Black Rights - White Wrongs the-critique

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1
ePILogue (as PRoLogue) ( 213 )

seeking principles of corrective justice for a non- ideal (here racist) society
[PCJ]~I. See Figure E.4.
My claim is that this is a better strategy for arriving at principles of racial
justice than trying to derive them from PDJ1 and PDJ2 (whose moral
foundation is not the correction of wrongs). The thought experiment (as
a “device of representation”) is being applied to a different end:  not how
you would create an ideal basic structure from ground zero but how you
would dismantle an already existing unjust basic structure. In “contractual”
terms, we could think of it as tearing up the “bad” contract that has created
the world we live in. (Cf. Rousseau, who described two contracts, one non-
ideal, one ideal.)^24
So the thought- experiment plays itself out differently. Self- knowledge is
still blocked by the veil (so as to guarantee objectivity). But the veil is thin-
ner on social knowledge. We know that we are going to emerge into a society
whose basic structure has historically been shaped by white supremacy. All
the social variants among which we choose will have a white- supremacist
state as their ancestor (since an ideal society is not an option for us). So we
are making a self- interested choice about different principles of corrective
justice that will correct to a greater or lesser degree for this history of racial
domination, thereby generating different possible social orders.
The choice then becomes this:  What kinds of measures would you
select to correct for a history of racial injustice, worried that when the veil
lifts, you may turn out to be black or a member of some other historically
subordinated race?
What recommendations would you make for altering the legal and
political system, the structure of economic opportunities, the dominant
cognitive and evaluative norms, the cultural patterns, the somatic ideal, the
inherited social ontology of racial superiority and inferiority?


Figure E.4 Expanded thought- experiment

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