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Ubuntu: The Indigenous Ethos of Restorative Justice
Because European colonialists saw no jails, police, lawyers, judges, or courts in African indigenous societies, they mistakenly concluded these cultures had no way to address social conflict and wrongdoing. […] In Western culture, we are socialized to believe that the desire to inflict counterviolence upon or retaliate against someone who has hurt us or a loved one is innate and that justice has always been done and will always be done in this way. In fact, far from universal or natural, this adversarial vision of justice is a relatively recent cultural and historical construction, arising around AD 1200 with the dawning of the nation-state and racial capitalism.
Because European colonialists saw no jails, police, lawyers, judges, or courts in African indigenous societies, they mistakenly concluded these cultures had no way to address social conflict and wrongdoing. Restorative justice views a vengeful and punitive response to harm unacceptable, because, on a social level, it sets into motion negative feedback loops of violence and counterviolence. Punishment, the equivalent of officially sanctioned vengeance, is a mere variant of the original harm, replicating and reproducing it, resulting in the destruction of community safety nets and social breakdown.
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