Race and the Meso-Level Sources of Domination

Abstract

This paper contributes to recent debates over the place of race in liberal theory, and the work of John Rawls in particular. Controversy has centered on whether Rawls’s broader philosophical approach is capable of addressing racial injustice, and if not, precisely why the Rawlsian framework remains disconcertingly blind to such issues. Pace scholars who focus on Rawls’s emphasis on “ideal theory,” and whether that precludes his engagement with racial domination, we show that Rawls’s inability to account for, or address, racial injustice lies in his limited understanding of the kinds of “associations” or institutions that condition and perpetuate racial oppression. As studies in race and American Political Development have shown, nonstatutory institutions such as political parties, unions, and universities were key to the development and maintenance of racial hierarchical order. Fully understanding the role of these institutions in perpetuating racial injustice allows us to see that the limitations of Rawls are not his ideal theory, per se, but his preoccupation with the “basic structure” of society, which rendered such institutions outside his analysis. We conclude by drawing on thinkers in the Afro-Modern tradition who help us conceptualize how such institutions are complicit in, and can be weaponized against, racial domination.