Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Rawls On Race/Race in Rawls" 161 Philosophy Raced
Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Rawls On Race/Race in Rawls" 161 Philosophy Raced
Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Philosophy Raced" 22 Mills, "Rawls On Race/Race in Rawls" 161 Philosophy Raced
M.
Terry
Harvard
University
Critical
Race
Theory
and
the
Tasks
of
Political
Philosophy:
On
Rawls
and
The
Racial
Contract
Work
in
Progress:
Please
do
not
circulate
or
cite
without
authors
permission
I.
Professional
Philosophy
and
The
Racial
Contract
No
discussion
of
Charles
Mills
blisteringly
provocative
essay,
The
Racial
Contract,
should
proceed
without
noting
from
the
outset
that
it
begins,
crucially,
with
a
conceptual
indictment
of
philosophy
and
political
theory
from
the
standpoint
of
critical
race
theory.
What
makes
philosophy
distinctive,
Mills
argues,
comparing
it
to
other
disciplines
in
the
humanities,
is
that
the
conception
of
the
discipline
itself
is
inimical
to
the
recognition
of
race.1
To
the
extent
that
philosophy
concerns
itself
exclusively
or
primarily
with
necessary,
spiritual,
eternal
[and]
ideal
truths,
scholars
of
race
are
at
a
disadvantage
given
their
subjects
location
in
the
contingent,
the
corporeal,
the
temporal,
[and]
the
material.2
Even
in
political
philosophy,
which
one
would
expect
to
be
more
sensitive
to
these
latter
categories,
Mills
argues
that
its
prevailing
strategies
of
abstraction
and
idealization
render
questions
of
race
and
racial
justice
conceptually
marginal,
placing
significant
obstacles
in
the
path
of
perspicacious
and
practically
useful
theorizing
about
justice.
Exemplary
for
Mills
in
this
ignoble
regard,
is
the
work
of
arguably
the
most
celebrated
philosopher
of
the
twentieth
century,
John
Rawls.
Rawls,
Mills
argues,
had
next
to
nothing
to
say
in
his
work
about
what
has
arguably
historically
been
the
most
blatant
American
variety
of
injustice,
racial
oppression,
nor,
he
adds,
is
the
remediation
of
the
legacy
of
white
supremacy...of
the
slightest
[apparent]
interest
or
concern
for
Rawls
and
most
of
his
commentators
and
critics.3
Recalling
an
encounter
with
Rawls
at
the
University
of
Toronto
in
the
late
1970s,
Mills
recalls
a
feeling
of
utter
disconnectionbetween
Rawlss
work
and
[his
own]
interests,
a
disconnection
so
great
that
it
did
not
even
manifest
itself
in
a
feeling
of
disappointment.4
In
The
Racial
Contract,
however,
Mills
began
to
build
the
foundations
upon
which
he
has
since
gone
on
to
fully
articulate
the
methodological
and
ethical
commitments
undergirding
his
critical
intuitions
about
Rawlsian
and
neo-Rawlsian
political
philosophy,
focusing
1
Mills,
Philosophy
Raced
22
2
Mills,
Philosophy
Raced
22
3
Mills,
Rawls
on
Race/Race
in
Rawls
161
4
Philosophy
Raced
2
on
the
inheritance
of
social
contractarianism
and
Rawls
influential
distinction
between
ideal
and
non-ideal
theory.5
I
draw
attention
to
Mills
intellectual
trajectory
(as
well
as
his
concerns
with
professional
philosophys
demographics)
in
order
to
draw
out
an
important
dimension
of
his
work
that
is
under-
acknowledged.
As
Nikolas
Kompridis
has
argued,
contemporary
theory
is
in
an
age
characterized
chiefly
by
the
practice
of
unmasking
critique;
indeed,
the
practice
of
critique
has
become
more
or
less
identical
with
the
activity
of
unmasking
[emphasis
added].6
What
we
seem
to
admire
mostand
what
we
have
generally
come
to
regard
as
definitive
of
successful
unmasking
critique,
Kompridis
writes,
is
the
way
in
which
[critical
theorists]
manage
to
redescribe
x
in
terms
of
y,
or
reveal
x
to
be
an
effect
of
y,
or
show
that
the
condition
of
possibility
of
x
necessarily
requires
the
exclusion
or
repression
of
s,
the
mechanisms
of
which
we
can
attribute
back
to
ever-ready
y.7
The
Racial
Contract
is
undoubtedly
an
exercise
in
this
vein,
an
instance
of
critical
race
theory,
meant
to
unmask
the
universalizing
pretensions
of
philosophical
methods,
the
white
supremacist
herrenvolk
ethics
of
social
contract
theory,
and
the
racia-sexual
domination
constitutive
of
modernity.8
However,
it
also
serves
as
a
prelude,
or
perhaps
better
yet,
an
invitation,
to
what
Kompridis
calls
transformative
critique.9
Mills
explicitly
distances
himself
from
the
sort
of
deconstruction
of
the
social
contract
that
he
associates
with
postmodernism
better
characterized
as
ironist
critique
and
instead
argues
that
the
ideals
of
contractarianism
are
not
themselves
necessarily
problematic,
the
problem
is
that
they
have
been
betrayed
by
white
contractarians
[emphasis
added].10
The
text,
therefore,
is
no
anti-Enlightenment
polemic,
but
as
Thomas
McCarthy
argues,
well-within
the
tradition
of
radical
Enlightenment
critique
and,
surprisingly
accommodating
to
the
pragmatic
need
to
engage
with
social
contract
theory
simply
because
of
its
hegemony
in
5 RC esp. 19-40 and 109-134; Ideal Theory as Ideology; Racial Liberalism; Rawls on Race/Race in Rawls;
from
such
thinkers
as
Marx,
Nietzsche,
Freud,
Heidegger,
Adorno,
Wittgenstein,
Lacan,
Foucault
and
Derrida.
To
illustrate
Mills
(and
Patemans)
insistent
criticisms
of
the
blindness
of
mainstream
political
philosophy,
here
we
have
a
list
that
does
not
include
any
of
the
greatest
female
and/or
nonwhite
unmasking
theorists,
or
any
non-Europeans
for
that
matter.
Even
restricting
our
inquiry
to
the
so-called
continental
tradition,
such
figures
as
W.E.B.
DuBois,
Frantz
Fanon,
Simone
de
Beauvoir,
Angela
Davis,
and
Judith
Butler
have
been
extraordinarily
influential
at
unmasking
critiques
of
reason,
social
arrangements,
and
their
justifications.
I
do
not
consider
the
feminist
tradition
to
only
be
a
radicalization
of
the
insights
of
the
philosophers
Kompridis
lists
(presumably
he
would
consider
this
the
case
for
critical
race
theorists
as
well).
7
Kompridis,
Reorienting
Critique
28
8
Mills,
Non-Cartesian
Sums
in
Visible
Blackness
9
Kompridis,
Reorienting
Critique
38
10
Mills,
RC
129
3
political
theory
and
philosophy.11
Mills
hope
is
that
an
unmasking
of
the
constitutive
racial
exclusions
at
the
heart
of
the
purported
universalism
of
the
social
contract
tradition
and
a
sustained
reckoning
with
the
sordid
history
of
racial
domination
and
its
contemporary
legacy
from
within
the
social
contract
tradition
will
force
contemporary
political
philosophy
to
challenge
its
prevailing
ontological
presuppositions
and
methodological
prescriptions.
The
horizon-enlarging
possibility
that
gives
his
critique
its
force
is
the
prediction
that
engagements
in
the
vein
of
The
Racial
Contract
could
potentially
spark
a
new
iteration
of
contractarianism
in
professional
philosophy,
which
generates
black
radical
prescriptions
indeed
heretical
ones
like
reparations
from
white
liberal
norms.12
Mills
has,
however,
expressed
disappointment
that
The
Racial
Contract,
and
his
subsequent
work,
has
been
received
near-exclusively
as
what
I
have
called,
following
Kompridis,
unmasking
critique
and
not
as
an
attempted
rapprochement
between
liberal
political
philosophy
and
critical
race
theory.13
I
aim
in
what
follows
to
pursue
a
critique
of
Mills
approach
to
the
tasks
of
critical
race
theory
in
political
philosophy
that
takes
both
projects
seriously,
even
as
it
ultimately
judges
his
approach
wanting.
Primarily,
I
want
to
argue
that
Mills
variant
of
critical
race
theory
pursues
critique
through
a
hermeneutics
of
suspicion
too
heavily
reliant
on
reading
silences
about
race
as
evidence
of
ideological
mystifications
concerning
white
supremacy,
and
this
leads
him
to
criticisms
of
Rawls
that
undermine
his
own
aims
and
are
not
ultimately
persuasive.
I
suggest
an
alternative
method
in
the
orbit
of
critical
race
theory
focused
instead
on
the
interplay
of
exemplarity,
narrative,
and
argument
in
those
instances
where
Rawls,
and
other
political
theorists,
refer
to
racial
injustice
or
African-American
political
struggle
in
order
to
unpack
the
complex
and
differentiated
ways
in
which
mainstream
theorists
conscript
historical
narratives
about
race
and
African-American
history
to
their
frameworks,
and
how
revisionist
historiographies
can
give
us
ways
of
pursuing
immanent
criticism
capable
of
reconstructing
critical
concepts
in
contemporary,
non-ideal
political
philosophy.
The
hope
is
that
this
theoretical
alternative
avoids
some
of
the
interpretive
burdens
and
untenable
binaries
of
Mills
approach,
while
retaining
some
of
his
most
important
critiques
of
contemporary
contractarian
liberalism
in
Rawls
and
his
inheritors.
11
McCarthy
review
453
12
Mills,
CD
247
13 Philosophy Raced 17; for many (non-philosophy) people of color and white progressives in the
academy,
The
Racial
Contract
has
now
become
a
standard
text
to
assign
as
a
self-contained
crash
course
on
imperialism,
critical
race
theory,
and
white
supremacy
that
exposes
the
hypocrisies
of
liberalism
and
the
Western
humanist
tradition,
and
puts
U.S.
racism
in
a
global
and
historical
context.
But
the
contract
framework
itself
is
quite
dispensable
for
them
except
insofar
as
it
provides
another
useful
target
to
be
trashed.
It
is
not
the
case
that
most
of
these
academicscertainly
not
those
outside
philosophyare
interested
in
the
exercise
of
seeing
how
Rawlsian
contract
theory
can
be
revised
and
reconstructed
to
deal
with
these
issues.
4
II. Critical
Race
Theory
and
the
Hermeneutics
of
Suspicion
While
Mills
emphasis
on
Rawls
has
increased
since
the
publication
of
The
Racial
Contract,
the
text
which
inaugurated
his
critical
project
focuses
much
more
time
and
textual
exegesis
on
Rawls
canonical
forebears
in
the
social
contract
tradition
(esp.
Locke
and
Kant)
and
the
constitutions,
charters,
and
instances
of
political
rhetoric
that
bear
the
unmistakable
influence
of
their
ideas
and
rhetoric.
Mills
presses
his
case
in
favor
of
both
the
actual,
historical
existence
of
something
akin
to
a
racial
contract
and
the
disclosive
power
of
the
racial
contract
as
an
analytical
construct,
through
juxtaposition.
On
one
hand,
Mills
contrasts
the
liberal,
egalitarian
pronouncements
of
social
contractarians
with
what
Thomas
McCarthy
has
described
in
endearingly
honest
fashion
as
the
startling
remarks
and
obscure
essays
on
race
that
we
[philosophers]
long
tended
to
pass
silently
over
when
discussing
the
classics
of
early
modern
political
theory.14
On
the
other
hand,
Mills
contrasts
the
voluminous
ruminations
of
these
theorists
on
liberal
ideals
with
their
jarring
silence
on
and
occasionally,
active
participation
in
the
gross
violations
of
liberty,
autonomy,
equality,
natural
rights,
dignity,
and
justice
contemporaneously
carried
out
against
non-whites
under
the
banner
of
empire
and
in
the
practice
of
enslaving
human
beings.
It
is
difficult
to
understate
the
importance
of
silence
in
Mills
corpus.
Studies
of
the
impact
of
racial
ideologies
and
racism
on
the
canonical
figures
of
political
thought
all
share,
at
their
core,
a
key
hermeneutic
dilemma
concerning
how
we
should
interpret
the
relationship
between
ostensibly
universal
defenses
of
liberal
principles
and
various
forms
of
accommodation
to,
defense
of,
and
outright
participation
in
transgressions
of
those
principles.
Mills
move,
which
is
familiar
to
scholars
of
critical
race
theory
and
postcolonial
theory,
is
to
reconstruct
the
apparent
paradox
as
more
consistent
that
it
first
appears.
Mills
achieves
this
by
arguing
that
these
philosophers
are
committed,
prior
to
their
various
contractarian
arguments
about
equal
rights,
reciprocal
obligation,
and
mutual
agreement,
to
theories
of
ethnoracial
(and
gender)
hierarchy
that
qualify
the
conceptual
and
normative
boundaries
of
their
theories.
There
is,
in
other
words,
a
philosophical
anthropology
involved
which
links
the
possession
of
the
requisite
traits
or
characteristics
(e.g.,
cognitive,
affective,
cultural,
aesthetic)
for
inclusion
and
standing
in
the
liberal
polity
with
racial
categories,
invariably
concluding
their
possession
among
white
racial
groups
and
denying
or
denigrating
their
presence
5
elsewhere.
This
is,
in
part,
the
insight
that
Mills
is
attempting
to
systematize
with
his
construct
of
the
Racial
Contract.15
For
the
classical
theorists
of
the
social
contract,
Mills
hopes
to
seal
the
judgment
of
their
complicity
with
racial
domination
with
the
damning
combination
of
(a)
textual
proof
of
their
endorsement
of
forms
of
racial
hierarchy,
(b)
the
persuasive
interpretation
of
their
putatively
universal
core
concepts
(i.e.,
person,
civilized,
rational,
etc.)
which
reveals
anthropological
or
evaluative
content
plausibly
stratified
or
constrained
by
the
sorts
of
claims
they
make
about
race
(often
in
other
writings
or
practices),
and
(c)
the
lack
of
any
countervailing
evidence
that
suggests
they
hold
(even
underdeveloped)
commitments
to
racial
equality
which
could
be
sympathetically
reconstructed
to
rebut
(a)
or
(b).
For
example,
Kants
forays
into
physical
anthropology,
with
his
attempts
to
develop
a
(hierarchical)
theory
of
race
and
attribute
various
capacities
for
rationality,
judgment,
and
moral
education,
are
put
forth
by
Mills
as
evidence
that,
given
those
capacities
critical
role
in
Kants
ethical
understanding
of
personhood,
Kantian
ethics
(at
least
in
Kants
own
formulation)
are
stratified
by
race.16
That
Kant
is
silent
and
does
not
condemn,
in
print,
African
chattel
slavery
and
narrowly
objects
to
only
the
most
violent
abuses
of
colonialism,
is
taken
as
prima
facie
evidence
that
these
injustices
did
not
disturb
him
greatly,
and
conscripted
back
into
the
argument
as
further
evidence
of
a
herrenvolk
ethics.17
Mills
naturalistic
political
theory
contains,
as
many
such
accounts
do,
a
hermeneutics
of
suspicion.18
By
this,
I
mean,
his
theoretic
approach
operates
from
the
assumption
that
the
world,
particularly
the
world
humans
have
created,
is
rivenwith
hypocrisy
and
concealment
and
needs
to
be
unmasked
by
a
critique
of
the
contents
of
consciousness,
an
assumption
justified
by
a
15 The Racial Contract is that set of formal or informal agreements or meta-agreements (higher-level
contracts
about
contracts,
which
set
the
limtis
of
the
contracts
validity)
between
the
members
of
one
subset
of
humans,
henceforth
designated
by
(shifting)
racial
(phenotypical/genealogical/cultural)
criteria
C1,
C2,
C3as
white,
and
coextensive
(making
due
allowances
for
gender
differentiation)
with
the
class
of
full
persons,
to
categorize
the
remaining
subset
of
humans
as
nonwhite
and
of
a
different
and
inferior
moral
status,
subpersons,
so
that
they
have
a
subordinate
civil
standing
in
the
white
or
white-ruled
polities
the
whites
either
already
inhabit
or
establish
or
in
transactions
as
aliens
with
these
polities,
and
the
moral
and
juridical
rules
normally
regulating
the
behavior
of
whites
in
their
dealings
with
one
another
either
do
not
apply
at
all
in
dealings
with
nonwhites
or
apply
only
in
a
qualified
form
(depending
in
part
on
changing
historical
circumstances
and
what
particular
variety
of
nonwhite
is
involved)
(RC
11)
16
Also,
see
Kants
untermenschen
and
Blackness
Visible
4,
5
17
I
am
less
concerned
here
with
the
persuasiveness
of
this
as
an
interpretation
of
Kant,
and
more
with
Mills
mode
of
argument
for
other
interpretations,
see
McCarthy,
Race,
Empire,
and
Human
Development;
Bernasconi,
Kant
and
Race;
Eze
18
Lieter,
Hermeneutics
of
Suspicion;
Mills
as
naturalist,
p.
5
RC
6
naturalistic
account
of
the
social
causes
of
conscious
life.19
For
Mills,
these
causes
are,
above
all,
differentiated
group-based
experiences
structured
by
positions
in
the
social
order
organized
along
familiar
and
intersecting
macrosocial
strata
of
race,
class,
gender,
sexuality,
nation,
mediated
through
other
group
identities
based
in
categories
like
vocation
(i.e.,
professional
philosophy).20
His
account
of
epistemology
suggests
that
our
interpretive
approaches
should
be
guided
with
these
forms
of
group
position
in
mind,
and
his
readings
of
classical
contractarians
are
as
persuasive
as
they
are,
in
part
because
the
textual
evidence
abundantly
repays
the
approach:
Kant
is
the
appropriately
voluminous
preeminent
moral
philosopher
of
the
Enlightenment,
and
its
most
systematic
theorist
of
racial
hierarchy;
Lockes
confused
reflections
on
slavery
were
written
alongside
his
deep
financial
and
political
involvement
with
the
owners
of
enslaved
human
beings
in
the
Carolina
colony.21
Silence
is
asked
here
to
play
the
scale-tipping
role,
if
you
will,
of
weighting
our
already
well-
nourished
suspicions
in
favor
of
the
critical
race
theorists
unmasking
critique.
Innocence
suitably
dispatched,
the
absence
of
pronouncements
on
anti-slavery,
racial
injustice,
and
colonialism
alongside
monographs
on
liberty,
justice,
and
equality
accrue
the
odious,
if
necessarily
always
inconclusive,
air
of
hypocrisy
--
especially
as
the
authors
indulge
themselves
in
the
figurative
imagery
of
human
bondage
to
press
other
political
aims.
In
The
Racial
Contract,
Mills
expounds
on
what
he
calls
the
evidence
of
silence:
Where
is
Grotiuss
magisterial
On
Natural
Law
and
the
Wrongness
of
the
Conquest
of
the
Indies,
Lockes
stirring
Letter
concerning
the
Treatment
of
the
Indians,
Kants
moving
On
the
Personhood
of
Negroes,
Mills
famous
condemnatory
Implications
of
Utilitarianism
for
English
Colonialism,
Karl
Marx
and
Frederick
Engelss
outraged
Political
Economy
of
Slavery?
Intellectuals
write
about
what
interests
them,
what
they
find
important,
and
especially
if
the
writer
is
prolific
silence
constitutes
good
prima
facie
evidence
that
the
subject
was
not
of
particular
interest.
By
their
failure
to
denounce
the
great
crimes
inseparable
from
the
European
conquest,
or
by
the
halfheartedness
of
their
condemnation,
or
by
their
actual
endorsement
of
it
in
some
cases,
most
of
the
leading
European
ethical
theorists
reveal
their
complicity
in
the
Racial
Contract.22
This
calculus,
however,
shifts
dramatically
once
explicitly
racist
arguments
are
removed
from
the
equation.
Take,
for
example,
Mills
invocation
of
David
Brion
Davis
towering
intellectual
and
19
Lieter
20
Mills,
Alternative
Epistemologies
21 Brad Hinshelwood, The Carolinian Context of John Lockes Theory of Slavery, Political Theory (online May
15,
2013)
22
RC
94
7
cultural
history
of
slavery
in
Western
thought.23
Mills
argues
that,
in
light
of
their
promotion
of
liberty
in
Europe,
the
silence
of
seventeenth-century
philosophers
on
the
problem
of
African
slavery
can
be
judged
to
reflect
a
silence
not
of
tacit
inclusion
but
rather
of
exclusionthe
black
experience
is
not
subsumed
under
these
philosophical
abstractions,
despite
their
putative
generality.24
Surprisingly,
suspicion
is
not
necessarily
diminished
with
the
disappearance
of
explicitly
racist
or
even
racialist
argument;
it
is
instead
transferred
elsewhere.
With
the
first
pillar
of
the
hermeneutic
architecture
of
his
critical
race
theory
removed,
Mills
unmasking
of
universal
concepts
and
methods
suffers
from
what
might
be
called
the
increasing
significance
of
silence.
III. Rawls
and
Race
In
stark
contrast
to
their
early
modern
predecessors,
contemporary
contractarians,
following
John
Rawls,
have
disavowed
racialized,
historical-anthropological
fictions
meant
to
give
impressionistically
true
accounts
of
the
origin(s)
of
state
and
civil
society.
They
have
also
explicitly
embraced
principles
of
racial
equality
and
anti-discrimination.
Rawls
states
unequivocally
in
A
Theory
of
Justice
that,
there
is
no
race
or
recognized
group
of
human
beings
that
lack
his
two
attributes
of
moral
personhood:
the
capacities
to
have
a
conception
of
the
good
and
a
sense
of
justice.25
In
his
very
first
published
paper
(1951),
Rawls
criticizes
pejoratively
as
ideological
any
attempt
to
claim
a
monopoly
of
the
knowledge
of
truth
and
justice
for
some
particular
race,
or
social
class,
or
institutional
group
or
to
define
competence
in
terms
of
racial
and/or
sociological
characteristics
which
have
no
known
connection
with
coming
to
know,
explicitly
in
the
course
of
designing
a
procedure
capable
of
generating
viable
ethical
principles
and
judgments.26
Moreover,
Rawls
entire
theoretical
apparatus
emerges
from
a
modification
of
this
early
decision
procedure
into
his
reflective
equilibrium
method,
where
we
attempt
to
align
our
moral
and
political
theorizing
with
what
he
calls
our
considered
judgments
or
considered
convictions
of
justice
(TOJ
17).
To
justify
arguments
about
the
design
of
decision
procedures
in
ethics,
the
principles
elicited
from
those
procedures,
and
comparisons
of
moral
theories,
Rawls
suggests
that
what
we
must
do
is
see
if
the
principles
which
would
be
chosen
match
our
considered
convictions
of
justice
or
extend
them
in
an
acceptable
way.
These
considered
judgments,
although
capable
of
23
David
Brion
Davis,
The
Problem
of
Slavery
in
Western
Culture
8
revision,
are
core
moral
judgments
which
we
now
make
intuitively
and
in
which
we
have
the
greatest
confidencequestions
which
we
feel
sure
must
be
answered
in
a
certain
way
(TOJ
17).
The
two
judgments
of
this
sort,
which
Rawls
mentions
so
succinctly
as
to
convey
their
self-evidence,
are
judgments
that
religious
intolerance
and
racial
discrimination
are
wrong.
Such
pronouncements,
along
with
the
promising
architecture
that
Rawls
has
seemed
to
provide
for
left-liberal
political
theorists
concerned
with
the
expansive
redistribution
of
wealth,
the
inviolability
of
civil
rights,
and
the
deflation
of
right-libertarian
arguments
against
left-liberal
interpretations
of
those
claims,
have
encouraged
a
handful
of
theorists
to
pursue
theoretical
work
on
racial
justice
through
Rawlsian
frameworks.27
Mills,
however,
has
become
the
most
prominent
critic
of
such
endeavors,
inspired
in
part
by
the
purported
silences
concerning
racial
justice
in
Rawls
and
in
the
Rawlsian
secondary
literature.
In
his
essay
Rawls
on
Race/Race
in
Rawls,
Mills
undertakes
a
review
of
the
textual
record
of
Rawls
five
major
books
and
some
of
the
landmark
volumes
of
the
secondary
literature,
searching
for
references
to
race,
racism,
racial
discrimination,
racial
injustice,
slavery,
civil
rights,
settler
colonialism,
genocide,
and
corrective
justice
(i.e.,
reparations,
affirmative
action,
etc.).
Concluding
his
review
in
a
section
titled
Rawlss
Silences,
Mills
argues
that
the
paucity
of
these
references
show
that
[r]ace,
racism,
and
racial
oppression
are
marginal
to
Rawlss
thought,
and
[m]erely
consulting
the
indexes
of
these
five
books
would
be
enough
to
establish
this
truth.28
More
than
forty
years
after
the
publication
of
A
Theory
of
Justice,
Mills
contends,
the
fact
that
there
has
not
been
more
debate
on
the
flagrant
absence
of
racial
justice
as
a
theme
in
this
literature,
and
the
questions
this
absence
raises
about
its
possible
intrinsic
whiteness,
raises
severe
questions
about
the
adequacy
of
the
Rawlsian
apparatus
for
theorizing
racial
justice.29
With
this
silence
animating
his
hermeneutic
suspicion,
Mills
goes
on
to
argue
that
it
is
not
just
a
matter
of
what
Rawls
does
not
say
the
omissions
but
of
how
what
he
does
say
is
conceptualized
the
tendentious
conceptual
commissions
which
Mills
decries
as
prescriptive
27
Tommie
Shelby,
for
one,
has
argued
for
nearly
a
decade
that
Rawls
insights
may
prove
to
be
indispensable
for
theorizing
about
racial
justice
and
that
they
do
not
require
radical
revision
in
order
to
develop
a
nonideal
theory
of
racial
justice
as
part
of
a
fully
comprehensive
theory,
and
has
embarked
on
a
research
project
perhaps
best
characterized
as
a
Rawlsian
study
of
ghetto
poverty
as
a
nexus
of
problems
for
a
theory
of
justice.
Indispensable
quote
is
from
Race
and
Social
Justice,
Rawlsian
Considerations
and
indispensable
quote
is
from
Racial
Realities
and
Corrective
Justice:
A
Reply
to
Charles
Mills.
Published
portions
of
the
ghetto
poverty
project
include
Justice,
Deviance,
and
the
Dark
Ghetto,
and
Justice,
Work,
and
the
Ghetto
Poor
28
Rawls
on
Race
169
29
Mills,
Retrieving
Rawls
for
Racial
Justice?
22
9
albinismcomplemented
by
a
similarly
bleached-out
faculty
picture
and
corresponding
descriptive/explanatory
conceptual
framework.30
Mills
case
turns
principally
on
three
claims:
Firstly,
he
argues
that
Rawls
commitment
to
ideal
theory
leads
him
to
marginalize
race
and
racism
because
its
conception
of
a
well-ordered
society
as
a
cooperative
venture
for
mutual
advantage
among
free
and
equal
citizens
abstracts
away
from
the
existence
of
racial
identities,
racial
inequality,
and
racial
domination.
This
abstraction
is
historically
inaccurate,
sociologically
nave,
and
ontologically
deficient,
given
that
society
is
constituted
by
various
forms
of
group
domination,
and
theorizing
from
this
idealized
assumption
short
circuits
theories
of
corrective
justice
that
cannot
take
egalitarian
standing
or
freedom
as
a
given
and
may
need
to
order
principles
in
a
radically
different
fashion
to
achieve
justice.31
Secondly,
he
claims
that
ideal
theory
is
not
sufficiently
action-guiding.
Its
impoverished
resources
for
dealing
with
actually-existing
injustices,
which
it
does
not
appropriately
theorize
may
even
have
the
bitter
irony
of
leading
us
away
from
the
sorts
of
remedies
they
demand
or
even
an
appropriate
sense
of
their
urgency
as
matters
of
justice,
especially
insofar
as
addressing
them
requires
us
to
bring
back
in
forms
of
group
identity
and
group
domination
that
were
excluded
from
our
thought
experiments.
Thirdly
and
finally,
Mills
goes
on
to
claim
that
the
postwar
struggle
for
racial
justice
in
practice
and
in
theory
a
category
that
is,
at
least
on
the
practice
side,
dominated
by
the
civil
rights
movement
and
the
Rawlsian
corpus
on
justice
are
almost
completely
separate
and
non-
intersecting
universes.32
The
concern
here,
it
seems,
is
a
bit
stronger
than
the
suspicion
engendered
by
silence
as
such,
entailing
something
like
the
familiar
argument
of
critical
theorists
that
social
movements
can
be
critical
reference
points
for
theories
of
justice,
insofar
as
their
claims,
actions,
and
interpretations
have
genuinely
emancipatory
potential.33
A
failure
to
engage
with
this
struggle
makes
political
theory
untenably
reliant
on
interpretations
of
need
(or
other
critical
concepts)
drawn
from
discourses
and
traditions
unaffected
by
critical
exchanges
and
public
contests
with
this
insurgency.34
This
third
objection
shall
be
my
point
of
departure,
and
guide
the
discussion
of
Mills
other
critiques.
My
argument,
in
short,
is
that
Mills
is
mistaken
on
this
point
above
all
others,
but
in
a
way
30
Mills,
Rawls
on
Race
170
31 Charles W. Mills, Ideal Theory as Ideology, Hypatia, Vol. 20, No. 2 (August 2005), pp. 165-183; Mills,
34 Mills does not elaborate as fully on this point as one might expect, but it seems evident that his persistent
focus
on
reparations,
for
instance,
is
exemplary
of
the
sort
of
shift
in
need-interpretation
that
might
emerge
from
such
an
engagement
between
post-war
African-American
political
historiography
and
political
theory.
10
that
provides
for
a
compelling
rethinking
of
the
relationship
between
critical
race
theory,
civil
rights
historiography,
and
liberal
political
philosophy.
My
argument
is
that
Rawls
is
deeply
influenced
by
the
civil
rights
movement,
and
his
historical
understanding
of
its
trajectory
operates
as
the
formative
background
not
only
for
his
reflections
on
civil
disobedience
and
public
reason,
but
also
for
significant
pieces
of
his
theoretical
overture
as
a
whole.
These
areas
of
Rawls
corpus
are
particularly
important
for
engaging
with
Mills
critique
insofar
as
they
are
the
bases
of
Rawls
endeavors
into
non-ideal
theory.
IV. Ideal
Theory
and
Non-Ideal
Theory,
Again
Before
pursuing
these
arguments,
however,
it
is
imperative
to
clarify
the
distinction
between
ideal
and
non-ideal
theory.
Ideal
theory
in
political
and
moral
philosophy
refers
to
a
family
of
approaches
to
ethical
and
political
questions
that
concentrate
primarily
on
working
out
principles
that
should
govern
intentional
human
action
and
the
arrangement
of
basic
social
and
political
institutions
given
the
fundamental
and
critical
assumption
of
full
compliance.35
All
persons
and
institutions
in
ideal
theoretic
thought
experiments
have
the
capacity
to,
and
do
indeed
comply
with,
the
principles
generated
by
its
thought
experiments.
This
insistence,
however,
at
least
in
Rawlsian
political
theory,
is
not
strictly
utopian,
but
realistically
utopian.
To
this
end,
Rawls
introduces
a
further
commitment,
which
other
ideal
theorists
including
GA
Cohen
have
rejected
to
varying
degrees,
that
ideal
theories
of
justice
must
also
be
fact-
sensitive
in
certain
critical
respects.
This,
principally,
means
that
ideal
theory,
deal
as
it
must
in
abstraction,
should
nonetheless
take
into
account
realistic
notions
of
moral
psychology,
certain
facts
about
the
functioning
of
basic
institutions
(i.e.,
imperfect
administration),
structuring
assumptions
like
the
existence
of
something
akin
to
Humes
conditions
of
justice,
and
problems
like
stability.36
This
is
a
point
often
neglected
in
arguments
that
attempt
to
downplay
the
significance
of
full
compliance
in
ideal
theory,
out
of
concern
that
they
remove
questions
of
institutional
design,
socialization,
preference
formation,
and
moral
education
from
political
theory.37
These
questions
are
precisely
what
Rawls
account
of
stability
wrestles
with
most
deeply.
The
assumption
of
full
compliance
does
not
necessarily
dissolve
the
theorists
responsibility
to
persuasively
account
for
reasons
that
might
motivate
such
compliance.
35
Michael
Phillips,
Reflections
on
the
Transition
from
Ideal
to
Non-Ideal
Theory,
Nous,
Vol.
19,
No.
4
(Dec
1985)
pp.
551-570;
Rawls,
TOJ
7-8,
215-216;
Andrew
March,
Taking
People
As
They
Are:
Islam
as
a
Realistic
Utopia
in
the
Political
Theory
of
Sayyid
Qutb
APSR
Vol.
104,
No.
1
(February
2010),
p.
192
36
Rawls,
Theory
of
Justice
37
Hamlin
and
Stemplowska,
Theory,
Ideal
Theory,
and
the
Theory
of
Ideals
p.
51
11
Ideal
theory,
despite
its
abstractions,
is
nonetheless
supposed
to
be
both
critical
and
constructive
and
play
some
role
in
guiding
the
course
of
social
reform.38
Rawls,
for
example,
sees
his
critical
task
as
one
of
developing
a
conception
of
a
perfectly
just
basic
structure
and
the
corresponding
duties
and
obligations
of
persons
in
order
to
judge
existing
institutions
in
light
of
this
conception
and
evaluate
them
as
unjust
to
the
extent
that
they
depart
from
it
without
sufficient
reason.39
The
constructive
hope,
at
least
for
Rawlsian
ideal
theory,
is
that
its
exercises
can
be
significantly
action-guiding
insofar
as
they
can
serve
as
the
most
persuasive
source
of
goals
to
work
toward,
as
normative
standards
for
judging
the
overall
justice
of
particular
social
arrangements,
and,
crucially,
as
sources
of
justification
for
these
goals,
standards,
and
principles.40
Moreover,
Rawls
is
at
pains
to
show,
through
ideal
theory,
that
a
society
well-ordered
by
his
principles
of
justice
is
stable
for
the
right
reasons.
In
other
words,
such
a
society
not
only
generally
maintains
itself
in
a
just
general
equilibrium
and
is
capable
of
righting
itself
when
that
equilibrium
is
disturbed,
but
does
so
through
fully
autonomous
activity
of
its
members
elicited
and
encouraged
by
the
institutionalization
of
and
common
adherence
to
said
principles.41
This
deep
concern
with
the
problem
of
stability
reveals,
as
Paul
Weithman
has
persuasively
and
insightfully
argued,
two
practical
tasks
of
Rawlsian
political
philosophy.
The
first
is
the
formulation
a
conception
of
justice
that
can
serve
as
an
enduring
foundation
charter
for
a
well-ordered
liberal
democracy.42
The
second
is
a
project
that
Weithman
aptly
describes
as
naturalistic
theodicy.43
This
task
is
a
response
to
the
ethical-existential
anxiety,
perhaps
best
articulated
by
Kant,
that
human
beings
in
their
utter
frailty,
will
be
unable
to
meet
the
daunting
demands
of
a
commitment
to
morality
and
justice,
indeed
to
our
own
freedom,
if
we
do
not
see
that
our
aims
can
be
achieved
and
that
our
particular
efforts
to
achieve
them
are
a
significant
part
of
their
realization.44
The
question
of
practical
faith,
therefore,
involves
engendering
justifiable
confidence
that
the
order
of
nature
and
social
necessities
human
sociability
are
not
unfriendly
to
[a
realm
of
ends],
namely
a
well-ordered,
stably
just,
liberal
constitutional
democracy.45
12
The
hope
is
that,
with
the
appropriate
balance
of
fact-sensitivity
and
abstraction
rooted
in
certain
ethical
ideals,
political
philosophy
can
demonstrate
through
reasoned
argument,
what
a
just
society
looks
like,
why
we
should
regard
it
as
possible,
and
why
its
pursuit
is
worthwhile.
It
is
this
notion
that
animates
Shelbys
insistence
that
the
fundamental
normative
question
for
the
members
of
historically
oppressed
groups
still
living
in
the
midst
of
societal
injustice
should
be
What
kind
of
society
would
merit
our
allegiance
and
is
therefore
worth
fighting
for?46
Non-ideal
theory,
in
contrast,
takes
its
theoretical
departure
or
primary
considerations
from
scenarios
of
significant
non-compliance
or
serious
violations
of
normative
principles
of
justice.
Both
sets
of
theorists
necessarily
deal
in
ideals,
normative
ones,
and
ones
that
represent
social
or
natural
phenomena.
However,
Mills
argues,
non-ideal
theorists
do
not
rely
on
idealization
to
the
exclusion,
or
at
least
marginalization,
of
the
actual.
Instead,
they
on
Mills
account
pursue
more
accurate
descriptive
models
of
actually-existing
phenomena
or
historical
developments
to
figure
in
their
theoretical
work.47
This,
however,
does
not
seem
quite
right
as
a
full
definition
of
non-ideal
theory.
It
is
not
clear
why
modeling
non-compliance
or
serious
injustices
need
to
necessarily
model
actually
existing
social
ills
or
enduring
injustices.
Non-ideal
theory
seems
also
to
entail
attempts
to
generate
principles
of
action,
institutional
design,
or
other
ethico-political
judgments
drawn
from
purely
speculative
models
of
social
injustice
and
adversity.48
Mills
insistence
on
political
theorys
descriptive
modeling
of
existing
and
enduring
injustices
is
not
constitutive
of
non-ideal
theory
as
such,
but
it
is
central
to
his
particular
version,
motivated
as
it
is
by
the
interplay
between
his
naturalistic
standpoint
epistemology
and
related
worry
about
ideological
mystification.
The
Racial
Contract
hypothesis,
he
writes,
is
explicitly
predicated
on
the
truth
of
a
particular
metanarrative,
the
historical
account
of
the
European
conquest
of
the
world.
Therefore,
Mills
continues,
the
Racial
Contract
lays
claims
to
truth,
objectivity,
realism,
the
description
of
the
world
as
it
actually
is,
the
prescription
for
a
transformation
of
that
world
to
achieve
justice
and
invites
criticism
on
those
same
terms.49
His
concern
is
that
ideal
theorists
stray
too
far
from
historical
facts
and
end
up
intuiting
indefensible
ontological
claims
about
society,
misguided
notions
about
social
institutions,
or
familiar,
yet
conceptually
inadequate
philosophical
ideals,
placing
a
deep
perspectival
bias
(rooted
in
forms
of
group
domination)
at
the
center
of
whatever
principles
emerge.
One
intellectual
project
that
illustrates
precisely
this
worry
are
the
devastating
feminist
critiques
of
Rawls
A
Theory
of
46
Shelby,
Corrective
Justice
160
47
Mills
168
48 See, for example, Derrick Bells famous story about alien slave traders and A. John Simmons, Ideal and
Nonideal
Theory
Philosophy
and
Public
Affairs
Vol.
38,
Issue
1,
pp.
5-36
(Winter
2010)
49
RC
129
13
Justice,
which
exposed
his
early
failure
to
acknowledge
gender
injustice
as
a
problem
at
the
level
of
the
basic
structure
of
society,
his
paternalistic
naivet
about
the
ability
of
the
(male)
head
of
household
to
represent
the
interest
of
his
household
in
the
discussion
concerning
the
principles
of
justice,
and
his
under-theorized
account
of
autonomy,
which
failed
to
consider
the
care
work
and
socialization
that
go
into
its
realization.50
Mills
is
not
especially
clear
on
whether
he
thinks
that
perfect
justice
is
possible
(or
how
we
might
know
it
without
ideal
theory),
but
it
seems
to
me
a
sympathetic
interpretation
of
his
position
entails
that
political
theory
should
begin,
in
his
naturalistic,
non-ideal
vein,
with
more
or
less
thick
descriptions
of
an
extant
injustice,
and
proceed
from
there
to
discern
suitable
principles,
design
comparatively
better
institutions,
or
in
some
other
way
reduce
the
harms
of
the
given
situation
often
without
a
perfect
ideal
in
mind,
but
rather
a
comparative
evaluation
of
alternatives
and
with
qualified
recourse
to
contractarian
thought
experiments.51
I
am
skeptical,
however,
that
the
superiority
of
non-ideal
theory
over
ideal
theory
can
be
persuasively
argued
at
the
level
of
abstraction
at
which
it
has
proceeded
thus
far,
in
large
part
because
central
moves
like
the
appeal
to
fact-sensitivity
in
the
realm
of
historical
fact
obscures
more
complicated
theoretical
problems
about
the
relationship
of
historiography
and
historical
imagination
to
political
theory,
ideal
or
otherwise.
In
reading
the
literature
on
ideal
and
non-ideal
theory,
it
is
remarkable
that
while
the
entire
debate
revolves
around
Rawls
distinction,
it
hardly
engages
in
any
robust
fashion
with
the
exercises
in
non-ideal
theory
that
Rawls
actually
does
pursue.
This
is
doubly
problematic
for
Mills
given
that
Rawls
most
sustained
interventions
in
non-ideal
theory
are
the
account
of
civil
disobedience
in
A
Theory
of
Justice
and
the
account
of
claims-making
through
public
reason
in
Political
Liberalism,
both
of
which
explicitly
invoke
Martin
Luther
King
and
the
classical
phase
of
the
civil
rights
movement
as
exemplary
touchstones
and
sources
of
insight
for
reflective
equilibrium.
I
want
to
argue
that
these
moves
call
into
question
Mills
claims
that
the
postwar
struggle
for
racial
justice
in
practice
and
in
theory
and
the
Rawlsian
corpus
on
justice
are
almost
completely
separate
and
non-intersecting
universes
and
that
Rawls
is
manifestly
unconcerned
with
racial
justice.52
50
Susan
Moller
Okin,
Justice,
Gender,
and
the
Family
(New
York:
Basic
Books,
1991)
51
Amaryta
Sen,
The
Idea
of
Justice.
See,
for
example,
Appiah
on
human
slavery;
Pablo
De
Greiff
(ed.),
The
Oxford
Handbook
of
Reparations
(New
York:
OUP,
2006);
Roy
L.
Brooks,
Atonement
and
Forgiveness:
A
New
Model
for
Black
Reparations
(University
of
California
Press,
2006);
J.
Angelo
Corlett,
Race,
racism,
and
Reparations
(Cornell
University
Press,
2003).
For
Mills,
its
not
clear
how
feasible
these
alternatives
must
be
(a
realism
constraint?)
or
how
we
should
think
of
feasibility.
Reparations
would
seem
to
be
the
best
test
case.
52
Mills,
Rawls
on
Race
p.
161
14
I
argue
that
critical
race
theorys
hermeneutics,
contra
Mills,
should
not
be
animated
primarily
by
an
expansive,
suspicious
association
between
silence,
absence,
and
ideology.53
A
narrow
focus
on
what
is
or
is
not
stated
explicitly,
straightforwardly,
or
prominently
in
a
text
runs
afoul
of
one
of
the
great
insights
of
late
twentieth
century
African-American
literary
criticism,
which
is
the
injunction
to
closely
interrogate
those
fleeting
and
seemingly
peripheral
black
presences
at
the
margins
of
texts
and
works
of
art
in
order
to
reconstruct
the
significance
of
this
presence
for
the
meaning
of
the
text.
This
approach
begins
with
Toni
Morrisons
claim
that
encoded
or
explicit,
indirect
or
overt,
the
linguistic
responses
to
an
African
American
presence
complicate
texts
[in
American
intellectual
history]
and
give
them
a
deeper,
richer,
more
complex
life
than
the
sanitized
one
commonly
presented
to
us.54
This
method,
therefore,
encourages
practices
of
reading
that
seize
on
some
apparently
peripheral
fragment
in
the
work
a
footnote,
a
recurrent
minor
term
or
image,
a
casual
allusion
in
Rawls,
the
appearance
of
African-American
political
struggle
and
work
it
tenaciously
through
to
the
point
where
it
threatens
to
dismantle
the
oppositions
which
govern
the
[original]
text
as
a
whole,
as
well
as
prevailing
interpretations
of
the
text.55
Sustained
reflection
on
the
invocation
of
the
civil
rights
movement
and
racial
discrimination
as
critical
examples
in
Rawls
work
(and
throughout
political
theory!)
leads,
in
this
interpretive
stance,
to
a
consideration
of
what
work
exemplarity
does
for
Rawls
(and
perhaps
political
philosophy
more
broadly).
A
benefit
of
this
approach
is
that
it
treats
the
charges
of
idealization
and
abstraction,
not
as
determinant
judgments
of
any
ideal
theoretic
approach,
but
as
open
questions
for
reflective
judgment
on
the
ways
in
which
particular
historical
narratives
are
conscripted
for
particular
theoretical
projects.
Treating
ideal
theory
as,
by
definition,
ahistorical
or
mythic
precludes
us
from
recognizing
the
myriad
ways
that
historical
imagination
operates
in
the
background
of
iterations
of
exemplarity
meant
to
secure
or
anchor
the
arguments
of
political
philosophy,
even
in
its
ideal
vein.
Coursing
like
capillaries
through
the
interplay
of
argument
and
example,
implicit
and
explicit
historical
narratives
are
conscripted
to
play
multiple
roles
often
telling
stories
about
race
whose
import
is
to
bolster
the
force
of
the
argument
in
its
reception
by
intended
audiences.
53
See,
for
example,
the
seminal
essays
in
Henry
Louis
Gates,
Jr.
and
K.
Anthony
Appiah,
Race,
Writing,
and
Difference
(Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press
Journals,
1992);
One
of
the
most
persuasive
rendering
of
this
point
is
shown
by
Susan
Miller
Okin
in
her
Justice,
Gender,
and
the
Family,
which
showed
Rawls
silences
on
the
structure
of
the
family
had
serious
consequences
on
his
theory
of
justice.
54
Toni
Morrison,
Playing
in
the
Dark:
Whiteness
and
the
Literary
Imagination
(Cambridge,
MA:
Harvard
University
Press,
1992)
p.
66
55
Eagleton,
Literary
Theory
133
15
But
this
essentially
rhetorical
function
does
not
exhaust
the
economy
of
exemplarity.
It
also
entails
an
essentially
contestable
attempt
to
deploy
the
aesthetic
and
ethical
force
that
the
example,
now
in
its
singular
guise
of
Exemplar,
is
expected
to
exert
on
the
imagination
and
reflective
judgment
of
any
addressees
summoned
to
evaluate
the
example.
This
force
of
the
example,
paradoxically,
serves
not
only
as
a
crucial
dimension
of
the
persuasive
and
justificatory
work
of
the
rhetoric
of
exemplarity,
but
also
as
an
often
concealed
or
marginalized
foundation,
or
origin
point
for
the
very
principles,
rules,
or
determinant
judgments
we
hope
to
defend.
As
Irene
Harvey
writes:
How
do
the
examples
betray
what
they
are
supposed
to
exemplify
or
reproduce?
Are
they
in
fact
productive
and
creative
rather
than
reproductive?
Are
they
pre-text
that
only
appears
in
the
guise
of
a
postscript,
seeming
to
come
after
the
fact
as
accidental
appendages
to
the
theory,
but
are
in
fact
its
progenitors,
its
unacknowledged
city
fathers?56
In
the
following
sections,
I
will
show
that
Mills
emphasis
on
evasion
is
not
fine-grained
enough
to
capture,
for
instance,
the
subtle
ways
in
which
contemporary
liberal
ideal
theory
engages
with
the
civil
rights
movement
as
a
source
of
its
self-conception
and
as
a
possible
resolution
to
its
persistent
crises
of
practical
faith.
Nor,
critically,
does
it
explain
the
aesthetics
reception
at
work
in
political
liberalisms
apprehension
and
conscription
of
historiography
and
public
memory
to
its
theoretical
aims.57
V. Reading
Race/Reading
Rawls
One
promising
approach
to
understanding
the
exemplarity
of
the
civil
rights
movement
in
Rawls
work
takes
its
point
of
departure
from
Rawls
idea
of
reflective
equilibrium.
Recall
that
in
the
process
of
reflective
equilibrium,
we
begin
from
our
most
considered
judgments,
namely
those
confidently
held
convictions
given
under
conditions
in
which
our
capacity
for
judgment
is
most
likely
to
have
been
fully
exercised
and
not
affected
by
distorting
influences.58
From
these
convictions,
reflective
equilibrium
seeks
to
forge
a
more
expansive
and
complete
theory
of
justice
through
reconciling
our
various
considered
judgments
into
the
most
complete,
coherent,
and
consistent
scheme.
It
pursues
this
by
subsuming
these
judgments
under
moral
principles,
testing
them
through
thought
experiments
and
decision
procedures
against
other
judgments
or
competing
56
Irene
Harvey,
Exemplarity
and
the
Origins
of
Legislation,
in
Unruly
Examples:
On
the
Rhetoric
of
devote
too
little
suspicion
to
the
stylized,
narrativized,
and
constructed
character
of
non-ideal
theorys
historical
claims,
taking
their
purported
realism
or
naturalism
at
face-value.
58
Rawls,
Justice
as
Fairness
29
16
theories,
discarding
or
revising
implausible
judgments,
and
securing
the
best
fit
for
its
considered
commitments
within
a
broader
constellation
of
judgments,
some
of
which
overflow
the
borders
of
moral
philosophy
strictly
defined.
The
important
thing
to
note
is
that
these
considered
judgments
are
not
just
the
most
abstract
moral
principles,
but
that
they
occur
at
all
levels
of
generality,
from
those
about
particular
situations
and
institutions
up
through
broad
standards
and
first
principles
to
formal
and
abstract
conditions
on
moral
conceptions.59
In
acknowledging
the
importance
of
judgments
concerning
particular
situations
and
institutions,
however,
Rawls
gestures
beyond
determinant
rules
and
principles
toward
other
scenes
of
judgment.
If
reflective
equilibrium,
in
Samuel
Freemans
words,
privileges
neither
the
general
nor
the
particular,
then
Rawls
method
of
reflective
equilibrium
necessarily
involves
not
just
what
Kant
called
determinant
judgments,
or
those
instances
of
subsuming
particulars
under
a
general
rule;
it
also
must
include
reflective
judgments,
or
those
instances
(as
in
aesthetics)
where,
in
the
absence
or
abdication
of
available
and
adequate
general
rules,
only
the
particular
is
given
and
the
universal
must
be
found.60
The
faculty
of
reflective
judgment,
therefore,
is
an
approach
to
particularity
which
ventures
predicative
claims
like
beauty
and
sublimity
(among
others),
and
attempts
to
give
structure
and
meaning
to
their
particular
instantiation
while
retaining
a
crucial
conceptual
indeterminacy
with
regard
to
the
object
of
judgment
itself.
This
indeterminacy
which
Kant
described
as
much
thought,
yet
without
the
possibility
of
any
definite
thought
(COJ
49:
314)
allows
for
the
free
play,
invigoration,
and
enlargement
of
our
faculties
of
imagination
and
understanding
which
Kant
insists
are
capable
of
generating
the
very
feelings
of
pleasure
and
awe
that
motivate
our
judgments
of
beauty
and
sublimity
respectively.
In
particular,
Kant
is
enamored
with
those
moments
of
aesthetic
judgment
where
there
appears
to
be
a
spontaneous
accord
or
symmetry
between
the
imagination
and
the
understanding
and
those
moments
where
imagination
emulates
understanding
and,
in
doing
so,
exceeds
it
and
enlarges
it.
Through
the
former
we
can
recognize
something
like
purposiveness
without
purpose
that
sense
that,
for
instance,
a
particular
object
of
judgment
appears
elegantly
or
improbably
fitted
in
form
to
a
particular
purpose
which
it
cannot
be
proven
to
be
designed
for
(i.e.,
natural
beauty
as
a
symbol
for
morality
or
unsocial
sociability
as
an
engine
of
cosmopolitan
progress).
Through
the
latter,
we
can
recognize
something
like
Kants
aesthetic
ideas,
or
those
evocative
and
perspicacious
renderings
of
rational
concepts
(i.e.,
infinity,
death,
17
love,
etc.),
which,
because
they
are
not
in
the
realm
of
experience
or
elude
the
completeness
characteristic
of
determinant
judgments,
rely
largely
on
imagination
for
their
presentation.
Given
this
characterization
of
reflective
judgment
and
reflective
equilibrium,
my
contention
is
twofold.
Firstly,
given
their
irreducible
particularity
and
the
ineliminable
aesthetic
elements
of
representation
(esp.
narrative),
which
are
constitutive
of
their
articulation,
historical
judgments
fall
largely
within
the
orbit
of
reflective
judgment.
Indeed,
historical
judgments
often
entail
just
these
kinds
of
claims
about
the
fittedness
of
certain
actions
or
events
for
certain
ends
(i.e.,
the
flourishing
of
a
national
identity)
or
an
events
exemplary
instantiation
of
an
ethico-aesthetic
idea
(i.e.,
courage
or
human
freedom).
Secondly,
I
contend
that
these
reflective
historical
judgments
are
at
work
in
the
wide
version
of
reflective
equilibrium
insofar
as
they,
often
through
the
ostensibly
aesthetic
elements
of
their
presentation,
entail
strongly
held
evaluative
claims
concerning
the
significance
and
valence
of
historical
phenomena
or
personalities.
These
judgments,
therefore,
enter
into
the
process
of
reflective
equilibrium
alongside
determinant
moral
principles,
in
some
cases
even
serving
as
roughly
fixed
points,
or
touchstones,
for
the
very
articulation
and
understanding
of
other
moral
judgments.
Here,
judgments
concerning
the
exemplarity
of
certain
events
are
not
dissolved
into
mere
examples
generative
of
and
then
subsumed
under
determinant
principles;
they
instead
retain
a
dimension
of
their
force
as
Exemplars,
singularities
which
authorize
the
territories
of
our
normative
reflections.
This
other
dimension
of
exemplaritys
force
arguably
best
reveals
itself
in
those
moments
where
our
determinant
judgments
are
borne
back,
perhaps
ceaselessly,
toward
conflict
with
our
reflective
judgments
of
exemplary
events,
and
instead
of
discarding
our
evaluative
claims
of
the
greatness
or
horror
of
these
moments,
we
shift
our
principles
so
as
to
better
accommodate
these
ethical-aesthetic
judgments.
Consequently,
it
is
intriguing
to
note
that
in
the
course
of
Rawls
various
invocations
of
Martin
Luther
King
and
the
civil
rights
movement,
the
movements
positive
exemplarity
seems
to
entail
a
unique
relationship
to
considered
judgments
about
racial
discrimination,
civil
disobedience,
public
reason,
and
protest
(as
does
the
abolition
of
chattel
slavery).
Rawls,
for
instance,
attempts
to
fit
his
notion
of
civil
disobedience
to
his
reading
of
the
account
in
Kings
Letter
to
a
Birmingham
Jail.
Even
more
importantly,
his
major
revisions
to
the
scope
of
his
theory
of
public
reason
came
on
the
heels
of
criticism
from
Michael
Sandel
and
others
that
his
normative
restrictions
on
public
reason
would
disallow
the
religious
rhetoric
of
King
and
the
cohort
of
civil
rights
activists
affiliated
with
him.61
As
he
widened
his
conception
of
the
use
of
comprehensive
doctrines
(i.e.,
prophetic
61
Sandel
18
Christianity)
in
public
reason,
each
time
the
justification
of
his
argument
turns
in
large
part
on
its
ability
to
allow
for
(his
reading
of)
the
civil
rights
movement.
The
stunning
implication
of
this
practice
of
argument
is
that
Rawls
seems
to
think
of
the
civil
rights
movement
and
principles
like
non-discrimination
as
manifesting
an
exemplary
congruence.62
This
congruence
makes
it
difficult
to
entangle
the
normative
judgment
from
the
historical
judgment
of
the
action
which,
at
least
in
the
account
of
exemplarity,
instantiates
it.
This
holds
not
just
for
Rawls,
but
also
for
Sandel,
Lyons,
and
other
theorists
who
treat
the
memory
of
the
civil
rights
movement
as
an
orienting
and
prestructuring
reference,
a
shared
terrain
for
communicable
disagreement.63
Any
theory
of
public
reason
that
cannot
allow
for
the
emergence
of
something
like
the
civil
rights
movement
in
the
face
of
injustice
is,
on
these
assumptions,
presumptively
deficient.
The
irony,
then,
is
one
I
have
noted
above:
the
area
where
Mills
presses
most
demandingly
his
substantive
philosophical
critique
the
presumed
inability
of
Rawls
ideal
theory
to
deal
effectively
with
the
non-ideal
normative
challenges
presented
by
racial
injustice
also
happens
to
be
the
place
where
Rawls
invokes
the
histories
of
the
abolitionist
and
civil
rights
movements
to
mediate
between
ideal
and
non-ideal
theory
and
provide
justificatory
grounds
to
his
arguments.
VI. Rawls
on
Civil
Disobedience,
Public
Reason,
and
Overlapping
Consensus
So
what,
then,
are
we
to
make
of
then
exemplarity
of
the
civil
rights
movement
and
Martin
Luther
King
in
Rawls
intersecting
arguments
about
civil
disobedience,
public
reason,
and
overlapping
consensus?64
Perhaps
it
is
best
to
begin
by
noting
that
Rawls
discussion
of
civil
62
Ibid
p.
3
proclaims
his
project
to
be
to
set
this
sort
of
conception
into
a
wider
framework.
He
again
cites
the
Birmingham
letter,
as
well
as
the
I
Have
a
Dream
speech
and
a
speech
on
voting
rights
to
invoke
King
as
an
exemplar
of
public
reason
and
describe
a
real-world
instance
of
an
appeal
to
a
possible
overlapping
consensus
to
recognize
claims
of
justice.
In
his
notes
for
his
original
paper
on
civil
disobedience,
however,
it
is
clear
that
Rawls
is
influenced
much
more
broadly
by
civil
rights
and
anti-war
activists,
particularly
in
his
list
of
paradigm
cases
of
civil
disobedience.
CD
[Civil
Disobedience]
+
The
Complications
of
Our
Federal
System
p.
4;
Rawls
Archives,
Harvard
University
Box
7,
Folder
6
Paradigm
Cases
of
CD
acts
(whether
juridical
or
not)
1. Refusal
(in
an
announcement)
to
pay
income
tax
(proportion
thereof
to
abjure
[?]
re
war,
eg.
In
Vietnam)
2. Burning
of
draft
card
in
a
public
place
(as
contrary
to
law)
+
to
protest
the
war
3. Sit-ins,
wall-ins,
etc.
(where
trespasser
or
else
contrary
to
local
ordinances)
in
public
protest
against
racial
segregation
or
other
statutes
regard
as
unequal.
19
disobedience
emerges
from
the
question
of
under
what
circumstances
and
to
what
extent
we
are
bound
to
comply
with
unjust
arrangements
(TOJ
308).65
His
concern,
which
becomes
increasingly
manifest
throughout
the
chapter,
is
that
too
expansive
justification
for
civil
disobedience
will
actually
destroy
the
very
conditions
which,
on
his
account,
make
civil
disobedience
possible:
the
stability
of
an
existing,
reasonably
just
constitution
and
basic
structure.
This
argument
presupposes
Rawls
more
fundamental
claim
that
we
have
specific
civic
obligations
to
other
citizens.
When
the
existing
institutional
arrangement
is
reasonably
just,
these
civic
obligations
also
arise
to
the
extent
that
we
voluntarily
accept
the
benefits
of
participating
in
the
cooperative
scheme
of
society
or
take
advantage
of
its
opportunities
to
pursue
our
interests.66
When
combined
with
the
claim
that
the
basic
structure
should
be
just,
then
we
have
Rawls
principle
of
fairness.
The
problem
of
civil
disobedience
arises,
therefore,
when
these
civic
obligations
collide
with
social
arrangements
that
fall
short
of
or
deviate
from
the
standard
of
justice.
Attention
to
his
arguments
here
shows
that
Rawls
thinks
that
injustices
arise,
essentially,
in
two
ways.
Firstly,
it
can
emerge
when
current
social
arrangements
depart
in
varying
degrees
from
publicly
accepted
standards
that
are
more
or
less
just
(TOJ
309).
One
is
reminded
here
of
Myrdals
notion
of
the
American
Creed.67
The
claim,
for
Myrdal
at
least,
is
that
the
Creed
is
near-universally
held,
and
publicly
affirmed;
yet,
there
exist
departures
(to
use
a
variation
on
Rawls
term)
that
are
not
commensurate
with
this
standard.
Secondly,
a
set
of
arrangements
can
actually
conform
to
a
societys
conception
of
justice,
or
to
the
view
of
the
dominant
class,
but
the
society
or
class
in
question
may
hold
an
unreasonable
and
unjust
conception
of
justice
(Rawls
309).
Here,
the
exemplar
is
something
like
Nazi
Germany.
4.
5.
An
action
made
as
The
(Mississippi)
Freedom
Party
sitting
in
the
seats
of
the
state
delegation
at
the
Democratic
Convention
(in
August
1964
at
Atlantic
City).
(This
event
witnessed
in
national
television
was
a
public
act).
Cf.
AI
Warkow
From
Race
Riot
to
Sit-In
(NY
1966)
pp.
267-275
James
Farmer
illegally
lying
down
at
the
entrance
of
the
Worlds
Fair
+
getting
himself
arrested.
He
wanted
to
emphasize
the
contrast
between
the
glittering
gold
fantasy
of
the
Fair
and
the
real
world
of
bigotry
+
poverty
(cf.
Bickel
p.
86)
65
He
is
at
pains
to
quickly
rule
out
one
defense
of
civil
disobedience
that
seems
prima
facie
plausible
to
ardent
defenders
of
the
freedom
of
conscience
who
want
to
preserve
individuals
right
to
not
be
a
party
to
injustice
or
submit
to
unjust
law.
This
is
the
claim
that
we
are
never
required
to
comply
in
these
cases
[emphasis
added],
which
he
dismisses
as
a
mistake
(TOJ
308)
66 The main idea, Rawls explains, is that when a number of persons engage in a mutually advantageous
cooperative
venture
according
to
rules,
and
thus
restrict
their
liberty
in
ways
necessary
to
yield
advantages
for
all,
those
who
have
submitted
to
these
restrictions
have
a
right
to
a
similar
acquiescence
on
the
part
of
those
who
have
benefited
from
their
submission
(TOJ
96).
67
Gunnar
Myrdal,
An
American
Dilemma:
The
Negro
Problem
and
Modern
Democracy,
Vol.
1
(New
York:
Harper
&
Bros.,
1944)
20
It
seems
that
Rawls
is
more
interested
in,
and
thinks
civil
disobedience
will
be
either
more
effective
in,
or
only
effective
in,
the
first
of
these
unjust
situations.
When
laws
and
policies
deviate
from
publicly
recognized
standards,
he
argues,
an
appeal
to
the
societys
sense
of
justice
is
presumably
possible
to
some
extentthis
condition
is
presupposed
in
undertaking
civil
disobedience
[emphasis
added]
(TOJ
310).68
A
departure
from
reasonably
just
standards
can
elicit
an
ostensibly
straightforward
claim
by
proponents
of
civil
disobedience
that
shared
principles
of
justice
or
their
constitutional
manifestations
are
being
unduly
violated
and
that
the
citizens
engaged
in
direct
action
will
not
comply
with
such
wrongs.
Injustices
of
this
kind,
says
Rawls,
are
always
possible
in
an
actual
constitutional
democracy
because
the
political
process,
necessarily
hampered
by
self-interested
behavior
and
the
upper
limits
of
human
knowledge
and
judgment,
will
eternally
be
an
imperfect,
mistake-prone
tool
for
realizing
the
ends
of
justice
(TOJ
311).
This
is
a
risk
of
constitutional
democratic
government,
but
for
Rawls
it
is
a
manifestly
worthwhile
one
given
the
benefits
of
stability
and
near
justice
that
such
arrangements
can
provide
as
compared
to
other
regimes.
The
virtues
of
constitutional
democratic
government
loom
so
largely
for
Rawls,
that
he
repeatedly
warns
us
to
not
mistake
the
trees
for
the
forest,
so
to
speak.
Not
only
must
we
cautiously
weigh
the
character
of
any
particular
injustice
against
the
relative
justice
of
the
constitution
in
any
given
society
before
engaging
in
civil
disobedience,
but
we
have
a
presumptive
duty
toward
compliance,
even
with
unjust
laws
solely
in
virtue
of
our
duty
to
support
a
just
constitution
(TOJ
311).
Specifically,
Rawls
worries
that
civil
disobedience
could
erode
the
trust
and
confidence
necessary
to
sustain
the
sort
of
political
culture
with
faith
in
the
rule
and
legitimacy
of
law
that
maintains
constitutional
democracies
over
time
(TOJ
312).
If
this
is
so,
however,
what
then
could
possibly
justify
the
politics
of
civil
disobedience?
Before
answering
this
question,
we
should
consider
Rawls
precise
definition
of
civil
disobedience.
He
defines
it
as
a
public,
nonviolent,
conscientious
yet
political
act
contrary
to
law
(not
necessarily
a
law
one
is
protesting)
usually
done
with
the
aim
of
bringing
about
a
change
in
the
law
or
policies
of
the
government
[emphasis
added]
(TOJ
320).
For
him,
it
is
a
type
of
public
speech,
which
he
describes
in
roughly
the
same
terms
he
uses
to
characterize
public
reason
broadly
in
later
works.
In
other
words,
civil
disobedience,
and
public
reason
broadly
are
public,
68
If
the
course
of
action
to
be
followed
depends
largely
on
how
reasonable
the
accepted
doctrine
is
and
what
means
are
available
to
change
it,
it
is
not
straightforward
how
civil
disobedience
on
behalf
of
an
aggrieved
party
would
work
in
a
scenario
where
the
(unreasonable)
doctrine
of
justice
in
a
given
society
was
largely
congruent
with
the
(unjust)
institutions
it
fosters.
These
sorts
of
societies,
like
feudal
societies
or
inegalitarian
theocracies
would
require
a
deeper
uprooting
of
the
entire
order
moral
and
political
than
civil
disobedience
aims
toward
in
Rawls
conception.
21
deliberative
democratic
speech-act
forms
that
concern
the
justice
of
the
basic
structure
of
society
and
speak
to
the
widely
shared
sense
of
justice
in
a
given
political
community.
Civil
disobedience
is
a
special
version
of
this
sort
of
claim
making,
addressed
to
the
majoritys
sense
of
justice,
which
declares
that
in
ones
considered
opinion
the
principles
of
social
cooperation
among
free
and
equal
men
are
not
being
respected
(TOJ
320).
In a claim that has been the source of much of the debate on Rawls conception of public
reason
and
his
invocation
of
Kings
example,
Rawls
in
A
Theory
of
Justice
argues
that
civil
disobedience
must
be
justified
by
recourse
to
political
principles,
and
not
by
arguments
from
personal
morality
or
religious
doctrines
(TOJ
321).
These
may
coincide
with
and
support
our
political
claims,
but
in
the
last
instance
we
must
appeal
neither
to
these
private
moral
doctrines
or
worse,
particular
self-interests
only
the
public
conception
of
justice
by
reference
to
which
citizens
regulate
their
political
affairs
and
interpret
the
constitution
(TOJ
321).
Readers
of
Rawls
work
should
readily
see
how
much
of
the
argument
in
his
Political
Liberalism
was
already
sketched
in
his
writing
on
civil
disobedience.
There,
he
extends
the
normative
principles
he
developed
in
this
instance
to
a
broader
category
of
political
speech,
action,
and
decisionmaking:
public
reason.
The
subject
of
public
reason,
what
it
is
about,
is
the
good
of
the
public.
In
other
words,
public
reason
is
a
mode
of
formulating
plans,
generating
and
prioritizing
ends,
and
making
decisions
that
occurs
publicly
between
citizens
and
concerns
the
arrangement
and
purposes
of
the
basic
structure
of
society
and
its
institutions
particularly
its
constitutional
essentials.69
There
are
three
major
reasons
that
Rawls
wants
public
reason
to
focus
on
the
basic
structure.
Firstly,
it
exercises
an
enormous
influence
on
our
life
chances
from
birth,
and
any
life
plan
we
desire
to
pursue
will
be
severely
affected
by
how
these
institutions
function.
Secondly,
it
is
the
medium
through
which,
in
a
democratic
society,
we
exercise
coercive
power
over
each
other
and
such
power
must
be
legitimate,
in
light
of
principles
and
ideals
acceptable
to
[all
citizens]
as
reasonable
and
rational
(IPR
96).
Lastly
and
crucially
for
our
purposes
there
is
an
interest
in
the
existence
and
stability
of
a
reasonably
just
basic
structure,
especially
its
foundation
in
constitutional
government,
insofar
as
such
a
government
will
best
secure
our
other
rights
and
basic
interests.
The
hope
for
public
reason
is
that
by
placing
certain
normative
constraints
on
public
speech
and
action,
we
can
best
pursue
a
just,
democratic,
and
enduring
basic
structure
in
a
society
marked
by
reasonable
pluralism
about
comprehensive
moral
views.
The
central
normative
constraint
is,
69
John
Rawls,
The
Idea
of
Public
Reason
in
Bohmann
and
Rehg,
eds.,
Deliberative
Democracy:
Essays
on
Reason
and
Politics,
p.
93
(Hereafter
cited
in
text
as
IPR);
The
basic
structure
of
society
includes
the
constitution,
the
legal
system,
principal
economic
and
social
arrangements,
the
monogamous
family
and
other
major
social
institutions
that,
together,
constitute
the
way
a
society
will
distribute
fundamental
rights
and
duties
and
determine
the
division
of
advantages
from
social
cooperation
(TOJ
6).
22
as
before,
restricting
the
appeal
of
public
reason
to
political
conceptions
of
justice.
This
sort
of
conception
is
focused
solely
on
the
basic
structure
of
society,
is
interpretively
autonomous
of
wider
comprehensive
religious
or
philosophical
doctrine,
and
is
elaborated
in
terms
of
fundamental
political
ideas
viewed
as
implicit
in
the
public
political
culture
of
a
democratic
society
(IPR
102).70
Such
ideas,
Rawls
later
goes
on
to
claim,
include
those
mentioned
in
the
preamble
to
the
United
States
Constitution:
a
more
perfect
union,
justice,
domestic
tranquility,
the
common
defense,
the
general
welfare,
and
the
blessings
of
liberty
for
ourselves
and
our
posterity.71
What
is
fascinating
about
Rawls
invocation
of
the
preamble
is
that,
alongside
the
values
of
liberty
and
justice
he
previously
endorsed
as
foundations
of
his
comprehensive
liberalism
in
A
Theory
of
Justice,
he
invokes
values
whose
virtue
is
essentially
political
stability:
a
more
perfect
union,
domestic
tranquility,
and
the
concern
with
posterity.
Underlying
the
assumption
that
constraining
discourse
in
this
fashion
will
provide
stability
are
further
assumptions
that
these
restrictions
on
discourse
will
help
citizens
achieve
consensus
on
the
conception
of
justice
they
will
share
and
the
arrangement
of
the
basic
institutions
of
society
and
that
this
sort
of
consensus
will
go
a
long
way
toward
ensuring
justice
and
a
stable,
constitutional
order.
Thus,
the
insistence
on
certain
guidelines
of
inquiry;
principles
of
reasoning;
and
rules
of
evidence
as
well
as
restrictions
on
the
content
of
public
reason
all
are
to
ensure
that
we
appeal
to
and
further
develop
an
overlapping
consensus
on
these
issues.
This
consensus
supposes
agreement
deep
enough
[across
comprehensive
moral
doctrines]
to
reach
such
ideas
as
those
of
society
as
a
fair
system
of
cooperation
and
of
citizens
as
reasonable
and
rational,
and
free
and
equal[and]
covers
the
principles
and
values
of
a
political
conception
(in
this
case
those
of
justice
as
fairness)
and
it
applies
to
the
basic
structure
as
a
whole,
especially
the
constitutional
essentials.72
It
is
a
guiding
framework
of
deliberation
and
reflection
which
helps
us
reach
political
agreement
on
at
least
the
constitutional
essentials
and
the
basic
questions
of
justice
(PL
156).
VII. Rawls
and
the
Romance
of
Civil
Rights
70
John
Rawls,
The
Idea
of
Public
Reason
Revisited,
University
of
Chicago
Law
Review,
Vol.
64,
No.
3
(Summer
1997)
p.
777;
Political
values,
properly
speaking,
exist
in
all
sorts
of
political
arrangements
including
aristocracy
and
corporate
oligarchy
but
Rawls
is
concerned
with
those
political
conceptions
that
are
reasonable
for
a
constitutional
democratic
regime.
71
Rawls,
Idea
of
Public
Reason
Revisited
p.
776
72
Rawls,
Political
Liberalism,
exp.
ed.
(New
York:
Columbia
University
Press,
2005)
p.
149;
hereafter
cited
in
text
as
PL
23
Rawls
asks
us
to
understand
civil
disobedience
as
a
politically
principled
appeal
on
behalf
of
a
minority
group
to
this
overlapping
consensus
asking
to
redress
a
particular
injustice.
But,
again,
injustice
and
civil
disobedience
occasion
a
dilemma
for
Rawls
between
our
moral
obligation
to
protest
injustice
and
our
duty
to
support
mostly
just
institutions
by
contributing
to
the
order,
confidence
and
trust
needed
to
reproduce
them.
Rawls
is
manifestly
concerned
that,
while
necessary
to
protect
against
injustice,
civil
disobedience
is
a
destabilizing
force
in
society
that
can
erode
mutual
trust.
Thus,
he
tries
to
resolve
this
dilemma
by
arguing
for
practical
and
normative
constraints
on
civil
disobedience
in
addition
to
the
ones
related
to
public
reason.
Firstly,
we
should
recall
that
civil
disobedience
for
Rawls
is
most
appropriate
to
societies
with
some
deviation
from
largely
just
constitutional
principles.
Secondly,
we
should
presume
that
if,
over
the
long
term,
the
burden
of
injustice
is
not
more
or
less
evenly
distributed
over
different
groups
in
society
or
if
their
basic
liberties
are
routinely
violated,
then
the
duty
to
comply
with
the
law
becomes
problematic
for
permanent
minorities
that
have
suffered
from
injustice
for
many
years.
Lastly,
we
are
in
no
way
required
to
acquiesce
in
the
denial
of
our
own
and
others
basic
liberties,
since
this
requirement
could
not
have
been
within
the
meaning
of
the
duty
of
justice
in
the
original
position,
nor
consistent
with
the
understanding
of
the
rights
of
the
majority
in
the
constitutional
convention
(TOJ
312).73
Much
turns,
therefore,
on
how
we
are
to
understand
these
various
criteria.74
The
only
decisive
reason
that
Rawls
suggests
can
legitimate
civil
disobedience
is
the
violation
of
basic
political
liberties.
The
problem
of
civil
disobedience,
what
he
calls
a
conflict
of
duties,
only
arises
for
Rawls
within
a
more
or
less
just
democratic
state
for
those
citizens
who
73
These
basic
liberties
are,
specifically,
those
of
political
liberty
freedom
of
speech
and
assembly,
freedom
to
take
part
in
public
affairs
and
to
influence
by
constitutional
means
the
course
of
legislationand
the
guarantee
of
their
fair
value
(TOJ
313).
74
We
will
need
an
interpretive
account
of
the
relationship
of
specific
forms
of
injustice
to
the
broader
standards
of
justice
in
society,
specifically
constitutional
principle.
As
the
existence
of
hundreds
of
years
of
constitutional
jurisprudence
demonstrates,
however,
it
is
perhaps
more
difficult
to
prove
that
acts
of
injustice
are
dissonant
with
constitutional
principle
than
Rawls
maintains.
Indeed,
many
questions
of
justice
turn
precisely
on
the
situational
clash
of
constitutional
principles
that
defend
conflicting
rights-claims
or
interpretations.
We
will
also
need
comprehensive
accounts
of
the
group
boundaries,
and
civic
and
economic
standing
of,
minority
groups
in
the
social
order
over
time,
to
judge
whether
or
not
the
various
burdens
of
injustice
they
bear
violate
the
two
conditions
Rawls
gestures
toward.
These
conditions
are
(1)
the
fair
distribution
of
the
burdens
of
injustice
and
(2)
the
temporal
criterion
of
permanence
or
many
years.
Even
with
a
persuasive
account
of
minorities
bearing
long-standing
and
disproportionate
injustice,
however,
Rawls
remains
hesitant
to
dissolve
civic
obligation
altogether,
suggesting
only
the
placeholder
that
such
obligations
will
become
more
problematic.
Tommie
Shelby
thinks
the
permanent
minorities
criterion
entails
more
radical
prescriptions
than
I
do.
24
recognize
and
accept
the
legitimacy
of
the
constitution
(TOJ
319).
A
question
that
we
will
return
to
is
whether
the
civil
rights
movement,
and
the
nation
it
occurred
in,
could
plausibly
have
been
said
to
fit
that
criterion
for
Rawls.
The
liberty
principle
contends
that
each
person
is
to
have
an
equal
right
to
an
extensive,
universal
system
of
equal
basic
liberties.
The
equal
opportunity
principle
insists
that
social
and
economic
inequalities
are
to
be
arranged
such
that
they
are
attached
to
offices
and
positions
open
to
all
under
conditions
of
fair
equality
of
opportunity.
Rawls
other
principle,
the
difference
principle
that
all
socioeconomic
inequalities
be
arranged
such
that
they
are
to
the
benefit
of
the
least
well
off,
is
deliberately
excluded
from
justified
acts
of
civil
disobedience
and
discouraged
in
public
reason
more
broadly
(TOJ
326-7).
Why,
if
these
principles
are
constitutive
of
justice,
would
Rawls
argue
for
this
restrictive
criterion?
He
gives
four
arguments
for
these
constraints
on
civil
disobedience
and
public
reason
(TOJ
323-330).
Firstly,
he
insists
that
violations
of
basic
liberty
are
easier
to
recognize
because
they
are
enshrined
in
legal
statute.
Secondly,
he
argues
that
their
protection
is
also
easier
to
agree
upon
from
an
overlapping
consensus
concerning
the
political
values
of
a
given
national
community.
Thirdly,
he
claims
that
if
basic
liberties
are
protected,
social
and
economic
inequalities
will
not
get
out
of
hand.
Finally,
he
endorses
an
expansive
lexical
priority
for
liberty
over
equality.
But,
to
the
extent
that
Rawls
treats
Martin
Luther
Kings
writings
and
speeches,
and
the
political
actions
of
civil
rights
activists
as
exemplary
of
this
conception
of
public
reason
and
civil
disobedience,
using
their
exemplarity
to
give
the
force
of
reflective
equilibrium
to
his
arguments,
it
seems
he
can
only
do
so
by
situating
him
in
what
I
describe
in
my
larger
project
as
a
romantic
narrative
of
civil
rights
history.
There,
I
argue
that
historiography
and
political
theorys
invocations
of
historical
example
have
an
irreducibly
narrativist
dimension,
which
is
inevitably
shaped
by
conventions
of
narrative
form
and
genre
that
shape
how
we
apprehend,
follow,
understand,
and
judge
the
significance
of
the
stories
that
make
up
our
historical
imagination.
One of the most prominent narrative forms is romance which is disposed to the symbolic
25
The
King
imagined
by
this
romantic
narrative
is
a
civil
rights
leader
in
the
narrow
sense.
Under
Rawls
conceptual
restrictions,
his
conception
of
American
society
would
have
to
be
that
it
is
already,
at
least
since
Brown
v.
Board,
basically
just
in
its
constitutional
essentials
and
basic
structure,
but
that
the
state
needs
to
extend
the
same
basic
liberties
afforded
to
other
Americans
to
African
Americans.
The
direct
action
demonstrations
he
leads
must
be
meant
to
dramatize
the
gap
between
American
ideals
and
these
anomalous,
exclusionary
practices
while
appealing
to
Americans
already-extant
sense
of
justice.
Moreover,
he
must
express
a
resolute
faith
that
civil
rights
and
rights
of
political
participation
will,
in
time,
ensure
fuller
justice
for
African
Americans
better
than
any
other
political
program.
The
passage
of
the
Civil
Rights
Act
of
1964
and
the
Voting
Rights
Act
of
1965,
from
this
perspective,
will
appear
to
be
instances
of
overlapping
consensus,
fostered
in
large
part
by
Kings
arguments.
A
great
transformation
toward
a
higher-order
reconciliation
is
enacted,
all
well
within
the
boundaries
of
Rawls
normative
constraints
on
civil
disobedience
and
public
reason.
The
appeal
of
this
narrative
is
related
to
Weithmans
argument
about
practical
faith.
The
demonstration
of
the
ability
of
a
constitutional
order
marked
by
pluralism,
not
only
to
achieve
justice,
but
also
to
correct
itself
and
endure
when
it
falls
short
of
that
charge
is
thus
a
critically
important
task
for
Rawlsian
political
theory.
From
such
a
vantage
point,
a
romantic
narrative
of
the
civil
rights
movement
presents
itself
as
an
exemplary
rejoinder
to
this
problem.
In
its
portrayal
as
a
refocusing
moment
in
American
democratic
constitutionalism,
it
is
thought
to
display
a
beautiful
symmetry
of
ends
and
means
that
performs
a
reunification
of
the
American
polity.
Its
narrative
resonance
with
Rawls
other
commitments
reveals
an
important
orientational
phronesis
to
Rawlsian
political
liberalism,
that
prestructures
judgment
and
significance,
and
which
we
can
decenter
through
historiographical
comparison.75
There
may
be
some
skepticism
of
this
reading,
given
that
Rawls
does
not
explicitly
discuss
the
United
States
in
the
text.76
However,
in
his
draft
notes
[ca.
1966]
for
his
original
paper
on
civil
disobedience,
Rawls
explicitly
describes
the
US
constitutional
order
as
basically
just
and
relies
heavily
on
an
account
of
federalism
to
establish
his
view
of
civil
rights
activism
in
the
sit-in
movement:
1. The
Sit-In
movement
began
in
Feb
1960
in
Greenboro
NC.
What
was
done
was
illegal
under
local
laws
+
ordinances
valid
at
the
time.
Hence
strictly
the
action
of
the
sit-ins
was
illegal.
26
2. Nevertheless
they
were
appealling
[sic]
not
nec
to
to
a
higher
law
a
moral
principle
beyond
the
legal
order
as
a
whole
but
to
the
higher
lawmaking
authorities.
Their
act
was
not
nec
a
revolutionary
act
but
in
our
federal
system
to
the
higher
legal
bodies
which
the
system
provides.
Their
aim
was
to
have
the
higher
agencies
correct
the
local
ordinances
thought
to
be
at
variance
with
the
Const.
or
other
higher
laws
at
any
rate
as
these
would
be
interpreted
by
the
Supreme
Court.
They
were
not
upheld
by
the
Court,
but
they
did
eventually
gain
their
end
in
Congress
by
Title
II
of
the
Civil
Rights
Act
of
1964
which
does
provide
for
equal
service
in
places
of
public
accommodation.
3. Thus,
because
our
Constitution
is
just,
much
CD
can
be
interpreted,
not
as
appeal
to
the
S
of
J
of
the
majority
as
an
extra-legal
conception,
but
as
an
appeal
to
the
Constitution
itself
or
to
the
ideals
which
it
expresses
+
which
it
is
believed
would
dictate
repeal
n
reform
of
existing
lower
(or
local)
statutes.
CD
can
be
viewed
as
appealling
[sic]
to
law
against
itself.77
I
hope
to
demonstrate
the
error
of
this
conception
by
injecting
a
note
of
discord
into
Rawls
conception
of
the
civil
rights
movement,
and
problematizing
his
implicitly
romantic
narrative.
Critique
cannot
simply
meet
Rawls
idealizations
with
real
history,
it
must
disentangle
the
role
that
historical
narrative
plays
in
his
work,
dislodge
that
historiographical
vision,
and
rework
the
claims
of
justice
from
a
different
interpretation
of
exemplarity.
VIII.
Given
the
constraints
of
space,
I
will
focus
on
one
Rawlsian
claim
and
sketch
its
potential
implications,
namely
the
argument
that
civil
disobedience
should
not
be
addressed
to
economic
injustice,
a
shadow
consequence
of
his
broader
arguments
concerning
the
lexical
priority
of
his
principles.
Rawls
insists,
drawing
implicitly
on
civil
rights
history,
that
we
can
more
easily
recognize
violations
of
the
basic
liberty
principle,
and
thus
more
readily
come
to
consensus
to
defend
them.
Rawls
argues
that
when
certain
minorities
are
denied
the
right
to
vote
or
to
hold
office,
or
to
own
property
and
to
move
from
place
to
place,
or
when
certain
religious
groups
are
repressed
and
others
denied
various
opportunities,
these
injustices
may
be
obvious
to
all,
as
they
are
likely
written
in
statutory
or
constitutional
law
(TOJ
326).
He
contrasts
the
ease
of
recognizing
these
violations
favorably
with
violations
of
his
difference
(equality)
principle.
For
the
latter,
Rawls
argues
that
it
is
difficult
to
avoid
prejudice
and
convince
others
of
our
impartiality,
since
there
are
rationally
conflicting
opinions
concerning
the
principles
violation,
involving
complex
institutional
and
policy
arrangements,
theoretical
and
speculative
beliefs,
statistical
and
other
information,
shrewd
judgment,
and
plain
hunch.
Further,
Rawls
argues
for
a
presumption
that
honoring
the
basic
liberties
while
possibly
persistent
and
significant,
will
not
get
out
of
hand.
(TOJ
327)
A
77 CD [Civil Disobedience] + The Complications of Our Federal System, pg. 1; John Rawls Papers, Harvard
27
similar
argument
underwrites
his
insistence
that
public
reason
focus
on
constitutional
essentials,
rather
than
socioeconomic
injustice.78
Rawls
argument
here,
however,
deserves
far
more
severe
scrutiny
than
it
has
heretofore
received
because
the
level
of
epistemic
complexity
that
Rawls
ascribes
to
controversies
of
economic
injustice
is
such
that
it
tips
his
considerations
in
favor
of
political
order
versus
leaving
the
widest
range
of
political
tactics
at
our
disposal
to
secure
an
essential
principle
of
justice.
Moreover,
he
invokes
the
exemplarity
of
civil
rights
history
as
justification.
Thus,
a
promising
point
of
entry
for
critical
engagement
are
competing
narratives
in
civil
rights
historiography.
These
place
pressure
on
both
Rawls
comparison
and
the
normative
judgment
he
culls
from
it.
On
the
one
hand,
the
ease
of
recognizing
violations
of
basic
liberties
is
much
more
difficult
than
Rawls
suggests.
Let
us
take
the
example
of
political
rights.
The
Long
Civil
Rights
Movement
frame
draws
our
attention
to
the
long,
arduous
struggle
for
voting
rights
and
the
right
to
hold
office.79
At
the
level
of
constitutional
law,
African-Americans
have
been
explicitly
guaranteed
the
right
to
vote
since
the
1870
passage
of
the
Fifteenth
Amendment
to
the
Constitution.
The
problem,
however,
was
that
violations
of
political
rights
occurred
through
measures
that
did
not
rely
on
constitutional
law.
Instead,
they
pursued
black
voter
disenfranchisement
through
non-state
avenues
like
the
primary
elections
held
by
political
parties
and
economic
sanction
by
employers,
or
putatively
race-blind
measures
like
grandfather
clauses,
poll
taxes,
literacy
tests,
felon
disenfranchisement,
criminal
statutes,
and
gerrymandering
districts.
There
was
no
straightforward
process
of
demonstrating
the
extensive
labyrinth
of
practices
that
congealed
into
a
daunting
structure
of
black
disenfranchisement,
and
the
relentless
contestation
by
blacks
and
their
allies
over
the
course
of
the
long
civil
rights
struggle
involved
the
same
sorts
of
statistical
analyses,
theoretical
interpretations,
and
shrewd
judgment
to
demonstrate
this
injustice
for
the
wider
polity
and
dismantle
the
edifice
of
voter
suppression
piece
by
piece,
from
the
white
primary
in
1944
to
fights
over
gerrymandering
in
the
late
1960s.
This focus on constitutional essentials, leads Rawls in his ideal theory, as GA Cohen has
argued,
to
an
unduly
restricted
conception
of
the
site
of
justice
dominated
by
the
state
and
the
legal
system.
Cohen
argues
that
properly
understood,
the
Rawlsian
difference
principle,
which
condemns
inequalities
that
contradict
the
interests
of
the
worst
off,
applies
not
only
to
the
actions
of
the
state
but
also
to
the
choices
of
individuals
that
are
beyond
the
reach
of
the
state.80
Hence,
while
Rawls
suggests
his
definition
of
civil
disobedience
as
aimed
at
changing
government
policies
78
Idea
of
Public
Reason
107
28
and
law
is
consonant
with
Kings
vision
of
civil
disobedience
as
articulated
in
A
Letter
from
a
Birmingham
Jail,
it
ignores
that
in
Birmingham
and
other
campaigns,
King
targeted
business
elites,
civil
society
organizations
(including
churches),
and
citizens
as
such
to
live
up
to
the
principles
of
justice
not
just
the
statebecause
he
conceived
of
justice
as
a
virtue
of
persons
and
civil
society,
as
well
as
the
state
or
the
basic
structure
of
society.
Indeed,
one
of
the
key
insights
of
the
civil
rights
movement
were
that
the
two
were
inextricable,
especially
insofar
as
(1)
attempts
to
challenge
the
ritual
humiliation
and
degradation
of
blacks
in
the
private
sphere
were
consistently
met
with
state
opposition
in
the
form
of
police
intervention
on
the
grounds
of
public
order
and
the
stability
of
law
and
(2)
the
achievement
of
justice
in
a
bureaucratic
state
depends,
in
part,
on
the
personal
virtues
of
bureaucratic
functionaries.81
The
attempt
to
delimit
the
content
of
public
reason
or
the
arena
of
civil
disobedience
restricts
a
priori
what
can
emerge
as
a
consideration
of
basic
justice
in
ways
that
King
would
certainly
object
to,
as
should
we.
That
Rawls
conception
of
public
reason
unduly
restricts
the
unpredictability
of
democratic
justice
and
its
constitutive
capacity
for
need-interpretation,
the
articulation
of
new
rights-claims,
and
contested
terrain
of
politics
is
a
contention
that
has
been
pursued
profitably
by
a
number
of
critical
democratic
theorists,
and
I
will
not
repeat
their
arguments
here.82
I
will
simply
add
that
such
strict
prioritization
of
constitutional
essentials,
particularly
when
defended
by
reference
to
a
claim
that
their
enactment
will
help
restrict
the
escalation
of
social
and
economic
inequality,
serves
only
to
legitimate
the
romantic
idea
that
the
African-American
civil
rights
movement
considered
legal
protections
as
the
chief
end
of
the
movement,
that
the
achievement
of
constitutional
rights
has
(or
should
have)
set
us
on
an
irreversible
path
toward
broader
forms
of
social
and
economic
equality,
and
that
the
violation
of
basic
liberties
exhausts
the
legitimacy
of
direct
action
protest.
This criticism leads to a related worry concerning Rawls insistence that we must pay a
certain
price
to
convince
others
that
our
actions
havea
sufficient
moral
basis
in
the
political
conviction
of
the
community,
by
constraining
protest
and
public
reason
in
certain
ways.
If
this
injunction
to
pay
a
certain
price
to
convince
others
is
interpreted
to
mean
that
minorities
must
sufficiently
demonstrate
their
commitment
to
the
stability
and
order
of
the
polity
before
pressing
claims
to
injustice,
this
may
lock
the
victims
of
injustice
into
chasing
a
perpetually
receding
horizon
of
justice.
If
citizens
like
Rawls
doesconsider
the
raising
of
economic
justice
issues
through
civil
disobedience
or
public
reason
as
inherently
disruptive
or
destabilizing
and
presumptively
81
Seanna
Shiffrin
82 See, in particular, the essays in Seyla Benhabib, ed. Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of
29
illegitimate,
then
perhaps
we
need
to
revisit
Rawls
insistence
that
a
consensus
on
basic
liberties
is
easier
to
achieve
than
a
consensus
on
redistributive
issues.
A
more
apt
characterization
might
instead
be
that
the
consensus
on
basic
liberties
is
achievable
precisely
because
there
is
an
understanding
that
it
will
it
is
politically
distinct
from,
and
not
ultimately
guaranteed
to
lead
to,
socioeconomic
redistribution.
The
Long
Civil
Rights
historians
emphasis
on
the
Cold
Wars
contemporaneous
chilling
effect
on
the
left
and
the
political
aims
of
African
American
civil
rights
gives
credibility
to
this
critique.
Throughout
the
course
of
the
Long
Civil
Rights
Movement,
one
of
the
most
devastating
charges
leveled
against
African-American
activists
was
affiliation
with
Communism,
and
a
public
emphasis
on
economic
justice
or
labor
rights
served
to
mark
the
speaker
as
insufficiently
committed
to
the
political
convictions
and
stability
of
the
polity.
As
King
complained
to
a
labor
union
in
1959,
It
is
a
dark
day
indeed
when
men
cannot
work
to
implement
brotherhood
without
being
labeled
communist.83
From
the
vantage
point
of
economic
justice,
the
concern
of
Michael
Sandel
and
others
to
defend
Kings
use
of
the
comprehensive
doctrine
of
prophetic
Christianity
in
his
exercise
of
public
reason
appears
to
miss
the
irony
in
their
project.
In
insisting
against
Rawls
(at
least
in
his
earliest
essay
on
public
reason)
on
the
necessity
of
Kings
religious
rhetoric
to
make
a
sufficiently
consensus-building
case
for
racial
justice,
they
do
not
entertain
the
possibility
that
one
of
the
purposes
his
religious
rhetoric
might
plausibly
have
served
is
to
demonstrate
for
other
citizens
a
sufficient
commitment
to
the
stability
(and
wide
public
reasons)
of
the
polity,
by
signaling
non-
Communism
and
an
otherwise
suitably
tempered
commitment
to
economic
justice.
When
Rawls
mentions
off
hand
how
his
ideals
might
discipline
public
discourse,
he
perhaps
inadvertently
gestures
toward
these
sorts
of
deep
constraints
on
that
are
obscured
in
his
theory
in
part
by
his
invocation
of
a
romantic
narrative
of
Martin
Luther
King,
Jr.
and
the
civil
rights
movement.
If
my
reading
is
at
all
persuasive,
then
it
should
show
that
founding
critical
race
theory
on
a
hermeneutics
of
suspicion
that
reads
marginalia
as
silence
and
does
not
excavate
the
relationship
between
exemplarity
and
abstraction
obscures
a
great
deal
of
what
might
be
illuminated
by
reading
race
and
the
difference
it
makes.
The
stratagem
of
reading
Rawls
as
if
he
is
manifestly
unmoved
by
racial
justice
faces
too
many
interpretive,
explanatory,
and
biographical
hurdles.
If
part
of
Mills
emphasis
on
social
contract
theory
is
pragmatic
to
engage
political
philosophers
in
a
debate
about
race
within
the
hegemonic
frameworks
of
the
discipline,
this
sort
of
interpretive
approach,
unduly
reliant
on
expansive
claims
for
silence,
is
likely
to
engender
more
quiet
resentment
than
vigorous
30
conversation.
The
intensive
unpacking
of
the
black
presence
in
the
margins
of
Rawls
allows
us
to
reformulate
the
hermeneutics
of
suspicion
to
ask
not
why
Rawls
is
silent
as
such,
with
the
guilt
of
omission
arrayed
against
him,
but
more
sympathetically
something
like
the
following:
Why,
if
John
Rawls
was
involved
in
activism
on
behalf
of
blacks
treated
unfairly
by
the
structure
of
exemptions
in
the
draft
in
Vietnam,84
referred
extensively
to
civil
rights
direct
action
in
his
lectures
and
seminars,
challenged
his
colleagues
defense
of
the
Moynihan
Report
in
correspondence85,
used
the
term
Black
when
most
whites
still
used
Negro,
and
read
relatively
widely
in
black
protest
literature
(including
not
just
Martin
Luther
King
and
Bayard
Rustin,
but
also
Frantz
Fanon
and
Eldridge
Cleaver),
does
he
treat
racial
justice
the
way
he
does?
84
Rawls
was
quite
active
in
anti-war
and
anti-draft
protest
efforts
during
the
Vietnam
War,
specifically
targeting
the
injustice
of
the
2-S
Resolution,
which
allowed
draft
exemptions
for
college
students
making
sufficient
marks,
a
population
that
was
overwhelmingly
white
and
high-income.
He
drafted
a
resolution
for
the
Harvard
faculty
to
publicly
condemn
this
provision
of
the
draft,
but
lost
the
motion
after
being
first
procedurally
thwarted
by
the
historian
Oscar
Handlin.
Included
in
Rawls
original
resolution,
laying
out
the
case
for
the
injustice
of
the
draft,
was
Section
5,
titled,
Concerning
Sociological
Inequities.
Here,
Rawls
argues
the
following:
It
happens
that
if
we
take
all
black
people,
that
the
chance
of
a
black
man
entering
the
army
is
the
same
as
that
of
a
white
man.
(Or
lets
suppose.)
Does
it
follow
that
the
draft
does
not
fall
disproportionately
on
the
poor
and
less
well
educated?
No
since
the
relevant
class
is
that
of
those
who
pass
the
tests
of
capacity
for
military
service.
The
chances
should
be
equal
over
this
class
(cet.
par.).
To
see
this,
we
could
imagine
a
society
in
which
every
black
man
is
drafted
while
only
one
of
ten
white
men
is.
But
since
for
reasons
of
poverty,
etc.,
only
one
in
ten
blacks
pass
the
test,
while
for
reasons
of
affluence
every
white
man
passes,
the
risks
over
the
whole
society
would
be
equal.
Yet
we
would
not
suppose
this
scheme
just.
Two
injustices
one
in
the
draft
and
another
in
background
sociological
conditions
combine
to
give
a
superficial
equality.
It
is
clear
that
this
equality
is
the
upshot
of
a
double
injustice:
the
one
keeping
black
people
below
the
line
of
passing
the
tests,
the
other
taking
a
larger
proportion
of
those
who
manage
to
struggle
above
it
(than
of
whites).
Questions
Re
the
2-S
Resolution
(suggestions
only)
[1966]
P.
2
Rawls
Archives,
Box
24
Folder
2
85
To
Edward
Banfield,
who
cited
with
approval
the
Moynihan
Reports
suggestion
that
lowering
the
educational
and
testing
standards
for
military
service
in
Vietnam
in
order
to
increase
the
number
of
blacks
and,
therefore,
resolve
the
problem
of
racial
inequality
in
unemployment,
Rawls
replied
to
this
line
of
argument
in
a
draft
version
of
his
A
Proposal
for
a
Military
Recruitment
Policy
[1966],
arguing:
We
appreciate
the
desire
on
the
part
of
many
to
use
conscription
as
an
agency
of
social
justice.
Given
the
glaring
inequities
of
our
society
and
the
sluggishness
of
the
movement
for
change,
it
is
tempting
to
use
the
military
for
social
ends.
It
may
offer
to
some
a
mode
of
life
without
racial
discrimination;
to
otheers
[sic.]
it
may
offer
an
opportunity
to
acquire
valuable
skills.
It
is
possible
that
there
are
many
desirable
side-effects.
But
we
do
not
attempt
to
weight
these
against
the
many
undesirable
consequences.
We
feel
that
these
considerations
are
irrelevant
in
view
of
the
kind
of
justification
required
for
compulsory
service.
Moreover,
to
maintain
that
these
injustices
are
so
great
and
the
other
institutions
of
our
polity
are
in
such
a
state
of
disarray
that
we
must
call
upon
the
military
to
remedy
our
condition
is
tantamount
to
a
confession
of
a
social
disorder
so
profound
that
were
we
to
accept
this
confession
as
true,
we
should
have
to
raise
the
question
whether
such
a
society
has
the
right
to
conscript
its
citizens
at
all.
(8-9)
In
another
anti-war
document,
prepared
for
a
question
and
answer
session,
Rawls
writes:
it
is
simply
ludicrous
to
suppose
that
it
is
in
the
national
interest,
in
any
material
sense,
that
students
in
philosophy
(as
well
as
other
subjects)
should
be
deferred
while
the
poor
and
the
black
are
compelled
to
suffer
the
burden
of
the
war.
And
while
conceivably
economic
and
technocratic
values
might
justify
some
deferments
for
highly
qualified
scientists
+
engineers,
we
believe
that
the
wealthiest
country
in
the
world
might
well
be
urged
to
put
first
its
professed
devotion
to
the
principles
democracy
+
equality.
(Re:
2-S
+
Rank
List:
Draft)
p.
3,
front
side
31
This
is
certainly
speculative,
but
I
imagine
Rawls
reluctance
to
explicitly
discuss
race
or
refer
to
contemporary
instances
of
discord
over
the
question
of
racial
justice
was
that
his
text
is
written
so
as
to
produce
a
semblance
of
the
experiential
dimension
of
his
visual
metaphor
of
blindness
in
the
original
position.
For
Rawls
in
particular,
the
refusal
to
invoke
race
or
racial
incidents
may
be
more
profitably
understood
as
his
attempt,
perhaps
in
the
end
misguided,
to
remove
his
audience
in
the
early
1970s
from
the
cacophony
of
battle
and
all
the
contingencies
of
history
that
often
dominate
immediate
perceptions.
It
could
be
argued
that
Rawls
ultimately
wanted
to
place
his
reader
in
an
imaginative
original
position
where
questions
of
racial
inequality
became
less
about
the
idiosyncracies
of
particular
protests
or
protest
leaders,
and
more
about
the
question:
would
you
agree
to
this
social
arrangement
if
you
were
in
their
place?
Now,
there
are
legitimate
questions
that
may
be
raised
about
such
an
approach,
but
I
think
it
is
misleading
to
treat
it
as
ignoring
problems
of
racial
injustice
and
struggles
to
ameliorate
it
as
such.
Critical
race
theory
is
ultimately
on
more
promising
ground
if
it
eschews
such
binary
formulations
as
idealization/reality
and
interrogates
critically
what
sorts
of
notions
of
reality
and
history
authorize
and
render
persuasive
(to
specific
audiences)
particular
models
and
modes
of
abstraction.
My
contention
is
that
this
reading
practice
reveals
that
the
problem
of
African-
American
presence
in
contemporary
political
theory
is
not
well
captured
by
concepts
like
absence
or
silence
and
instead
opens
up
a
far
more
challenging
question:
how
does
the
historical
imagination
of
something
like
the
civil
rights
movement,
with
all
of
the
questions
of
narrative
and
judgment
that
accepting
the
place
of
imagination
in
historical
judgment
entails,
exert
ethical,
political,
and
aesthetic
force
both
on
the
(partially
prestructured)
attention
of
political
theorists
and
in
(although
perhaps
overflowing)
their
arguments.86
86
Menke,
The
Force
of
Aesthetics