RetRIevINg RaWLs foR RacIaL justIce? ( 177 )These dramatic divisions obtain not merely at the layperson level but at the
level of academic theory. As Thomas McCarthy writes:
[Conservative] theorists treat “underclass” values, attitudes, behavior, and the like as
independent variables and make them the causes of the social, economic, and politi-
cal inequities afflicting its members. Extreme residential segregation, failed schools, dire
poverty, chronic unemployment, and the breakdown of the black family are thereby
regarded as effects of irresponsible behavior rather than its causes or as both its causes
and effects. Accordingly, the remedy proposed is self- improvement rather than institu-
tional change or than some combination of both. Institutional racism, on this view, is a
thing of the past.^75If Shelby is claiming to be relying on an unmodified Rawls, he cannot use
left- wing social- scientific materials, since they violate Rawlsian norms.
Even armed with such theoretical analyses, of course, the left have already
lost the battle with the right, as shown by the neo- liberal shift of recent
decades.^76 But without them, they would be helpless even to put up a fight.
Note by contrast that because I believe more radical changes are necessary,
the reliance on such social science claims is not problematic for me, since
I believe Rawls’s methodology does have to be modified to deal adequately
with racial injustice and other non- ideal realities.^77 I take for granted that
under non- ideal circumstances, where social oppression is the norm, the
group interests of the privileged and their differential group experience will
generate rationalizations of the existing order so that contesting social priv-
ilege to realize social justice will necessarily mean encountering and com-
bating such ideologies.^78 Controversiality for me goes with the theoretical
territory, the territory of the systematically non- ideal. But this revision is
not open for Shelby.
Racial Injustice versus Class InjusticeFinally, I want to elaborate on another way in which Shelby’s attempted use
of FEO to address racial injustice represents a category mistake. It is not
merely that two different species of justice, distributive and corrective, are
being conflated, but that two different kinds of wrongs are being jumbled
together.
In trying to turn a principle meant to remedy class disadvantage into
a principle for addressing the legacy of racial discrimination, Shelby is
blurring the difference between wrongs that involve the violation of (left-
liberal) norms of opportunity and wrongs that involve the violation of
personhood. The difference between left- liberalism (such as Rawls’s) and