Behind 'The Veil of Race-Neutrality': Sharing Responsibility for Racial Justice and Cultivating Democratic Equality of Difference

Abstract

This dissertation adopts a ‘social criticism’ model in order to analyze racism in our contemporary world – particularly the United States. This analysis offers a detailed account of racism as rooted in social structural processes, and prioritizes oppression and domination as the chief wrongs resulting from racism. To do so, said analysis highlights norms, ideals, policies, and actions, that are often assumed to be ‘race neutral’ (e.g., impartiality, merit, ‘natural rights’, and autonomy), and the role they play in the production of racial injustice. More specifically, it exposes how these norms function to undermine human agency by restricting means for self-development and self-determination. As such, the role that inclusive and democratic deliberation can play in combating racial oppression and domination is developed. In light of this analysis, a defense of a ‘concrete morality’ which prioritizes the fight against oppression and domination, is made against an ‘abstract morality’ that adheres to ‘ideally just’ principles regardless of the injustice that results from doing so. Moreover, this project develops a ‘shared responsibility model’ for racial injustice, articulating varying degrees and kinds of responsibility we have for correcting it. It concludes by offering ‘democratic equality of difference’ as a normative ideal for cultivating racial justice. Generally, said ideal aims to: create basic conditions for the self-development and collective self-determination of all; cultivate a universally inclusive and ongoing process of democratic deliberation for solving collective problems; and attend to difference when deliberating about matters of justice.