Black Rights - White Wrongs the-critique

( 206 ) Black Rights/White Wrongs

There are no guarantees, but then no other competing ideology can offer them
either. Insofar as black radical liberalism is attentive to trends within capital-
ism (e.g., the forthcoming consolidation and exacerbation of plutocracy in
the Western world predicted by Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty- First
Century),^14 it would hope that an increasing number of the white poor/ white
working class may begin to wake up to the reality that the prospects for their
children and grandchildren under plutocratic capitalism— albeit white-
supremacist plutocratic capitalism— are not that great either. As a materialist
political philosophy, black radical liberalism does not rest its hopes for social
transformation on moral suasion alone but on the mobilization of group
interests. The strategy would be to combine the racial justice political project
with a larger social justice political project, highlighting the startling fact that
the United States has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of
all the Western democracies. Of course, whites may still prefer to hold on to
the “psychological wage” (Du Bois) of whiteness if it is going to be jeopar-
dized by such a transracial political alliance. But as emphasized, this will be
an obstacle for other anti- racist political programs also. And the impending
demographic shift to a nonwhite majority should assist.
So that (very sketchily) would be the real- world agenda. Let us now look
at the (academic world) implications for political philosophy, particularly
Rawlsian liberalism. Obviously social justice theory does not have to be
done in a Rawlsian framework, but given its centrality to contemporary
Anglo- American political philosophy and to the discussions throughout
this book, it seems natural to end by engaging with Rawlsianism.

CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM WHITE POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY

I suggest that the key areas for rethinking would be the following:

• Overarching framework: Non- ideal theory


• Theoretical focus: Ill- ordered societies


• Social ontology: Races in relations of domination/ subordination


• Task of social epistemology:  Exposing dominant racialized ideologies,
  whether overt or subtle


• Actual hegemonic variety of liberalism: Racial liberalism


• Normative orientation: Corrective justice


• Key normative tool: Black radical “Kantianism”


• One possible strategy: Adapting Rawls for corrective justice

Let me now go over these briefly, but still (I hope) usefully.

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