Session 9 assignment

John Meyer
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Mills summarizes Rawls’ ideas of justice on pages 5-7 of his critique of Shelby. Rawls
refers to a hypothetical social contracting scenario called the veil of ignorance in which all the
agents are unaware of their particular identity. In this situation, the just and fair constitution is
what anyone would prudentially choose, since any construction of unfair advantage would be as
likely to disadvantage a contracting agent as advantage them. Specifically, they would choose
two principles of justice (the second of which has two parts) in the following order: the equal
entitlement to maximum mutually compatible basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity to
positions available within the society regardless of inherited inequalities, and the principle that
deviations from equality are acceptable to the extent that they better the situation of those worst
off in the society (the difference principle). Mills quotes Shelby saying that a great deal of racial
injustice stems from the past and suggesting that Rawls’ idea of fair equality of opportunity is the
correct way to understand how corrective measures could be justified. Mills disagrees with this
approach.
In his “Race and Social Injustice: Rawlsian considerations” Shelby begins by stating that
for Rawls racism is an insult to human dignity and that racial disadvantage is unjust by reason of
its arbitrary denial of the equal entitlement to basic liberties. Through this and other
observations, Shelby states that Rawls’ relative silence on the subject of race is because Rawls
believed race discrimination could only ever be unjust; no application of the difference principle
could save it, nor would it realistically meet any minimal sense of justice even in a society that
lacks the idea of equal citizenship. So much for overt and ongoing racism, but Shelby is more
interested in legacy racial injustice, that injustice which originates in deeds in the past but is
perpetuated in an inherited complex of racially structured economic class difference. As a
response to this, Shelby would deploy Rawls’ fair equality of opportunity as the principle to
address this injustice. Though it’s not compensation per se, the effect of real fair equality of
opportunity would be to wipe out the unjust racially structured class difference by eliminating all
unjust class difference.
 In "Racial Realities and Corrective Justice" Shelby reiterates that the fair equality of
opportunity approach to racial injustice would not be corrective as such, but rather a forward
looking way of eliminating the ongoing historical perpetuation of past injustice through class
difference. This approach does not in any way wipe out the claim to compensation, but does
address the urgent justice claims located in the present and future. Though Shelby’s approach
might reduce some reparations advocacy (perhaps particularly where it is motivated by concern
for justice in the present), he does not hold that it would liquidate these justice claims. He does
believe that his justice argument is more fundamental than purely corrective justice would be.
Shelby maintains that even a vigorously pursued reparations politics would sooner or later have
to confront the issues of ideal theory, the well ordered society, and the nature of just collective
self determination.