Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [62]
Even if you think that explicit racism and bigotry is widespread in the US today, this still doesn’t seem like enough to explain this inequality. Instead, we need to say this: the rich tend to get richer, and the poor tend to stay poor. So, if we want the kind of real freedom of opportunity that would allow the legacy of racist disenfranchisement to even out, in time, we need to narrow the gap between rich and poor. Rawls’s perspective would clearly call for a redistribution of wealth through something like a progressive income tax, or some other way of lessening the advantage of those born wealthy, and providing expanded opportunities for those born poor.
Up on the Ladder
The predictable response is that it would be unjust to treat wealthy individuals differently in order to benefit others in society. Surely, after all, a basic principle of justice is that like cases should be treated in a like manner, so how can you justify taxing people at different rates? Don’t we have basic property rights? If I obtained my holdings without force or fraud, how can the government be justified in taking a disproportionate share of them? With regard to the racial inequality, rich Whites, placed high up on our ladder by the accidents of birth and family might ask: I didn’t enslave anybody, why should I have to pay for the crimes of dead people who happen to share my skin color?
There is clearly something to be said for this response. This comes into even sharper relief when we look at the example of affirmative action. From a larger perspective, we see systematic disadvantages in the market. While this takes many forms, perhaps the most dramatic is the cycle of poverty in Black America, where those from impoverished backgrounds are less likely to have the same educational and economic opportunities, leaving them with little time and energy to raise their own children, who grow up in depressed areas with underfunded public schools. At the same time, from the smaller, local perspective, the employer might ask, “why should I hire the person I think is less qualified just because he shares a skin color with a group of people who tend to suffer from disadvantages?” The White job applicant might ask, “why should I be disadvantaged just because of my skin color?”
There are many arguments on both sides here, and very good points have been made about, for example, how ‘reverse discrimination’ is not wrong in the way that racial discrimination is wrong, or how our rights in the marketplace are all based on having a healthy marketplace, so economic redistribution or affirmative action are justifiable because they are necessary for there to be a healthy marketplace. These may be right, but they cover over an important point: if we respect universal basic property rights, then the wealthy are right to complain of unequal treatment; and if we think skin color should be irrelevant, then acting on the basis of whiteness is wrong too.
In my view, the problem isn’t that one side is clearly fair and the clearly unfair—the problem is that the world isn’t fair. If we pay attention to the social problems, we violate individual rights and fail to respect those who happen to be advantaged. If we pay attention to individual rights, we allow people to remain in the cycle of poverty, and we allow racial and economic disparities to widen. Either way, we fail to respect what seem to be serious claims about what is just and unjust. Personally, I’d rather work towards social justice, even if it means failing to properly respect individual rights, because