In recent philosophical scholarship on historical injustice and reparations, a notable development has been “the structural turn.” How fundamentally does conceiving of the ground of reparations as structural — e.g., in terms of present anti-Black institutional racism, and not just slavery as a discrete event that happened in the past — necessitate a change in our underlying theories of reparative justice? Focusing on the U.S., I lay out a typology of harms that give rise to reparations claims. One type of harm that I identify, diachronic group harms, is inherently structural, and focuses our attention on a different set of issues than those with which past philosophical authors writing about reparations were concerned. However, across all types of harms, the underlying moral rationale for reparations is the same. The answer to the question “Why reparations?” has to do with the inherent value of accountability for serious wrongdoing.

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