RetRIevINg RaWLs foR RacIaL justIce? ( 165 )(addressing injustice). He argues that we would choose two principles, a
guarantee of basic liberties (BL), lexically prior to a second principle in
which fair equality of opportunity (FEO), the correction for being born
into a disadvantaged social group by the “social lottery,” is itself lexically
prior to the difference principle (DP), that permits social inequalities only
if they better the condition of the worst- off social group, who are handi-
capped by a thin bundle of talents inherited in the “natural lottery.” In sum,
BL → (FEO → DP). In his later work, post- Theory, he argued that given a
plurality of “reasonable” views in modern democratic societies, liberalism
cannot be imposed as a “comprehensive,” self- contained, and self- sufficient
ethico- metaphysical doctrine, so that a more minimal, freestanding “politi-
cal” liberalism that does not rely on such foundations is all that can be
required of citizens.
Let us now turn to Shelby’s article “Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian
Considerations.”^33 Appearing in a section on race and ethnicity of a
Fordham Law Review special issue on Rawls, it is part of the most extensive
discussion I know in the secondary literature about the non- discussion of
race in the secondary literature. Shelby was one of four contributors, the
others being Seana Shiffrin, Anita Allen, and Sheila Foster. Part of Shelby’s
concern in this article is to defend Rawls against Shiffrin’s charge that anti-
racial- discrimination provisions should have been incorporated directly
into the principles of justice.^34 I am sympathetic to Shiffrin’s critique but
will not get into this matter here, since our primary concern is corrective
racial justice, which is the really interesting issue, rather than preventive
anti- racist measures.
Shelby’s strategy for addressing these matters, as detailed in part V of his
article, is to use FEO (fair equality of opportunity) as the crucial Rawlsian
principle.
In most modern democratic societies ... many, though by no means all, of the socio-
economic disadvantages that racial minorities currently suffer are caused by racial
injustice perpetrated in the past— e.g., chattel slavery, genocide, land expropriation,
colonization, disenfranchisement, denial of basic liberties, relentless terrorism and
intimidation, and forced segregation. The racially disparate distribution of income,
wealth, and opportunities that currently obtains in the United States, for example, can
be partly explained by the cumulative impact of this history of racial violence and dom-
ination. Past racism has led to the development of a class structure in which the mem-
bers of certain racial minorities (e.g., Native Americans and African Americans) are
disproportionately located in its lowest ranks. Given that ideal theory does not directly
address matters of compensatory justice, how, if at all, can Rawls’s theory be useful for
addressing this injustice?^35