Making a far-right activist

Far-right supporters of CasaPound

How can we understand some of the factors that lead to the development of far-right beliefs and worldview in young people? Why do a certain number of people in their teens and twenties develop a political fascination with neofascism, anti-immigrant extremism, and a range of racist ideas? Is this an expression of psychopathology just waiting for a trigger? Is it the “politics of cultural despair” re-emerging in the democratic west? Is it economic hopelessness and anger?

Polish-born ethnographer Agnieszka Pasieka has spent the first years of her research career doing in-person ethnography to try to get a better understanding of this issue. Her recent Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe presents some of her findings. Here are a few short descriptions that she offers concerning the challenges presented to ethnographers who undertake to study far-right organizations and activists.

Transnational ethnography is not easy either. And neither is a (transnational) ethnography of the far right. This book is an attempt to come closer to an understanding of the ideas and practices driving the varied forms of far-right activism that have been unfolding in recent years, both locally and transnationally. It strives to problematize the very ideas of the “local” and the “transnational,” demonstrating, on the one hand, how ethnographic knowledge can help to unpack these notions and, on the other, how research of this sort is a lesson in humility, prompting us to recognize the limits of our ability to define and capture the nature of “here” and “there.” It similarly strives to unpack the notions of the “far-right activist” and the “far-right movement” by juxtaposing common assumptions about who they are and what they represent with the activists’ own understandings. For me, anthropology is the language that mediates this process. (22)

One point that she emphasizes throughout her work is the heterogeneity of paths, beliefs, and worldviews that the activists she studies have experienced. She does not suppose that there is a single pathway or set of causes that lead a young person from adolescent daily life to a political affinity with the far right.

It took time to see through the label “far-right activism” and begin to discover a complex landscape made up of individuals and community, coercion and choice, violence and friendliness, conformism and revolt. It was a journey during which I learned how to get close to and yet keep a distance from people I had previously not even considered talking to, and how to create a respectful research relationship (at times close to friendship) despite the fact that I could not, to say the least, respect some of their claims and actions. It is important to emphasize that although I was accepted as a travel companion, I remained a stranger, sometimes even a suspect one. (22)

Here she articulates two problems that almost any ethnographer must confront: to avoid easy generalizations, and to negotiate the relationship between one’s role as an investigator and the personal rapport that is required in order to gain understanding of the other person’s journey.

Pasieka’s 2022 article, “‘Tomorrow belongs to us’: Pathways to Activism in Italian Far-Right Youth Communities” (link), provides a compact exposure to her style of research and some of her central findings about far-right youth activism. She offers a short historical context of fascist ideology in Italy, and her account focuses on the orientation towards the future that she finds in the language and “grammar” of the fascist and neo-fascist movement. The ethnographic content of the article involves her profiles of three young Italian activists, each with a very different story about their route to what amounts to a neo-fascist set of political commitments. Here is the future-orientation of the fascist/neo-fascist ideology that she describes:

When analyzing their agenda, it appears clear that activists like to present themselves as drawing first and foremost on the “fascism-movement” period as opposed to the “fascism-regime” one (de Felice 1997[1975]). In providing this distinction, Renzo de Felice highlighted the vitality and the revolutionary character of the“fascism-movement,” its emphasis on rebirth and orientation toward the future (ibid.: 28–29). Present-day activists eagerly embrace this vocabulary, particularly the need to adhere to revolution and build a New Man, a new society, and a new civilization. Further, as the“fascism-movement” era was also the one in which the socialist component was accentuated, it corresponds with the view of far-right movements that they are the “true” defenders of the interests of their working-class compatriots. (158)

She describes Leo’s earliest interest in neo-fascist politics in these terms:

Leo explained that he had been an active member of Forza Nuova since late high school, when he joined a meeting after a short encounter with an FN member. Prior to that, he neither held views close to those of FN nor knew much about the group. The first thing he appreciated about it, and at the same time found to be most crucial, was the community’s desire to “break the mold” (uscire dagli schemi): to believe in and create a political alternative. (160)

In spite of her desire not to reach premature generalizations, she closes “Tomorrow belongs to us” by identifying “three key factors” in the appeal of neo-fascist organizations to Italian young people:

My analysis suggests three key factors. The first is the kind of community the far-right promises: this community is presented, and experienced, as having an educational and ethical mission, as focused on“doing,” as providing members with an unconditional support and, fundamentally, as a community that transcends here and now. It is a community grounded in some ideas from the past and simultaneously constituting a model for the future. This aspect best explains people’s fascination with fascism as a movement, such as Codreanu’s grassroots activism. The second factor is that the actions of this community address “injustice”—taking care of neglected co-nationals or forgotten Christians—and speak to the injustice militants claim they too experience. As I indicated, this relates to their experiences of and with ethno-religious diversity and migration which lead them to reevaluate the importance of being rooted in and valuing “national culture.” The community is thus a vehicle which recasts social solidarity in terms of cultural particularism (Feischmidt 2020). The third factor is a lofty vocabulary marking the community discourse: the weight given to altruism and sacrifice, and on their heroic mission and arduous path. Such a rhetoric further reinforces the value of belonging to the community and, by extension, helps to “identify” political opponents (as individualistic, disregarding hierarchies, and lacking any broader vision). (175)

And in Living Right she offers a similar diagnosis:

During a conversation with an Italian activist in which we discussed what made their project special, my interlocutor affirmed: “It is simple. We want people to fall in love with our view of the world. We want to reenchant the world.” Reenchantment—which is necessarily related to the experience of disenchantment and the experience of liberal modernity—opens up numerous interpretative possibilities. It encourages us to discuss the radical nationalist project against the background of a long tradition of antimodernist and anti-Enlightenment critique; to consider it as a kind of Occidentalist narrative; and finally—and perhaps unsurprisingly—to ask whether the process of disenchantment and reenchantment is what radical nationalist activists find most inspiring about the fascist project. (41)

The movements I have been researching are often dubbed fascist or neofascist. These terms are used in political speech meant to cast them as intransigent opponents as well as in scholarly work that tries to make sense of ongoing developments. I acknowledge the importance of the historical dimension both as a source of comparisons for scholars and also, perhaps more critically, as a source on which far-right activists flexibly draw in their interpretations of history, as well as in their activism, to bring about desired futures. While their use of “fascist” grammar and vocabulary is obvious, the ways they are deployed are less so. Rather than assuming activists’ relationship to the past, I ask: What do they do with the past, broadly conceived, to make it speak to the future? (41)

This seems to present a rather idealistic and forward-looking view of the appeal of the ideology of neofascism. And while Pasieka does not ignore the explicit racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Muslim language that is also associated with the Italian neofascist groups she studies, the issue of racism and xenophobia does not enter this closing diagnosis in an explicit way. She refers to “cultural particularism” in this summary, but the motivation of background religious and racial hatred and prejudice does not enter into her summary of the attraction of these parties to young people. We are left here with an impression of “idealistic young people” who are dissatisfied with “politics as usual” and want a new start. But this doesn’t seem to capture the core of neofascist politics and the appeal of these parties and activists.

Pasieka’s somewhat benign view of the motivations of young far-right activists seems to contrast fairly sharply with the findings of other ethnographic researchers of the far right, including Kathleen Blee and Cynthia Miller-Idriss. See in particular the virulent racism that Blee describes in her ethnography of the KKK and the emphasis on racism and violence offered by Blee and Creasap in their review article, “Conservative and Right-Wing Movements” (link). 

Right-wing movements in the United States openly and virulently embrace racism, anti-Semitism, and/or xenophobia and promote violence. They include long-standing racist movements such as the KKK; white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and white power skinhead groups; and racialist and violent groups of nationalists and patriots (Gallaher 2004, McVeigh 2009, Zeskind 2009). Their historical orientations vary, with the KKK focused on the Confederacy of the Civil War era, neo-Nazis focused on World War II–era Nazi Germany, and nationalists/patriots focused on the 1776 American Revolution (Durham 2007). Their locations also vary, as the KKK is generally in the South and Midwest, neo-Nazis across the country, and nationalists/patriots in the West and Southwest (Flint 2004a). Most right-wing groups are viciously white supremacist and anti-Semitic, regarding non-whites and Jews as inferior, destructive, and fearsome and seeking to preserve the power and privileges of white Aryans (Blee 2007b, Fredrickson 2002). (Blee and Creasap, 275)

Likewise, Miller-Idriss emphasizes the central part played by racism in mobilization of the far right in the US in Hate in the Homeland. (I should note that Miller-Idriss offers a favorable review of Living Right in Comparative Politics.)

Consider this description offered by Tobias Jones in the Guardian (2/22/2017; link) of the CasaPound movement in Italy. As a piece of documentary journalism it complements Pasieka’s ethnographic research. After describing a covert takeover of an abandoned government office building in Rome, Jones writes:

That building became the headquarters of a new movement called CasaPound. Over the next 15 years, it would open another 106 centres across Italy. Iannone, who had been in the Italian army for three years, described each new centre as a “territorial reconquest”. Because every centre was self-financing, and because they claimed to “serve the people”, those new centres in turn opened gyms, pubs, bookshops, parachute clubs, diving clubs, motorbike clubs, football teams, restaurants, nightclubs, tattoo parlours and barbershops. CasaPound suddenly seemed everywhere. But it presented itself as something beyond politics: this was “metapolitics” , echoing the influential fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile, who wrote in 1925 that fascism was “before all else a total conception of life”. Until then, fascist revivals had usually been seen, by the Italian mainstream, as nostalgic, uncultured and thuggish. CasaPound was different. It presented itself as forward-looking, cultured, even inclusive. Iannone had been drawn to fascism in his youth because of a “fascination with the symbols”, and now he creatively mixed and matched code words, slogans and symbols from Mussolini’s ventennio” (as his 20-year rule is known), and turned them into 21st-century song lyrics, logos and political positions. In a country in which style and pose are paramount, CasaPound was fascism for hipsters. There were reports of violence, but that – for young men who felt aimless, sidelined, even emasculated – only added to the attraction. Many flocked to pay their €15 to become members.

By the early 2000s, it was no longer taboo for mainstream politicians to speak warmly of Mussolini: admirers of Il Duce had become government ministers, and many fringe, fascist parties were growing in strength – Forza Nuova, Fronte Sociale Nazionale, and various skinhead groups. But where the other fascists seemed like throwbacks to the 1930s, CasaPound focused on contemporary causes and staged creative campaigns: in 2006 they hung 400 mannequins all over Rome, with signs protesting about the city’s housing crisis. In 2012, CasaPound militants occupied the European Union’s office in Rome and dumped sacks of coal outside to protest on behalf of Italian miners. Many of their policies looked surprising: they were against immigration, of course, but on the supposedly “progressive” grounds that the exploitation of immigrant labourers represented a return to slavery.

Like Pasieka, Jones seems to be providing a kind of “progressive populist” interpretation of this resurgence of fascism — something more hip than the old-fashioned dress, language, and symbols of the crude racism of the 1950s that young people can find an affinity with. Ironically, Jones himself seems to share some of the generational cultural discontent that Pasieka’s ethnographic subjects experience as well. Here is the publisher’s description of his book about Italy, Utopian Dreams:

This is a travel book, an account of the year Tobias Jones spent living in communes and amongst unusual dreamers. It is his attempt to retreat from the ‘real world’ – which is making him emptier and angrier by the day – and seek out the alternatives to modern manners and morality. Instead of cynicism, loneliness and depression is it possible to be idealistic, find belonging and companionship? Are there really groups that transcend the opposites of individualism and community, where you can be truly yourself but also part of something else? With his wife and baby daughter in tow, Jones visits unusual orphanages, retirement villages, detox co-operatives and old-fashioned farmyards, and spends time with spiritualists, time travellers, reformed drug addicts and Quakers. He encounters wildly different communities, some more harmonious than others, which lead him to ask the deeply unfashionable question: do groups that place faith at their centre work better than those that don’t?

The role of political education in social progress

Stephen Esquith has spent much of his career observing, teaching, and engaging in “conflict societies”, and trying to develop an understanding of how best to move from high-violence to low-violence societies. In particular he has spent a great deal of time in Mali in west Africa. He has come to emphasize the importance of “political education” as a critical ingredient of building an enduring and peaceful community. Here are several passages from his recent book Everyday Peacebuilding through Democratic Political Education where he expresses what he means by “political education”.

To achieve everyday peace between neighboring communities at odds with each other, democratic political education must lead to a dialogue, not just a ceasefire or a peace accord. Demobilization, development, and reintegration will have to be regularly renegotiated, and to do this will require a democratic political education that addresses the emotionally charged nature of this process. I have argued that the arts and humanities can prompt such a radically poised dialogue. (240)

Radical poise can do this collectively through a process of democratic political education that prepares citizens, prospective citizens, and conditional citizens to coordinate their antipodal abilities for self-restraint, resistance, humility, political respect for dignity, and protest. (230)

When appropriately cultivated through a democratic political education in the arts and humanities, radical poise in theory and radically poised processions in practice together have the potential to limit negative political emotions such as anger, hatred, and fear and to coordinate a countervailing set of political virtues (self-restraint, resistance, political respect, humility, and protest) necessary for everyday peacebuilding. [It is] the process of making of liberal citizens. (1,3)

We might paraphrase the idea of political education as “the cultivation, formal and informal, of the attitudes, beliefs, norms, and practices of members of society as they interact with other citizens”.

Esquith has the view that these processes can be facilitated by the arts and humanities, and that the arts and humanities can contribute significantly towards the development of expectations and attitudes that facilitate more peaceful inter-group interactions and cooperation.

Esquith criticizes the tradition of liberal political thought for its tendency to present the problem of political education as one of formulating convincing “theories of justice” based on independent purposive individuals, and for a parallel tendency to reduce citizenship to a purely formal status of individuals within a system of law. The moral status of citizens is reduced to the categories of clientelism and consumerism, in place of a richer phenomenology of inter-personal emotions, obligations, and loyalties. It becomes a transactional conception of citizenship.

In place of this abstract and flat conception of the “citizen” as rational and mutually disinterested individuals, Esquith advances a new conception of democratic social practice that he formulates as radical poise. This virtue is thought to be “capable of (1) coordinating the constituent political virtues and emotions of self-restraint, resistance, humility, political respect for civic dignity, and protest to counter the political violence that fuels forced displacement and (2) constituting a more inclusive demos that embodies these coordinated political virtues and emotions in the exercise of political power with one another, not over others” (Everyday Forms, 4-5). “To be radically poised in such moments of political vertigo is to be actively and imaginatively committed to expanding a diverse demos peacefully even when it seems to be splintering further apart.” (5).

The ideal that Esquith has in mind for a transition to a more peaceful Mali or other existing conflict societies is a powerful one. The goal is to help citizens to a new way of thinking about their society and their neighbors:

That is, to imagine a form of politics that is not a zero-sum competitive contest for power over others but rather a collaborative search for power with one another to constitute a political society, a demos, appropriate in scale and more inclusive in active membership that is capable of resisting and overcoming those forms of anger, fear, and hatred that stereotype and exploit forcibly displaced persons, refugees, immigrants, and fugitives and on which further political violence feeds. (13)

Esquith describes his own strategy in these terms:

My focus is on the prior democratic political education needed to limit negative political emotions and cultivate collective political virtues and the concomitant emotions that orient citizens, prospective citizens, and conditional citizens—the emergent demos—toward alternative conceptions of power so that changes in resource availability and the opportunities to use them can be realistically imagined as part of what I call a radically poised procession. (16)

And later:

To be more effective than the procedures for peacekeeping and peacebuilding that have focused primarily but with inadequate success on liberal state-building and retribution, a process of everyday hybrid peacebuilding through political education must be able to counter negative political emotions, cultivate positive political virtues, and reorient citizens and prospective citizens toward democratic conceptions of political power with mutual trust, imagination, and realistic hope. (87)

Here I would like to extend this line of thought by suggesting a parallel with the problem of moving from a society in which there is a high degree of racism and inter-group antagonism to one in which these negative social emotions have been replaced by more tolerant and respectful ideas about members of other groups. In particular, can the cultural strands of hate and racism that persist in the United States and other liberal democracies through some of the same mechanisms of education that Esquith considers for conflict societies? In my view, the parallel is a deep one. Consider this point about political respect as a democratic virtue:

I will use the word “respect” to refer to a particular kind of respectful political attitude toward others. To treat others with political respect is to respect their rights and responsibilities as equal citizens and to recognize their role in the generation and control of power. (118)

This understanding of respect is directly supportive of a deep conception of equality, and it is flatly incompatible with racism. So when processes of political education succeed in cultivating attitudes of political respect for one’s fellow citizens, these processes are also doing the work of dissolving racist attitudes and behaviors.

Esquith uses the concept of demos throughout the book. The concept requires some explication. He is explicit that the demos is the people of a state, and it is heterogeneous in multiple ways: norms, nationalities, ethnicities, and sometimes legal status (citizen, fugitive citizen, non-citizen). As in classical Greek political philosophy, the demos is distinctly different from the concept of the polis. The polis is held together by a civic culture and shared values; whereas the demos is the people of the nation without any assumption of bonds of loyalty, civic identity, or shared values.

An emergent demos of citizens, conditional citizens, and potential citizens—whatever their formal legal status—must learn to limit the negative political emotions of fear, anger, hatred, and resentment (their own as well as those of others) that drive the cycles of political violence in rich and poor countries alike. (9)

We might say that the role of political education is to find effective institutions, arrangements, and practices through which a demos is transformed into some version of a polis — a political community in which most or all citizens regard each other with respect and value each other’s dignity and freedoms. And this begins to sound more like the vision that Martin Luther King, Jr., described in his vision of a post-racist society, a beloved community.

Affirming democracy

If you are concerned about the fate of our democratic institutions, the rise of xenophobia and hate, and the rule of law, please consider visiting affirmingdemocracy.org — an ongoing group blog aimed at affirming our democracy and opposing the racism, lawlessness, and authoritarianism we now face.

This group blog describes its goals in these terms —

We are a small group of friends and neighbors who reject the turn to authoritarianism, racism, and lawlessness shown by the current Federal administration. This site will serve as a hub for sharing stories and discussions about the realities facing our country and our many communities.

We support a just and equal multicultural democracy, governed by law and constitution, and we want to work together to return our country to these values. In Rousseau’s words, we support a “free community of equals”.

We have many thoughts and fears about the policies and actions of our government today. We do not have a shared credo, but we are united in our love of freedom, equality, constitution, mutual respect, and civil community.

In particular, many of us notice many of the same things:

• We condemn the assault on immigrants and the cruel and lawless enforcement regime the Federal government has enacted.
• We are horrified at the assault on Medicaid and the likely effects these policy changes will have on millions of people in our country.
• We reject the administration’s attack on scientific and medical research, universities, and academic freedom across the country.
• We fear for the future of our country when we consider the ongoing assault on medical research and sound public health planning.
• We condemn the current administration for its lawlessness and its contempt for both Constitution and the Federal judiciary.
• We abhor the administration’s efforts to censor and dictate the museums, libraries, parks, and collections that document our country’s history and share its art, music, and literature.
• We are ashamed of our government’s desertion of Ukraine and the president’s embrace of a bloody-handed dictator, Vladimir Putin.
• We are horrified at the embrace of white supremacy and racial resentment that is encouraged by the current government.
• We reject the government’s war on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, with full awareness of how far our society must go in order to achieve real justice.

Readers of Affirming Democracy are encouraged to find their own ways of supporting peaceful protest and advocacy in support of our shared democratic values and institutions. There is power in collective protest and shared support for our constitutional system.

A guide to being a sociologist

Karl Marx Imagined

The social world is more complex and heterogeneous than most parts of the natural world, with diverse causal processes, different tempos of change, and multiple influences on a given outcome of interest. If we want to understand, say, why American psychiatry came to have the institutions and prescriptions that it currently has (as Andrew Abbott wants to do in The System of Professions), we need to consider —

• actors at a range of levels (local people, state officials, educational institutions and associations …) who have an interest in the definition of mental-health practices, institutions, and regulations
• the legal and educational context that affects the interests and strategies of various practitioners differently
• the ways in which other professions connected to mental health and behavior (such as nursing or street-level policing) have influenced the development of the profession of psychiatry

… and many other factors and processes that do not yield to the impulse towards simple answers or single-dimensional hypotheses.

So the intellectual process of sociological inquiry and discovery is itself a complex and obscure one. The reader of a rich sociological analysis of a complex institution like Abbott’s treatment of the professions will quickly understand that this research project could not have been drafted out in detail in advance. Rather, the researcher was obliged to discover his or her own questions and insights as they dig more deeply into the specific institutional and practical realities of the profession. And this leads us to ask, what kinds of intellectual and imaginative capacities are invoked in this evolving analysis? To what extent does sociological theory contribute to a researcher’s ability to understand a new and complex social phenomenon? What is involved in applying a “sociological imagination” to a sociological topic?

David Stark’s Practicing Sociology: Tacit Knowledge for the Social Scientific Craft is a contribution to current thinking about methods of inquiry and uses of theory in sociological research. Stark is an organizational sociologist who has devoted a great deal of attention to “how organizations learn”.

The title is deliberately thought-provoking: is the process of investigating the social world a “craft”, or is it a set of precise methods that can be taught in PhD programs? The difference in perspective on this question is important: a craft involves something like “tacit knowledge”, whereas a precise set of methods sounds quite a lot like an algorithm of discovery. Stark’s view, and the view of many of the contributors to the volume, is that there are important aspects of the practice of sociology that are indeed “craft”-like. They are features of the active lives of academic sociologists that need to be learned through concrete practice in the discipline.

Stark’s introduction to the volume lays the ground for the contributions that follow. He argues that important parts of the research process within the social sciences are almost never addressed within graduate education. Three activities in particular are important: the researcher must “(1) come up with a compelling research topic …; (2) develop a publication strategy; and (3) learn how to improve a manuscript while navigating the process of peer review” (p. 1). And Stark suggests that these topics are both crucial to impactful sociological research, and at the same time, substantially under-developed when it comes time to assist young sociologists to make the transition from learners to researchers and creators of knowledge. Stark’s own comments focus on what are somewhat epiphenomenal aspects of the process of research — deciding who your audience is, choosing a title, making productive academic relationships in fields different from your own. Notably, however, Stark’s comments do not connect at all to the problems of deciding how to proceed empirically, how to define the research questions of interest in one’s project, how to decide about the theoretical or explanatory ideas that might be relevant to this topic. And yet these are in fact closest to the problem of conducting innovative, illuminating research on a difficult sociological topic.

The book consists of short commentaries in which a number of established scholars attempt to formulate their own answers to these three questions. And the contributions are excellent, written by highly creative and productive contributors to a range of fields of contemporary sociology.

The book is presented as a series of discussions of how a range of accomplished sociologists have sought to better understand the social world. But that’s not really what we get. Instead, in line with Stark’s emphasis on the “craft” of sociology, the contributors are mostly inclined to reflect on their own practices of writing and publication through an extended career. And this often comes down to mundane questions about choosing a potential publisher (book or journal article), how to respond most productively to feedback on a piece of work, how to decide when an article or book is “finished”, how to balance conference invitations and ongoing work within one’s own well defined research program, and similar pragmatic questions that arise for working academics. But we don’t get much insight into the creative intellectual work in which the sociologist engages. The contributors are themselves imaginative and innovative sociologists; but none of them really addresses the intellectual and imaginative processes involved in sociological research. Rather, we get pragmatic reflections about which kinds of publication venues are best for pursuing tenure at a research university, or how much time to spend on reviewers’ comments on a submitted manuscript.

We could ask whether the figure in the AI-generated image above conformed to any of Stark’s recommendations. And the answer seems to be almost universally “no”. Marx’s titles were unintuitive and unrevealing about the material in his manuscript; he gave virtually no thought to his “audience”; he had little interest in interdisciplinary discovery and collaboration; and Marx’s own published work was only a tiny fraction of his total corpus. He seems not to have thought at all about the pragmatic challenges raised by Stark. And similar comments seem in order for other founders”and early contributors to the scientific discipline of sociology — Tarde, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, or Merton. Of course there is a bit of “selection bias” here, but these figures all turned out to have great impact within their intellectual worlds.

Confronting race through Rawls's political philosophy

 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.

Grounds for impeachment

In his speech to the top officers of the United States military Donald Trump has crossed the line from reckless right-wing authoritarian politician to aspiring fascist dictator. Here is a report from the Washington Post on the unprecedented event; scroll down to Amy Wang’s coverage of his speech. Here are some crucial excerpts from her reporting.

In his speech to top military leaders, President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against the “radical left,” repeatedly calling the group “the enemy within” and insisting that he should be able to use military force in American cities.

“I told [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard. But military, because we’re going into Chicago,” Trump said Tuesday at Quantico, referring to his efforts to deploy military to blue cities and states “to keep domestic order and peace.”

Though Trump has, in recent months, frequently attacked blue cities and states, it was the first time he directly addressed military leaders and told them they would be “a major part” of fighting a “war from within” in cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

“We’ve brought back the fundamental principle that defending the homeland is the military’s first and most important priority. That’s what it is,” Trump said. “Only in recent decades that politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms — at least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms, but we are under invasion from within, and we’re stopping it very quickly.”

Dangerous cities … enemy within … invasion from within … demonization of the “radical left” … This is not the language of an American president who is committed to democracy, constitution, equal rights, and the rule of law. This is not the language of a president who respects the idea of a non-political military. It is not the language of a president who respects the rights of citizens to assemble, to protest, to express their values and their opposition in a peaceful manner. It is rather the language of a Mussolini in Italy, a Pinochet in Chile, or a Juan Carlos Ongania in Argentina in 1966.

And who is the “radical left” to whom Trump refers? It seems to be any person or group who disagrees with the MAGA agenda, who objects to Trump’s lawlessness, who rejects the racism and cruelty of his anti-immigration crusade — in short, anyone who is not MAGA. Are reporters next? What about critical bloggers and Youtube hosts or podcasters? What about leaders of civil rights organizations who object to the explicit racism of ICE profiling on the streets of Chicago or Los Angeles? And how about Democrat senators and congressmen and women who oppose Trump’s plans? Are these the “radical left” that Trump wants to wage war against? Is James Comey just the first high-profile persecution by Trump’s Department of Justice that we will see? Are we talking detention camps for liberals? Are we thinking of firing professors whose courses mention racism and slavery?

We have a constitution, and it is very clear about our fundamental rights — rights of freedom of speech, conscience, association, and habeas corpus, and yes, citizenship by birthright. The president demonstrates that he has no respect or adherence to the principles and values that are embodied in our constitution and our system of law.

The president’s threats about waging war against “internal enemies” and using the military to conduct such an assault should be the basis for impeachment. These threats demonstrate a fundamental disregard and disloyalty to our most basic principles of freedom and equality. This shouldn’t be a political party issue; it concerns the loyalty of the president to the constitution of the United States, and the oath he took when he assumed office. Articles of impeachment now!

Racial assumptions in western political philosophy

A prior post asked whether liberal political philosophy can be “anti-racist”. Charles Mills addresses a related question in much more radical terms. He offers a fundamental critique of European/American liberal philosophy grounded in his view that the “social contract” tradition embodies a comprehensive “racial contract” that embodies racial hierarchy and white supremacy. Here is Mills’s critical overview of the social contract tradition from Hobbes to Rawls:

The social contract is, by definition, classically voluntaristic, modeling the polity on a basis of individualized consent. What justifies the authority of the state over us is that “we the people” agreed to give it that authority. (On the older, “feudal” patriarchal model, by contrast—the model of Sir Robert Filmer, Locke’s target in the Second Treatise—people were represented as being born into subordination.) The legitimacy of the state derives from the freely given consent of the signatories to transfer or delegate their rights to it, and its role in the mainstream moralized/constitutionalist version of the contract (Lockean/Kantian) is, correspondingly, to protect those rights and safeguard the welfare of its citizens. The liberal-democratic state is then an ethical state, whether in the minimalist, night-watchman Lockean version of enforcing noninterference with citizens’ rights or in the more expansive redistributivist version of actively promoting citizens’ welfare. In both cases the liberal state is neutral in the sense of not privileging some citizens over others. Correspondingly, the laws that are passed have as their rationale this juridical regulation of the polity for generally acceptable moral ends.

This idealized model of the liberal-democratic state has, of course, been challenged from various political directions over the past century or so: the recently revived Hegelian moral critique from the perspective of a competing, allegedly superior ideal, a communitarian state seeking actively to promote a common conception of the good; the degraded version of this in the fascist corporatist state; the anarchist challenge to all states as usurping bodies of legitimized violence; and what has been the most influential radical critique up till recently, the Marxist analysis of the state as an instrument of class power, so that the liberal-democratic state is supposedly unmasked as the bourgeois state, the state of the ruling class.

My claim is that the model of the Racial Contract shows us that we need another alternative, another way of theorizing about and critiquing the state: the racial, or white-supremacist, state, whose function inter alia is to safeguard the polity as a white or white-dominated polity, enforcing the terms of the Racial Contract by the appropriate means and, when necessary, facilitating its rewriting from one form to another. (Racial Contract, 111-112)

Mills is especially critical of the choice made by modern liberal social contract theorists like John Rawls to restrict their attention to “ideal theory of justice” without paying attention to the actual systemic injustices that US society embodied. In particular, he is highly critical of the fact that these liberal political philosophers have completely ignored the history and current realities of racial domination and oppression in the United States. He argues, along the lines of the main argument in Racial Contract, that this reflects the continued hegemony of the assumptions of White / European supremacy that he maintains were present within social contract theory from its beginnings.

The retreat of mainstream normative moral and political theory into an “ideal” theory that ignores race merely rescripts the Racial Contract as the invisible writing between the lines. So John Rawls, an American working in the late twentieth century, writes a book on justice widely credited with reviving postwar political philosophy in which not a single reference to American slavery and its legacy can be found, and Robert Nozick creates a theory of justice in holdings predicated on legitimate acquisition and transfer without more than two or three sentences acknowledging the utter divergence of U.S. history from this ideal. (Mills 1997, Racial Contract, 106)

And in Black Rights / White Wrongs (2017) he argues: 

Rawls and Nozick may be in conflict over left-wing versus right-wing liberalism, but both offer us idealized views of the polity that ignore the racial subordination rationalized by racial liberalism. Rawls and Sandel may be in conflict over contractarian liberalism versus neo-Hegelian communitarianism, but neither confronts how the whiteness of the actual American contract and its conception of the right and of the actual American community and its conception of the good affects their views of justice and the self. Late Rawls may be in conflict with early Rawls about political versus comprehensive liberalism, but neither addresses the question of the ways in which both versions have been shaped by race , whether through an ” overlapping consensus ” (among whites) or a “reflective equilibrium” (of whites). (Mills 2017 : 32)

An important manifestation of the importance of features of “imperfect justice” is the fact that a current generation of society may embody ways of thinking, stereotypes, and prejudices that serve to reproduce racist, sexist, or religious discrimination in the next generation. Is there any doubt that cultures of discrimination, disparagement, and bias continue to exist in American society? Of course not; the persistence of these attitudes and behaviors are all too evident, even when expressed in indirect and “socially acceptable” ways. And these attitudes and emotions have consequences for the freedoms of the men and women who are the object of these prejudices. Mills writes in The Racial Contract:

Similarly, a study of how “American apart-heid” is maintained points out that whereas in the past realtors would have simply refused to sell to blacks, now blacks “are met by a realtor with a smiling face who, through a series of ruses, lies, and deceptions, makes it hard for them to learn about, inspect, rent, or purchase homes in white neighborhoods. . . . Because the discrimination is latent, however, it is usually unobservable, even to the person experiencing it. One never knows for sure.” (Mills 1997 [quoting Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 84, 97-98]

This is one concrete mechanism of cross-generational racial domination. A few minutes of reflection can allow us to identify numerous other mechanisms through which current racialized thinking leads to future racial domination and disparity. For example, health disparities often derive from assumptions made by caregivers based on racial or gender stereotypes — sometimes entirely unconsciously. Employment decisions are influenced by stereotyped assumptions about a person based on gender, race, or ethnicity. The racial assumptions and attitudes of police officers often lead to differential treatment of members of the public, including increased likelihood of excessive force and firearms against one group as compared to another. And there are many other examples as well.

Failing to consider “non-ideal justice” is crippling for political philosophy, because it leaves completely unspoken the moral fact that discrimination, oppression, and violence are morally and socially unacceptable and that these evils are pervasive in contemporary society; and it leaves no place for focused thinking about how to move from a non-ideal society to a more just society.

So far Mills offers a damning view of the social contract tradition. However, in Black Rights / White Wrongs he suggests that Rousseau does a better job of bringing “domination” into the discussion of justice and the state. Here he draws extensively from Rousseau’s discussion in the First and Second Discourses:

Rousseau can be seen as initiating an alternative, radical democratic strain in contract theory, one that seeks to expose the realities of domination behind the façade and ideology of liberal consensuality. He retains the two key insights captured by the contract metaphor, the constructed nature of the polity and the recognition of human moral equality, but he incorporates them into a more realistic narrative that shows how they are perverted. Some human beings come to dominate others, denying them the equality they enjoyed in the state of nature. (Mills 2017: 36)

Rousseau, then, is at least open to the idea that “non-ideal” features of social life demand philosophical attention. This view creates an entrance for a more fully anti-racist political philosophy within the social contract tradition. It aligns with the political philosophy of republicanism and Philip Pettit’s views in  Republicanism : a theory of freedom and government (link), in that Mills’s remarks here emphasize “freedom as non-domination”. If freedom means a set of social arrangements in which no individual or group has the power to dominate others, then a constitution guaranteeing freedom is one that authorizes appropriate steps for recognizing and ending past and present forms of domination.

Mills’s criticisms of the social contract tradition are highly negative. Mills seems to suggest that the tradition is entirely useless as a basis for thinking about justice. However, a more nuanced view would allow that this tradition has largely ignored racial domination, a gaping blindspot that demands correction; but that the abstract philosophical principles through which Rawls, Locke, or Rousseau reasoned about freedom, equality, and consent are indeed appropriate principles for thinking about the just society. Suitably embedded in a philosophy that acknowledges categorical inequality and racism, these principles can in fact be quite radical in their implications for needed reform. And it is worth noting that Rawls does not ignore racial discrimination completely; rather, he looks at its injustice as being obvious and beyond debate. His restatement of this point in Justice as Fairness emphasizes the topic of domination and subservience in language that converges with that of Pettit:

Significant political and economic inequalities are often associated with inequalities of social status that encourage those of lower status to be viewed both by themselves and by others as inferior. This may arouse widespread attitudes of deference and servility, on one side, and a will to dominate and arrogance on the other. These effects of social and economic inequalities can be serious evils and the attitudes they engender great vices… Fixed status ascribed by birth, or by gender or race, is particularly odious (Justice as Fairness, 131).

Particularly odious … that doesn’t sound like a silent endorsement of racial discrimination and domination.

Rawls also addresses the religious arguments used by the abolitionists and by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the context of the issue of public reason versus “comprehensive reason” (arguments based on a particular comprehensive conception of the good). From the point of view of justice, only public reasons have force, since there is no politically relevant comprehensive conception of the good.

On this account the abolitionists and the leaders of the civil rights movement did not go against the ideal of public reason; or rather, they did not provided they thought, or on reflection would have thought (as they certainly could have thought), that the comprehensive reasons they appealed to were required to give sufficient strength to the political conception to be subsequently realized. To be sure, people do not normally distinguish between comprehensive and public reasons; nor do they normally affirm the ideal of public reason, as we have expressed it. Yet people can be brought to recognize these distinctions in particular cases. The abolitionists could say, for example, that they supported political values of freedom and equality for all, but that given the comprehensive doctrines they held and the doctrines current in their day, it was necessary to invoke the comprehensive grounds on which those values were widely seen to rest.289 Given those historical conditions, it was not unreasonable of them to act as they did for the sake of the ideal of public reason itself. In this case, the ideal of public reason allows the inclusive view. (Political Liberalism, 251)

His view is that both the 19th-century abolitionists and civil rights activists like MLK made compelling arguments because their “comprehensive” (religious) arguments are entirely supported by public arguments based on equality and equal freedom. Here again, it seems clear that Rawls’s underlying view is one that regards racial inequalities as fundamentally unjust, within the terms of justice as fairness. Though Rawls did not explicitly put this point forward, it is a strong endorsement of the justice of the demands for equality being advanced by the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Tommie Shelby has done substantial work in attempting to help thread the way between the ideal theory offered by Rawls and the concrete, sociological and historical realities of racial oppression that Mills believes must be incorporated into theories of the just society. Shelby’s 2017 book Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform offers an extensive and nuanced reformulation of “justice as fairness” in terms that do take racial oppression into account. Here is a key paragraph:

Rawls has suggested that if we were to conceive of society as a system of social cooperation over time and took an impartial view of what the distribution of benefi ts and burdens of participating in this scheme ought to be, we could arrive at conclusions about what social justice requires that warrant our rational assent. The idea of society as a fair system of cooperation is a moral notion to be used in the evaluation of institutional arrangements. Social justice is constituted by the legitimate claims and responsibilities individuals have within a fair overall social arrangement. Thought about in this way, justice is a matter of reciprocity between persons who regard each other as equals. Taking this approach to questions of social justice is particularly apt when considering criticisms often made against the ghetto poor. It provides a framework for settling whether the urban poor are doing their fair share in upholding the system of cooperation and whether they are receiving the fair share due them as equal participants in this system. Reciprocity, as a central value in liberal political morality, is the primary normative standpoint from which I reflect on family structure, joblessness, and crime in ghetto neighborhoods. (Dark Ghettos, 20)

Mills in turn expresses his own disagreement with Shelby’s approach to Rawls in “Dark Mores: Some Comments on Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform“. Shelby offers a concise summary of his own position in “Racial realities and corrective justice: A reply to Charles Mills” (Critical Philosophy of Race 1:2 (2013)):

In all these interventions, the main thrust of Mills’s critique is to emphasize the need to attend carefully to the realities of racial domination and to deny the value of a normative theory that abstracts away from the actual history of racial injustice. However, this critique has been mainly negative, telling us how not to derive principles of racial justice. Apart from vague suggestions that reparations are due for past racial injustices (e.g., for slavery and land expropriation), the positive normative analysis remains undeveloped. What we get instead is an emphasis on the necessity of getting the historical facts right about white supremacy. Mills does not offer his own positive normative principles for condemning or responding to the history of racial domination that he so forcefully describes. By contrast, Rawls does offer a specific set of normative principles of justice that, I argue, can be usefully applied to racial subordination. Mills, so far as I am aware, does not argue that if we were to follow his methodological approach we would arrive at principles that conflict with the ones that Rawls defends. Nor does he specifically attack or attempt to reformulate Rawls’s principles. So our dispute does not turn on the content of those two principles. (link)

Both Mills and Shelby offer deep and valuable new lines of thought to political philosophy, and their debate is a sign of healthy engagement within a field of philosophy that has sometimes come down to disagreements about the third decimal point. Bringing structures of race and domination into the dialogue within political philosophy is profoundly important.

Can liberal political philosophy support anti-racism?

John Rawls and Philip Pettit agree about the idea that a liberal democracy depends on the idea that all citizens have equal liberties, rights, worth, and dignity. Therefore they also agree that social and legal arrangements that are incompatible with equal rights, equal liberties, and equal dignity are illegitimate. They disagree in some details about what all of this means — Pettit refers to liberty as “the absence of domination” (link), while Rawls emphasizes the liberty to pursue one’s conception of the good in the way he or she chooses (link). But the common ground between these leading advocates of liberal democracy is extensive. And each philosopher provides an unequivocal basis for rejecting mistreatment and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or other social characteristics.

What is less clear is whether either of these philosophers has a place for the idea that an inclusive multicultural democracy — in Rousseau’s conception, a “free community of equals” — has a positive value for the whole of society, and whether enhancing this value is itself a legitimate function of a democratic state. These are separate questions, and it is possible that Rawls and Pettit would affirm the first but deny the second. Rawls’s view in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism is largely that the function of the state is (1) to establish and secure the system of law within which all citizens enjoy maximal, equal rights and liberties, and (2) to establish a legitimate majoritarian process through which policies and laws are enacted subject to the authority of the majority of citizens. Anything more extensive than this falls outside the scope of legitimate exercise of coercive authority, according to Rawls. His distinction between a “political conception of the good” and a “comprehensive conception of the good” is crucial for his view of the scope of the state’s authority: the former consists of the minimal commitments that all citizens share concerning the functions and limitations of the state and its legal system; whereas the latter consists of a fully developed set of ideas and values that individuals or groups may adopt for orienting their lives and activities, but concerning which the liberal state must remain neutral (link).

So, for example, the state cannot undertake on its own, without democratically enacted legislation, to ensure a beautiful natural environment, simply on a governmental judgement that “all of society is better off when the natural environment is maintained for public enjoyment”. For Rawls, this judgment falls within a “comprehensive conception of the good”, and cannot be taken as a function of government without majority-supported legislation. By contrast, the state is fully authorized to enact rules and procedures that guarantee free and unfettered elections, because the right to vote is a fundamental democratic right shared equally by all citizens and part of the “overlapping consensus” (the political conception of the good) required for any democracy.

We can raise this question from two related perspectives: the perspective of idealized political philosophy (abstract theorizing about what constitutes a good and well-ordered society and state) and the perspective of the minimum legal and constitutional requirements needed to ensure the equal liberties and rights of individual citizens (minimalist theory). The first is intended to articulate a vision for the future of social life within a democratic society, while the second perspective is intended to articulate the protections of rights and liberties that every legitimate state must embody.

Is there a basis in the “minimalist” version of the liberal democratic state that gives broad authority to government as well as private and public organizations to take positive measures to cultivate attitudes of racial acceptance and respect among their constituents? Can a liberal democratic state enact a set of arrangements through which citizens will learn the values of tolerance and compassion, and learn of the harmful effects of attitudes involving negative stereotypes about members of other groups? And if the answer is that government itself cannot undertake such measures, are private organizations and relatively autonomous public institutions free to do so when it comes to organizing the functioning, supervision, and training of an agency, a private workplace, or a university? Or does the minimalist perspective on political philosophy involve only restrictions on actions that harm others or reduce the freedoms of others, with no basis for undertaking to change how people think? Perhaps “cultivating mutual tolerance, interest, and respect” is itself a value about which reasonable people may differ.

We might imagine, for example, a “liberal cultural separatist” who fully endorses and respects the equal civil and legal rights of member of other groups, and this person condemns discrimination against individuals based on their particular characteristics. However, this person prefers to associate with members of his/her own group and believes that others should do so as well. “Separation of groups is best for the social order,” according to this version of the good society. If so, then according to Rawls the goal of “building a tolerant and inter-connected society” belongs to a “comprehensive conception of the good”, and the state must remain neutral about this value. Citizens are entirely free to form their own associations and advocacy groups around these values, but the state must not take a side.

To put the point somewhat differently, are the ideas of tolerance, compassion, and respect simply specific visions of inter-group relations, to be debated alongside a number of competing views as “comprehensive conceptions of the good” — with the implication that this particular vision cannot be enforced through state mandates? A traditional liberal like John Stuart Mill (and perhaps Rawls as well) might argue that if the values of a tolerant and respectful society make up a compelling idea, then advocates should be able to persuade a majority of citizens to agree. In that case these programs can be democratically enacted through enabling legislation. But if the idea remains “visionary and confined to a small minority” then the state cannot use its coercive power to enact policies based on this vision of a more tolerant society.

On this line of thought the answer to the question is not much different from the formulation offered by J.S. Mill: liberalism is committed to individual freedoms, including freedom of speech and association, and these commitments are fundamental. So the legal system must give substantial deference to the opinions, statements, and programs of individuals, and much of the same deference is due to private and public institutions as well. The task of struggling for anti-racism, toleration, mutual respect, and communication across major racial and ethnic divisions is to be left to private associations rather than to state legislative authority.

On this view of a liberal society, individuals and their free associations have the right to advocate for an inclusive multicultural democracy, and for the steps needed to create such a world. What about other organizations? Is it legitimate for businesses, public school systems, colleges and universities, and labor unions to adopt similar resolutions? Is it legitimate for these organizations within civil society to enact procedures and requirements within their scope that are designed to influence the thinking and behavior of the individuals who make up those organizations? Do private organizations like businesses, private universities, and non-profit organizations have a zone of autonomy that permits them to undertake “pro-inclusiveness” policies, procedures, and training regimes? And what about organizations owned or directed by the “liberal cultural separatists” considered above — do they too have autonomy to enact processes that further embed prejudice and stereotype?

What seems to be lacking within liberalism, both traditional and contemporary, is a way of coping with “imperfect justice” and the fact that the current generation of society may embody ways of thinking, stereotypes, and prejudices that serve to reproduce racist, sexist, or religious discrimination in the next generation. (Charles Mills explores these ideas in The Racial Contract and Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism.) However, to go beyond racism, it seems clear that a process of moral transformation is needed. Children, young people, and adults need to come to understand the history of racist thinking and action in our country and to recognize the value of respecting the equality and dignity of members of other groups.

The assault on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs in universities, corporations, and government departments currently underway (link) seems to reflect a status quo mentality when it comes to racial prejudice and stereotype: “we are who we are, and there is no need for change”. More bluntly, it reflects an ideology of white supremacy. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed so vividly, racial equality and justice will only come to pass when the people of our nation have undertaken the hard work of confronting the realities and persistence of racism. Personal transformation is a necessary step on the way to human equality.

These reflections suggest that liberal theories of justice like those offered by Pettit and Rawls need to be supplemented by two things: (1) A clear and developed elaboration of the value of a pluralistic multicultural democracy based on real equality and respect across groups. Such an account will demonstrate both the value of such a society and its connection to profound ideas about liberty, equality, and humanity. (2) A clear account of the extended processes of learning that will be needed to get from here to there. Such an account will incorporate a realistic appraisal of the ways in which persistent racial attitudes and habits inform the next generation’s social environment as well, and it will provide some ideas about how to accomplish these transformations at multiple levels. Achieving racial justice, and ending antagonism and mistrust across groups in society, requires good laws, but it also requires sustained processes of personal transformation for citizens of all ages.