Rawls believes that a just society must be a pluralistic society, and that means that it must be neutral across (reasonable) comprehensive conceptions of the good. Citizens must be enabled to pursue their own comprehensive conceptions without interference from the state. Does this imply that a comprehensive conception based on the idea of ethnic or racial superiority over another must be condoned? It does not, because Rawls is not in fact neutral across all comprehensive conceptions. He believes there is a background condition that is both morally and sociologically necessary for the maintenance of a just society — the requirement that recognizes equal freedoms, dignity, and opportunity for all groups of citizens and that cultivates citizens who share these commitments. This has a very powerful implication: Rawls’s theory implies the urgent need for finding means of developing citizens who embody respect, tolerance, and compassion for others. This means finding effective means of reducing and eliminating racism in our society.
Consider this short text from section 7 of Political Liberalism:
Think, then, of the principles of justice as designed to form the social world in which our character and our conception of ourselves as persons, as well as our comprehensive views and their conceptions of the good, are first acquired, and in which our moral powers must be realized, if they are to be realized at all. These principles must give priority to those basic freedoms and opportunities in background institutions of civil society that enable us to become free and equal citizens in the first place, and to understand our role as persons with that status. (Political Liberalism, 41)
This paragraph merits close attention. Let’s start with the idea of “forming the social world in which our character … as well as our comprehensive views … are first acquired”. This is an acknowledgement of the plasticity of character, conception of the good, and moral powers in real human beings. These features of the person must be acquired, and they are shaped and influenced by the circumstances in which the individual develops. This introduces a fundamental aspect of historicity into the question of justice: a society both shapes the individuals who constitute it and is the result of the moral identities of past generations of individuals. Moral development is a crucial part of the creation and maintenance of a just society.
This idea has an important implication: a society founded on “bad” institutions, practices, and principles will result in the creation of individual persons — the constituents of the next phase of the social order — who are morally flawed. And this implies that the society that they play a role in creating will itself be morally flawed.
As an example, imagine a society in which sons and daughters are treated very differently within the family, with sons having a privileged role and daughters being expected to behave in subordinate ways and to accept different kinds of opportunities (schooling, employment, sports). How will the institutions and social arrangements of adult society be affected by this feature of family behavior? The answer seems clear: privilege and subordination between boys and girls in the family will seem “natural” and this inequality will carry over into civil society. The institutions of a society consisting of individuals shaped within these family norms and practices will themselves reflect the domination and subordination associated with familial roles for boys and girls.
So what kind of principles and practices must a healthy just society embody? The final two sentences of the paragraph bring the point home. The background principles of a just society “must give priority to those basic freedoms and opportunities … that enable us to become free and equal citizens in the first place, and to understand our role as persons with that status.” Conversely, a society that does not give priority to equality and basic freedoms will result in generations of citizens who are unable to become “free and equal citizens”. Such a society requires reform before it can become a just and equal democracy.
So a just society over time needs to ensure the legal, normative, and institutional principles that establish basic (and equal) freedoms and opportunities. This means that social, familial, or cultural practices that are inconsistent with equal freedoms and opportunities must be altered. The practice of treating daughters as subordinate is toxic to the creation of a just society because it fails to embody the conditions required for creating men and women who understand themselves as free and equal citizens, and who respect each other accordingly.
This line of thought has direct relevance to the history of racism and racial discrimination in the United States and other countries. It is part of what Charles Mills is getting at in his critique of “the racial contract”. If racial subordination and discrimination are woven into the experience of childhood and young adulthood, then the ambient social institutions and practices fail the test Rawls is proposing. They fail to give priority “to basic freedoms and opportunities … that enable us to become free and equal citizens in the first place”. It is therefore a first priority that such a society, and the state that governs such a society, must make strenuous and sustained efforts at reforming the social environment in which citizens form their “moral powers” and develop their comprehensive conceptions of the good. That means finding effective ways of removing racial subordination and racist ways of thinking from society.
It is a fact that creating a just society is a process of “boot-strapping”, in which one series of improvements lays the basis for new improvements at the next level. Establishing legal and political equality for all groups — a basic tenet of progressive liberalism in the 1950s — was a pressing goal. It is not yet achieved. The next pressing goal is to find ways of changing the experiences that children and young adults have of inter-group relations. Forms of behavior and ideas of prejudice are formed through lived experience; so teachers, family members, members of civic associations and places of worship, and political leaders can provide powerful and transformative examples that cultivate mutual respect, tolerance, and compassion across groups.
But the point to emphasize here is that both activities — establishing equal constitutional rights and liberties, and changing the developmental environment so as to cultivate attitudes of respect, tolerance, and compassion for others — both these activities are mandatory for a “becoming-just” society, according to Rawls’s prescriptions here. The goal of both kinds of reforms is the same: to “enable us to become free and equal citizens” and to participate fully in a just and multicultural society.
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