Rawls and Racial Justice

Abstract

This chapter explores the relation of facts about racial injustice to two key aspects of Rawls’s ideal theory. First, it explains why Rawls excludes race as a social category in his depiction of a well-ordered society and why he believes this exclusion does not mean that justice as fairness cannot support or secure racial justice. Second, it considers three recent accounts of the role of social facts about racial injustice, focusing on the methods of the original position and reflective equilibrium. It concludes with a reinterpretation of the method of reflective equilibrium that provides a novel defense of the role of facts about racial realities in theorizing about justice. Namely, the consideration of facts about racial realities at the level of ideal theory makes clear that justice as fairness establishes the foundational requirements of racial justice, thereby adding justification or practical use-value to Rawls’s ideal theory for the express purpose of eliminating racial injustice.