When reading the end of Sandel's article I tend to
think of Rawls. Sandel puts the right before the good, but only the right as
being something that everyone agreed to respect if we could "abstract from
our interests and ends" (334). This seems very similar to Rawls veil of
ignorance, which is needed to keep us unawares of our possible social status,
abilities, gender, etc in order to make just laws. However, what do we do when
the veil comes off, what happens next after everyone gets a fair chance at
office or at social liberties....who actually gets them and how?
When I look at both of these philosophers, it
reminds me of our race discussion on Wednesday. Had the laws and rights been
made the way Rawls and Sandel have described, we would still have inequalities,
and then who should be blamed if those inequalities become deeply rooted within
the structural upholding of a society? We discussed race as something that we
invent and then we ourselves see what we have invented projected on other people.
We also discussed the idea of a possible collective guilt or responsibility when
one someone commits a racist act; and even more so to be considered racism it
must be an act done from the major race to a minor race. I guess I am interested in hashing this idea
out a little more because it makes sense, but can be a little difficult to
fully wrap our brains around. Within our society racism is a structural
upholding, that has been there for hundreds of years. Since this system was primarily swayed to be anti-black,
which now serves as the “ism” model for other minorities- the disabled,
homosexuals, the old, women, etc.- there is really no way within this system to
have true racism against those of the majority “group”-the whites. There are definitely racist things that can
be said and done, however, they aren’t part of our cultural logic and therefore
we could possibly consider it irrational to think in that way. Now, I know we
talked about it a lot in class, but what do you think? Are there other examples
that you can think of where this is the case, other countries, or societies in which an "ism" cannot structurally be reversed (not yet) and can therefore not actuall be reverse racism?
I completely agree with you when you say that it's almost impossible to be racist against the majority. Even today, people who are racist against whites aren't as harsh as whites were 150 years ago. The majority (whites) were dehumanizing the minority (blacks). But today, anti-white terms aren't meant to be dehumanizing. (The term "honkey" only does so much damage...) We can say anti-white things but they aren't as effective as anti-minority statements. For example, anti-Hispanics say that Hispanics only come to America to steal jobs. But what can the Hispanics come back with? Nothing really. Well they can say that they take the jobs because whites are lazy, but this is pretty soft. So, I really don't think that anti-white racism has as intense of a effect when compared to anti-minority racism.
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