diverse state. These include Indigenous peoples and smaller nations within states (eg. the Quebecois or Basque). In many cases, their societal culture and context of choice is significantly different from that of the majority culture. This difference means national minority cultures have difficulty using the majority cultural context of choice to set and pursue their ends. Ethnic minorities, on the other hand, are groups of individuals whose societal cultures are not territorially concentrated and do not bear a historical connection to the larger state. The primary example of ethnic minorities are voluntary immigrant groups. Like national minorities, their societal culture differs from the majority culture(s). Yet, it is less likely that members of ethnic minorities will find themselves unable to live autonomous lives without extensive cultural accommodations. By choosing to immigrate they have demonstrated an ability and willingness to engage in the majority societal culture (Kymlicka, 1995: 24–25). National minorities face far greater burdens in trying to integrate into the dominant culture because their established societal culture differs greatly from the majority. Justice requires they receive extensive MCPs for an equal ability to live autonomous lives. Ethnic minorities face fewer burdens in integrating. So they do not require extensive MCPs to live autonomous lives.

Importantly, the dichotomy is informed by the way these minority groups were incorporated into the state (20–25). The differences between ethnic and national minorities track historical and sociological facts about their modes of incorporation. Immigrant groups are often incorporated as a result of voluntary migration, knowing that they are migrating to a pre-established dominant culture (65–78). National minorities, on the other hand were, at the time of their incorporation, ongoing societal cultures (79–89). Their incorporation was often violent or involuntary. These differences in mode of incorporation inform the ways they access their cultures. For many voluntary ethnic migrants, the expectation is that they will integrate into the dominant societal culture, and they know this when they choose to migrate. For many national minorities, their societal culture remains in place since it was conquered or colonized by the dominant majority and continues to be defined independent from the majority.

For Kymlicka, this historical fact informs the ways cultural policies are allocated. But Kymlicka continues to emphasize a distributive logic in response to this historical fact. This is reflected in Kymlicka’s insistence on the “equality argument” (108–116). As a matter of historical fact, national minorities are the kinds of groups whose cultures will need more cultural resources to achieve equal access because their societal culture is still present. Ethnic minorities will not have the same need for the same level of cultural accommodations because their mode of incorporation into the state reflects a willingness to incorporate into the majority culture. In other words, historical processes as a matter of fact “defined the range of socially meaningful options” for members of minority groups (79). These historical injustices determine the distributive logic and the MCPs each group will need to access the meaningful options of their culture required for individual autonomy (101).

So, both kinds of groups of the dichotomy receive MCPs on the grounds that they are necessary to live equally autonomous lives as majority cultures. National and ethnic minorities differ in the (historically informed) burden integration into the dominant societal culture would impose. ⁵ Thus, differences in MCP entitlements reflect differences in what is required for different groups to achieve equally autonomous lives. We can supplement (1) with (2) to reflect the dichotomy:

Liberal egalitarian multiculturalism

(1) Access to societal cultural is a primary good to be fairly distributed as a resource to ensure individuals live equally autonomous lives.

(2) Differences in MCP entitlements between minority cultural groups reflect differences in distributive need to achieve equal access to culture, reflecting (a) how deeply cultural attachments are held (the burden imposed by integrating) and (b) the benefits and burdens these cultural attachments generate for members of the minority culture when interacting with the dominant societal cultural. This need is determined by historical and sociological facts, including the mode of incorporation into the majority culture.

As I will argue, there is a tension between the motivation behind principle (1) and (2). Principle (1) insists that MCPs are allocated on the basis that they ensure equal individual autonomy (1995, 101). Principle (2) is motivated by a desire to be responsive to historical facts about the mode of incorporation in society (79). In theory, some national minorities could not need greater MCPs purely to achieve equal autonomy (per principle (1)). Yet we may still think that the historical legacy of their mode of incorporation gives good reason to provide them with extensive MCPs (per principle (2)). As I will argue, this tension can be overcome by supplementing multiculturalism with a reparative principle that allocates extensive MCPs in cases of historical injustice, directly on the grounds of the wrong of the historical injustice, not purely on the grounds to achieve equal individual autonomy. But first, I consider some objections that highlight this tension in multiculturalism.

Objections to the dichotomy and multiculturalism

The dichotomy has received significant objection (Young, 1997; Barry, 2000; Choudhry, 2002; Rubio-Marin, 2003; Vertovec, 2010; and Patten, 2014). These objections can be seen as challenging multiculturalism itself. Any answer to the question of cultural diversity will need a principled way to determine which groups are entitled to MCPs. If multiculturalism relies on questionable principles that result in a questionable dichotomy to do so, then this may reflect underlying problems in the theory.

Objection (a): Do voluntary migrants relinquish extensive rights?

National minorities are entitled to extensive cultural rights because they are particularly attached to and dependent on them to live autonomous lives. The burden imposed by leaving their own societal culture and integrating into the majority would be too high. Voluntary migrants, on the other hand, relinquish their extensive cultural rights. Yet, if the basis for extensive rights is that they are required to live autonomous lives, it is unclear why voluntary migrants (ethnic minorities) do not remain entitled to more extensive rights. If the requirement for leading autonomous lives is strong enough to generate an entitlement and outweigh other liberal values (social cohesion, tolerance, inter-group equality) then why is it not strong enough to generate entitlements for voluntary migrants (Barry, 2000; Patten, 2017)? Moreover, part of the reason that immigrants are not entitled to extensive MCPs is that they are able to integrate into the majority culture. By choosing to immigrate they are prepared to integrate into the dominant societal culture and thus do not require extensive cultural rights. Why think that national minorities are any less capable of integrating? All these worries have a common origin: since the equality need generates the entitlement, it is unclear whether consent or voluntariness should play any role in determining the allocation.

Objection (b): Unintuitive accommodations for members of the majority

Cultural attachment and autonomy-promoting considerations are strong enough to generate extensive entitlements for national minorities. This logic, however, could create unintuitive entitlements for members of majority ethnic groups. Certain religious or economic minorities within the majority ethnic groups may have similar attachments to elements of their culture. There may be elements or practices of their societal culture that intuitively we think should not receive accommodation. The white working poor in the American South, for instance, may claim exemption from laws prohibit the confederate flag on the ground that it is culturally significant and required for them to live autonomous lives. Or, take Brian Barry’s tongue-in-cheek example in Equality and Culture. Barry asks why he should not be entitled to the same weapons exemptions as Sikhs and be permitted to carry an Excalibur sword to properly honour his King Arthurian British ancestry (2000: 38, 51–2). If attachment and necessity for securing autonomy is present and is enough to justify exemptions from previously neutral policy, why think that being a member of the majority ethnic group precludes a cultural policy? What makes the fact that the cultural attachment is experienced by a minority ethnic group “special”? If the practice is indeed part of the community’s cultural context of choice in their societal culture, then it is not clear how we can deny a right to it. Yet examples of this sort seem unintuitive. They suggest something has gone wrong in how the theory allocates cultural policies (see Barry, 2000; Orgad, 2015; Patten 2020).

Objection (c): Other groups?

Finally, the dichotomy seems silent with respect to other kinds of groups we might want a theory of cultural diversity to discuss. ⁶ For instance, Black Americans do not fall into either category. In many ways, Black communities resemble many national minorities; they are historically established communities who, due to histories of racist and systemically unfair policies, are often concentrated in geographical areas, have communities with characteristics similar (if not identical) to societal cultures; many elements of Black culture differ tremendously from dominant white culture; and their incorporation into the state was initially involuntary. On the other hand, Black Americans are importantly different from many national minorities. Black Americans do not have formal governance structures or unified territories. And, in many cases it is precisely just integration and equal citizenship (rather than cultural self-governance and territorial autonomy) that Black Americans have persistently demanded from the state. Other groups, such as involuntary migrants (refugees) and migrant workers similarly do not neatly fit into either category of the dichotomy.

It would seem that the theory should simply distribute cultural policies on the same familiar principles of equality and autonomy it uses for national minorities. Yet, as soon as it does this, the dichotomy is once again questionable in ways similar to (a) and (b) above. It seems as if all the work is being done by the burden imposed by leaving one’s societal culture and egalitarian need to address this burden. Yet, this does not result in a principled answer to the question of cultural diversity.

Diagnosing the problem

Objections (a) (b) and (c) all point to a common issue. Multiculturalism’s difficulty dealing with these “hard cases” suggests a tension in its core principles. National minorities ought to be accorded extensive rights because access to culture is a primary good. As it stands, other cultural groups could make these same claims to extensive MCPs on the grounds that they are needed to achieve autonomy. But then we lose the very thing we were trying to find: A principled answer to determine why some groups are owed extensive cultural policies and which are not. Ethnic minorities can just as well claim to have cultural entitlements. But, as established, a state cannot allocate cultural rights and policies to all groups. So attachments to culture and distributive may not suffice.

However, if we supplement the account with a further principle that specifies another way cultural policies are allocated, we may resolve this tension. While my supplementary principle may not decisively resolve each of these objections, my goal is to offer an additional resource to work through objections and tensions in the account.

A supplementary principle

There is an additional reason that explains why some sorts of groups are owed more extensive policies. Extensive cultural policies should sometimes also be allocated directly on the grounds of reparative justice. They directly respond to the way the minority was incorporated into the state when this mode of incorporation was a historical injustice.

Consider again the kinds of groups in the “national minority” category: Indigenous groups and historic minority nations. In most (or all) cases, these groups have been subjected to historical injustices and oppression. Indigenous groups were victims of violent conquest and colonial acts, their were lands stolen, and they continue to face widespread discrimination. Minority nations have often been victims of the dominant state’s conquest, persistent political subjugation, and discrimination in wider society. National minorities are characterized by having been victims of the dominant state or culture’s wrong.

I suggest that part of what creates the entitlement to extensive MCPs for such minority groups is a duty of reparative justice. We can supplement multiculturalism by adding a reparative principle that says that one of the ways MCPs are allocated is as a reparative duty for historical injustices. The state and dominant cultural group committed wrongs against cultural minorities. They now bear reparative duties to make up for these wrongs. Extensive MCPs are among reparative duties that address the wrong. Call this version of multiculturalism with a reparative principle “reparative multiculturalism”. I will argue that reparative multiculturalism may offer a useful resource to help overcome the tensions and objections explored in the previous section. But first I sketch the structure of reparative justice more generally.

The general structure of reparative justice

Reparative justice refers to a practice of justice that deals with what wrongdoers owe their victims to repair their wrongs. I use the term “reparative justice” to refer to a general group of practices which may also be referred to as “corrective justice” (Weinrib 2012; Ripstein 2004), “compensatory justice” (Walker 2006), or “reparations” (Boxill 2003). My account broadly follows the “corrective justice” literature developed in legal theory (especially in discussion of tort law), but I am not committed to any particular formulation. All my account requires is that reparative justice is separate and independent from distributive justice and concerns what wrongdoers owe victims of their wrongs independent of the distribution of resources previously between them (Cohen, 2016).

Reparative justice demands that when someone commits a wrong, the wrongdoer owes a reparative duty to the victim to address the wrong. The content of the reparative duty corresponds to this wrong and what would (most adequately) address it. Consider a simple example. Suppose you steal my bicycle. You now owe a duty to address this wrong. Since the wrong consisted in taking my bicycle, justice now demands you return the bicycle.

When you steal my bicycle, justice requires that you give my bicycle back. This simple example gives us two necessary conditions of reparative justice. First, reparative duties must occur between wrongdoer and perpetrator. Second, the reparative duty (return of the bicycle) must fit the original injustice (the loss of the bicycle). Together they give us:

Basic model of reparative justice

When P commits an injustice against V, P owes V reparative duties to address the injustice. Reparative duties have two conditions:

(i) Reparative duties must occur between the parties of the injustice

(ii) Reparative duties must address the “content” of the injustice

The Basic Model tells us that you must return my bicycle (or an adequate substitute) to me. Suppose instead someone else compensates me. Perhaps I’ve registered my bicycle and there is a third-party insurance system that provides me with its cash value when it is stolen. This is not reparative justice since you, the perpetrator, have done nothing for me. Likewise, suppose you cover my shifts at work, thinking that without my bicycle I was not able to go to work and this would make up for the theft. Yet you still do not return the bicycle. Your actions here covering my shifts are not reparative justice. Since you kept my bicycle, you do not address the thing that made the injustice problematic.

The Basic Model is common in many discussions of reparative justice (see references above). But it is frequently applied in cases beyond simple wrongs like the bicycle theft, including in large historical injustices. Sometimes, as I will explore below, this is in the context of arguing that reparative justice is not possible for historical injustices, since we cannot apply conditions (i) and (ii). For instance, Jeremy Waldron (1992) argues that we cannot return the precise thing taken in historical injustices (such as land) and so reparative justice is not possible. But the basic model of reparative justice has also been used to argue that we can and should repair past injustice. Bernard Boxill (2003), for instance, argues that slavery consisted in an unjust theft of wages and labour and so reparative justice requires descendants of slave owners must return these wages to descendants of slaves. In other words, he argues that both conditions of reparative justice I explain above hold: the parties of the injustice are the descendants (i) and they must repair the injustice because it consists in the unjust deprivation of holding wages and pay (ii). More recently, Olufemi Taiwo (2022) has applied reparative justice to argue that contemporary states owe duties to address climate change on the grounds that this is the injustice of many historical injustices like slavery. Present states in the global North are the parties of the past injustices (condition (i)) and the injustice now consists in disadvantages in climate change adaptation capabilities (condition (ii)). ⁷

My “reparative multiculturalism” broadly follows in this tradition. We can apply the Basic Model to cases of cultural rights. As in our standard bicycle example, when the “thing taken” corresponds to cultural practices, justice demands the state “give it back” through MCPs.

Reparative multiculturalism

I offer the following principle of reparative multiculturalism that supplements liberal egalitarian multiculturalism presented above. I explain and develop it further in response to objections and examples in the following sections.

Reparative multiculturalism

(1) Access to societal cultural is a primary good to be fairly distributed as a resource to ensure individuals live equally autonomous lives.

(2) Differences in MCP entitlements between minority cultural groups reflect differences in distributive need to achieve equal access to culture, reflecting (a) how deeply cultural attachments are held (the burden imposed by integrating) and (b) the benefits and burdens these cultural attachments generate for members of the minority culture when interacting with the dominant societal cultural.

(3) Further extensive MCPs are allocated on the basis of reparative justice. Individuals are entitled to MCPs to address the wrongful acts of which they (or their minority cultural group) have been the victim.

Principles (1) and (2) stipulate the basic equal distribution of cultural rights for all individuals determined by basic liberal egalitarian multiculturalism. Principle (3) supplements these. It stipulates that some minorities are entitled to more MCPs because MCPs are a requirement of reparative justice. Just as I am entitled to an “extra” bicycle than what might be distributively fair because you must return the stolen one to me, minorities are entitled to “extra” cultural rights on reparative grounds.

At this point one might wonder whether reparative multiculturalism actually differs from liberal egalitarian multiculturalism. The claim here is not that the reparative model fundamentally challenges or departs from Kymlicka’s original model. Rather, the claim is that the addition of the reparative principle makes explicit one of the motivations of the ethnic-national dichotomy. It adds a principle that directly responds to minorities’ modes of incorporation. Instead of stipulating that the mode of incorporation tends to produce a pattern of autonomy-promoting need, as Kymlicka does (1995: 79, 85), the mode of incorporation determines specific MCPs because they directly address an injustice that results in a claim to cultural policies.

This is an internal critique of Kymlicka’s multiculturalism, and it is worth considering how his position is already motivated by concerns of historical injustice. His discussion of the dichotomy starts from the observation that national minorities have typically been victims of historical injustice (Kymlicka, 1995: 20–45). His more recent work puts this historical fact in even greater focus. Kymlicka (2018) argues that the historical relationship between minority groups and the state should provide context for the kinds of cultural rights and MCPs minority groups are owed. For instance, he says: “[s]ettler colonialism disrupted the cultural context of indigenous societies, but this was a corollary of the deeper injustice of political domination and territorial dispossession, and a normative theory of indigenous rights must address these deeper issues, through some process of reconciling indigenous and settler sovereignties” (Kymlicka, 2018: 84). So, one might think that Kymlicka’s current version of multiculturalism already is responsive to reparative demands as a way of allocating MCPs. If this is the case, then does reparative multiculturalism add anything, or avoid some of the challenges liberal egalitarian multiculturalism faces?

Despite starting from a common observation – that national minorities are typically victims of historical injustice – and despite insisting that this context should shape the MCPs justice requires, the two positions differ, at least in focus. Without an explicit reparative principle, liberal egalitarian multiculturalism allocates MCPs as resources on the basis of what the minority needs. The historical injustice is relevant in that it provides context in determining what those cultural needs are. There is no principled theoretical reason that MCPs must be allocated on the basis of the historical injustice directly. It determines, as a historical fact, the ways the minorities are disadvantaged, where these disadvantages must be addressed on the grounds of equality. Reparative multiculturalism makes this historical context explicit. It allocates MCPs in response to the historical injustice itself. We can put the difference as follows. Without a reparative principle, liberal egalitarian multiculturalism says that the minorities are wronged, this wrong has created a need, and this need justifies the MCPs on grounds of equality. Reparative multiculturalism supplements this by emphasizing the historical injustice. Minorities are wronged, and the wrong itself justifies the MCPs, because MCPs are fitting reparation for the nature of the wrong. It is not merely that national minorities have a greater need to access their culture because of a historical process (as Kymlicka seems to suggest when emphasizing the “equality argument” 79, 108–111). They also are entitled to cultural practices because, as a matter of historical injustice, this is what was taken away from them.

Responses to objections (a) (b) (c)

Let’s now consider how reparative multiculturalism could help respond to objections leveled against multiculturalism. The reparative principle may not be decisive in all of these objections, and it is most useful in cases of historical injustice of the kind I consider in the final section. My point here is that it can offer a further resource to address some hard cases and objections.

Objection (a) Do voluntary migrant relinquish extensive rights?

Once we see that some entitlements to extensive MCPs are based on reparative justice, objection (a) loses its force. In many cases, voluntary or involuntary migrants may only be entitled to basic MCPs based on access to an autonomy-promoting culture (97–101). But now sometimes some migrants may be entitled to extensive MCPs when they are victims of historical injustice. For example, many of the migrants to former colonial powers (eg. the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium) come from former colonies and, thus, are victims of past wrongs. They may be entitled to more extensive MCPs as a matter of historical injustice. Likewise, the idea that national minorities could easily integrate into society and thus are not owed extensive MCPs is no longer a tension. The ability or inability of a minority to integrate into the dominant culture is not the only factor determining their MCP entitlements. They may be owed extensive MCPs as a matter of reparative justice even if they could integrate into the dominant culture.

Objection (b): Unintuitive accommodations for members of the majority

When extensive MCPs are thought to be allocated on distributive need, there was a worry that members of the majority ethnic groups could claim significant accommodations and exemptions on the same grounds. If members of majority ethnic and cultural groups need accommodations to live autonomous lives, principle (1) of multiculturalism requires it. This could lead to potentially unintuitive accommodations. However, once we adopt a reparative principle, many extensive MCPs are allocated on the basis of reparative justice. Many national minorities are entitled to extensive MCPs because they were wronged by the dominant majority. The dominant majority does not have reparative entitlements from the dominant majority, so they cannot claim extensive MCPs on these grounds.

There may be some cases jn which a minority sub-group within the dominant majority may still receive accommodations. For instance, Catholics in the United Kingdom or the United States have often been historically a minority, even among the majority of Christian/white citizens. Reparative multiculturalism can help explain this. When a sub-group of the majority has historically been victims of (unrepaired) injustices, they too may be owed MCPs in accordance with the reparative principle. But members of the majority who are not historical victims will not have these same claims from historical injustice and, thus, will not be allocated extensive MCPs.

Objection (c): Other groups?

Reparative multiculturalism also offers a promising way to determine cultural entitlements for groups not neatly captured by the dichotomy. In liberal egalitarian multiculturalism, it was unclear what some groups – Black Americans, nonvoluntary migrants – are entitled to. There is an intuition that more than basic MCPs are appropriate, but it does not seem like we can justify them on distributive grounds on the same ways as national minorities.

We can now vindicate the intuition that more is required. Like national minorities, these kinds of groups are victims of injustice. The natures of the injustices are, of course, different. Indigenous groups and national minorities primarily experienced wrongs of territory theft and political subjugation. Black Americans and refugees primarily experienced wrongs of physical violence and discrimination. This means that the precise reparative duties owed to each type of group will differ. Yet, the justification for extensive MCPs is similar: all these groups have MCPs because MCPs in some way help address wrongs of the past. Differences in cultural rights reflect differences in the wrongs the different groups experienced.

A challenge for reparative multiculturalism

Reparative multiculturalism offers a promising addition to liberal egalitarian multiculturalism. It helps multiculturalism respond to objections leveled against it, and can be promisingly expanded to cases like cultural policies for other historical victims of injustices that liberal egalitarian multiculturalism has difficulty explaining.

Despite this promise, reparative multiculturalism encounters a challenge: MCPs do not straightforwardly correspond to anything “taken” in the way the bicycle does in our basic case. Reparative justice must address the original injustice. But if the original injustice did not primarily consist in taking away the things cultural rights now supply, then we cannot defend extensive MCPs on the grounds that they are what justice demands we return. They do not “fit” as reparation for the original historical injustice.

Versions of this objection frequently appear in the reparative justice and historical injustice literature. It is sometimes meant to challenge the very possibility of reparations, especially in the context of reparations for slavery. The objection is supposed to run as follows. Slavery consisted in a number of egregious injustices, which include psychological harms, bodily harms, and theft of labour. Reparative justice is meant to address these injustices. But, we cannot actually repair these egregious harms, since nothing could make up for them. Moreover, there is no one in the present who currently experiences these harms. ⁸ Since no reparative duties in the present are fitting for these injustices, reparative justice is not possible.

Let’s sharpen the objection. Take again our basic example of reparative justice. When you steal my bicycle, justice requires that you give my bicycle back. This example shows our two conditions of reparative justice:

(i) Reparative duties must occur between the parties of the injustice

(ii) Reparative duties must address “the content” of the injustice

We can apply the Basic Model in historical injustices. Take violent colonial acts, such as child abduction in Australia or Canada. Here, the “content” of the injustice seems to be harms and losses including the psychological or bodily harms to the children and family, the intergenerational trauma this creates, or the economic and political damage sustained by the community from having generations stolen and unable to continue political traditions. According to condition (ii) of our Basic Model, it seems reparative duties must address these harms, since this was the content of the injustice. Reparative duties might include, say, compensation or mental health services for the psychological effects of the abduction, support in generational trauma, and economic support for the damaged political traditions.

The Fittingness Objection says that justice cannot require MCPs as part of reparative duties because they do not meet condition (ii) of reparative justice. They are not fitting reparation for the injustice and, thus, cannot be required by justice. More precisely:

Fittingness Objection

P1. Only reparative duties with content corresponding to the original injustice can be required by justice. (Crudely, only things that the original injustice “took away” can be part of what reparative duties must “give back”). [necessary condition (ii)]

P2. For all or most cases of historical injustices committed against national minorities, MCPs do not correspond to the original injustice. (The original injustice did not “take away” MCPs). [claim]

C: All or most reparative duties for historical injustices committed against national minorities cannot be MCPs [P1,P2].

The Fittingness Objection would challenge reparative multiculturalism. In most cases, the injustice of historical injustices committed against national minorities does not consist in “taking away” the things MCPs give. Recall something like child abduction in colonial conquest. The “content” of these injustices corresponds to things like the harms to the children and families. Any reparative justice that is now owed would seem to be for these immediate harms. But if MCPs are not fitting reparative duties for these historical injustices, then MCPs cannot be required by reparative justice.

The Fittingness Objection may run even deeper. Perhaps, it will be suggested harms to cultural access do straightforwardly correspond to the content of the historical injustices. It might be thought that the injustices we primarily about harms to cultural access. Then, reparative duties amount to simply giving back the cultural access that the injustices took. MCPs, it might be thought, simply amount to giving back the cultural access in the same way that returning the bicycle repairs the bicycle theft.

Yet, this it too quick. Even if we admit that the original injustices created harms to cultural access, they are not the same harms that current descendants experience that MCPs are meant to address. That is, contemporary policies that grant cultural rights do not merely “give back” the same sorts of cultural goods that the injustices caused at the time of the original injustice. For instance, an MCP does not merely permit an Indigenous group to fish in the same ways that was denied at the time of colonial conquest. In fact, this would not only be an inaccurate way of thinking about MCPs, but would also be normatively problematic. To think of MCPs as merely giving back the precise cultural thing that was taken presents a picture of Indigenous peoples as somehow rooted in the past, undeveloped, or uninterested in anything beyond survival. As Douglas Sanderson (2011) suggests in the context of Canadian Aboriginal Law, this simple return of cultural practices view “neatly side-steps any sense that Indigenous people.

Acted for reasons that were more complex than survival.” (2012: 118). It essentializes their culture in a way that freezes it in time. If reparative justice is just meant to give back access to the same cultural practices that injustices caused, it would provide this sort of essentializing function. It would not result in the kind of MCPs that we are interested in – that is, ones in which the national minority has a right to develop the culture, even if this is different than the ways that it was prevented from doing before. In other words, even if we think that cultural access was one of the harms of the original injustice, the Fittingness Objection still applies. MCPs do not merely “give back” the original cultural practices in the way that you must simply “give back” the bicycle. MCPs extend to different and more extensive cultural rights. We need to explain why the kind of MCPs that give more and different cultural rights than merely the harms of the past can be demanded by justice.

Overcoming the challenge

To disarm the challenge let’s clarify exactly how reparative justice generates reparative duties. In particular, we must clarify condition (ii) of the Basic Model. Condition (ii) tells us that the reparative duties must address the content of the injustice. If we understand the content of the injustice simply in terms of the particular things that were taken and reparative duties as simply “giving them back,” then the challenge remains. Yet, if we understand the injustice in terms of more general normatively significant features of the original wrong, rather than merely the harms that result from it, then reparative duties must correspond to addressing these features. And, extensive MCPs may sometimes be required to address these normatively significant features, even if doing so provides something different than the original harms of the injustice.

To illustrate, I turn to a case of Indigenous artifact repatriation. Intuitively, repatriation resembles our Basic Model. The wrong consists in the artifact being the “thing taken”. And the wrongdoer now bears a straightforward reparative duty to return it. Yet, by working through examples of repatriation we will see that repatriation actually requires something very specific. We must return the stolen artifact not merely because it addresses the original loss. Rather, we must return the stolen artifact because doing so restores the normatively significant features that made the action wrongful in the first place: the ability of the victim to determine how it acts (in relation to this artifact). If we understand reparative justice as being about restoring the ability of the victim to act free from the imposition of the wrongdoer, we avoid the objection. MCPs address the original things that made injustices wrong in the first place, so MCPs can be part of reparative duties.

Artifact repatriation

Throughout Canadian colonial history, the state has stolen and dispossessed Indigenous artwork, artifacts, and other culturally significant objects (“artifacts” or “artwork” throughout my discussion). Sometimes these dispossessions were deliberate, targeted actions. For instance, from 1884-1951 Canada criminalized the Potlach ceremony. The potlach is a traditional practice of numerous nations of the Pacific Northwest (including Haida, Nootka, Nuy-chah-nulth and Coast Salish nations). The ceremony, though multifaceted, is enacted primarily as an exchange of gifts. This exchange of gifts has implications for nations’ economic systems, governance structures, and social systems. Potlach practice continued through its ban (for discussion of potlach see Harkin, 2015; Kramer, 2004; U’mista Cultural Society, 2022). Yet, in part because of the ban potlach practices today are significantly changed. Younger generations are less comfortable in the ceremony are less experienced with the practice (Kan, 2016).

Traditional potlach ceremonies use a variety of masks and regalia. As part of its criminalization, Canadian authorities conducted raids intended to dispossess nations of the masks and ceremonial regalia required for the ceremonies. A particularly stark example occurred in 1921. A police raid of a large Kwakwaka’wakw potlach ceremony in ʼMimkwamlis (Village Island) dispossessed a collection totalling over 600 pieces of masks, rattles, regalia, and other family heirlooms. Not only were the artifacts stolen to prevent this and future potlaches. More poignantly, the masks and regalia were transported out in the open and then displayed on benches in the Anglican church in Alert Bay. Since masks and regalia were traditionally kept out of sight when not being used in the ceremony, this overt display caused significant harm to members of the Kwakwaka’wakw community (U’mista Cultual Society, 2022; Knox, 2021).

When Indigenous communities demand the return of artifacts they do not do so merely to get to appreciate the artwork again. Nor it is merely to heal phycological traumas resulting from the injustice. If either of these were the goals of returning the artifacts, we could address them by other means. Perhaps we could redistribute global material culture so that Indigenous communities had access to the goods created by material culture (as suggested by Appiah, 2007: 115–135). Likewise, we could repair the harm of the psychological trauma by some other means that would not require the return of the artifact. Neither relieving the psychological harms nor global cultural redistribution explains the intuition that justice requires the return of stolen artifact to address the injustice.

So, if not (only) to address the harms of the theft, why does justice require the return of the stolen artifacts? When Indigenous communities demand the return of cultural artifacts, what reparative function does repatriation address?

Some defective forms of repatriation help us understand what justice requires. In Skwxwu7mesh Uxumixw (Squamish) and Lilwat7ul (Lil’wat) culture, many cultural artifacts and works of art are designed to decay. This is meant to reflect the natural lifespans of the natural materials from which they are produced. As Mixalhitsa7 Alison Pascal, the curator at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler suggests, a work of art is not meant to stay preserved (as it would in a museum), but rather undergo transformation based on the natural life cycle of the material it is constructed from:

Our cultural pieces aren’t meant to be kept forever and ever […] A lot of our carvings and baskets are made of natural materials, and a lot of them would decompose over time and start to fail (quoted in Bernstien, 2021).

Pascal goes on to explain that an anonymous major Vancouver museum denied the return of a woven cedar root violin case because of this idea of decay. The museum accepted the Squamish-Lil’wat’s claim to ownership. Yet, the museum denied calls to repatriate (return) the artifact on the grounds that the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre does not have adequate display infrastructure that would preserve it from decay. Though ownership is agreed and established, the Nations are denied repatriation and the museum has decided the parameters of this repatriation (that it must be stored and presented in a particular manner). Even if the cedar violin case were to be returned, it would be on the condition that it is stored in a particular way specified by and on the terms of the museum.

A similar story is recounted by Jennifer Kramer (2004) about a particularly important Bella Coola ceremonial Echo Mask. After losing it through questionable private sales, the band regained the mask years later in a public art auction (161–172). However, to reacquire it, the band used assistance from the Canadian Department of Heritage. The funds used to repurchase the mask resulted from negotiations with the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board and the board attached conditions to these funds. In particular, the mask must be displayed in a special case located in an off-reserve bank to ensure the safety of the mask from degradation and theft (168–72). This condition is notable. Like many ceremonial masks, the Echo Mask is traditionally supposed to be kept out of sight except during ceremonies. Here, then, though property has been re-established, and its physical return to the Bella Coola band achieved, the terms of this repatriation are still determined by the Canadian government.

Both examples are forms of defective repatriation. And they are defective for the same reason: Though both nations regain some form of legal ownership, some element required for full return of the artifacts is importantly missing. In the first case, though the museum and state have admitted that the artifact belongs to the nation, they deny physical repatriation. Even if the state granted physical repatriation, they would insist on the artifact being maintained in a particular way. They would deny the Squamish and Lil’wat nations the ability to let the artifact decay in line with traditional cultural values. In the second case, though the state grants physical repatriation, they still require the nation to display the mask in particular ways. Both cases could address the harms that resulted from the original theft. The nations have access and can appreciate their cultural artifacts. They are even permitted to use these artifacts in some traditional cultural ways, so long as they remain displayed as the Canadian state requires. Yet, there is a strong sense that something is missing. The use of “permitted” and “granted” in describing the situation is telling. These are forms of defective reparation because, even if the artifacts are physically returned and can be used in ways that secure cultural goods lost by the original theft, it is still on Canada’s terms.

These examples show us that repatriation requires something very specific. It cannot simply be physical return of the artifact. Nor can it be an admission of ownership with conditions attached to its possession. Nor even can it be physical return, admission of ownership and permissions to use the artifact in certain traditional cultural practices. The examples are defective because they do not address the normative features that made the original theft wrong: the wrongdoer determining the ways in which the victim is able to interact with the artifact. So long as the victim is still not permitted to do what it would like with the artifact, its return has not fully been realized and the theft has not been repaired. Now, by specifying the ways the victims of the theft may interact with the artifact, the state continues to act in the same ways that made the original action wrong. Successful repatriation and requires that the thief no longer determines the terms under which the Indigenous nation may interact with the artifact.

Repatriation and reparative justice

Repatriation illuminates reparative justice more generally. The success conditions of repatriation require that the Indigenous nation be able to interact with the artifact on its own terms. Only full return of this kind addresses the normatively significant features of the original theft. Until the Indigenous nation can use the cultural artifacts again in a way entirely determined by itself, the theft is not repaired. This is because determining the ways the nation was able to interact with the artifact is what made the action wrong in the first place.

Reparative justice addresses this normatively significant feature more generally. It addresses the imposition of the wrongdoer’s will on the victim. Actions are wrong when they interfere with the victim’s ability to set and pursue their ends in important ways. The normatively significant features of the wrong are the constraints the wrongdoer imposes that are inconsistent with both parties’ freedom. And the wrongdoer bears reparative duties to address these unjust ways the wrong determined the actions of the victim. Reparative duties correspond to the things the wrongdoer must do to restore the victim’s freedom, either by refraining from continuing the wrong, or by providing resources that restore the victim’s options and actions available to them.

Recall condition (ii) of reparative justice: Reparative duties must address the content of the injustice. To say reparative duties must “address the injustice” means that reparative duties must address the normatively significant feature of the injustice. This corresponds to the ways the wrongdoer interferes with the actions available to the victim. Though the particular actions the wrong prevents may change over time, the reason the action was wrong continues in the same way. Originally, we might say, the wrong of the theft manifests itself in preventing the nations from being able to enjoy the art or use it in cultural ceremonies. Now, though, the wrong of the theft manifests itself in preventing the nations from developing and passing on their culture. All along, the reason the action is wrong has been the same: it interferes with the actions the nations may take. Thus, any reparative duties that address this normatively significant feature of domination address the original injustice.

Reparative multiculturalism revisited: reply to the objection

We can now respond to the Fittingness Objection by rejecting P2. Initially, the content of historical injustices does not seem to correspond to the kinds of things that MCPs try to restore (as P2 suggests). Yet, now we see that actions are wrong because they interfere with their victims. Reparative duties correspond to addressing this normatively significant feature of interference. In many (or most) cases of historical injustices, the wrong continues to manifest itself by restricting or determining cultural ends. Consider, again, theft and repatriation of ceremonial potlach masks. Initially, this wrong simply took away nations’ abilities to interact with the masks. Yet, since the masks and potlach practice were integral to younger generations learning cultural language and governance practices, restricting the ability to practice potlaches meant restricting the ability to teach younger generations. Reparative duties in the present, then, may entail providing resources and policies tailored to developing these cultural practices in younger generations. The reparative duty in the present might entail extensive MCPs because providing MCPs corresponds to provide the same thing that the initial wrong took away: the ability to be free of the interference of others (in cultural practices). At the time of the original theft this domination came in the form of simply dispossessing the artifact, in the present it now comes in the form of interfering with cultural development. MCPs are fitting reparation to address the domination, even if they extend beyond the original dispossessive act.

Conclusion

Reparative multiculturalism supplements our answer to the question of cultural diversity. When an individual (or group) is the victim of a wrong and that wrong restricts culturally related actions, the individual or group is entitled to MCPs to restore their ability to act in culturally-related ways. This gives us a principled way to answer the question of cultural diversity and supports the intention behind the dichotomy. Not all groups are entitled to extensive MCPs because not all groups are victims of historical injustices with normatively relevant lingering cultural effects. This principle helps us with problems liberal egalitarian multiculturalism encounters and expands the cases of cultural entitlements to other groups multiculturalism had difficulty addressing. Any group that is a victim of a historical injustice may be entitled to MCPs. This explains why groups like Black Americans are entitled to MCPs despite not resembling national minorities.

Of course, reparative multiculturalism needs to be further developed. Reparative multiculturalism fits within a larger question of reparative justice for historical justices more generally. There is a sense in which reparative cultural policies are only a small part of what reparative justice generally requires for historical injustice. This suggests that if reparative multiculturalism is a plausible addition to the previous model, theories of cultural diversity would benefit from looking to questions of historical injustice more generally. The goal of this paper has been to sketch reparative multiculturalism as a plausible addition to our theories of cultural diversity and emphasize the focus theorists of cultural diversity should place on unpacking such questions.