Dark Mores: Some Comments on Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform

Autor: Charles W. Mills
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Criminal Law and Philosophy. 16:29-43
ISSN: 1871-9805
1871-9791
DOI: 10.1007/s11572-019-09512-w
Popis: Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform is a major contribution to black political thought and the theorization of racial justice more generally. In these brief comments, I begin by situating Shelby’s work both in the Anglo-American political tradition and the Afro-modern political tradition. While praising the accomplishment that Shelby’s book represents, I nonetheless go on to point out some obstacles to his project arising from the tensions between these traditions. Using the concept of “dark mores” (a racially differentiated ethic coming in both white and black versions), I argue that Shelby’s racially revisionist Rawlsianism is pre-empted by Rawls’s own restrictions on the scope of his theory, while Shelby’s invocation of “reciprocity” as a key norm is undermined by the structural asymmetries of a racist society.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: