Justice, deviance, and the dark ghetto

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 126-160

  Shelby, Tommie ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34247546287     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2007.00106.x     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Norman Daniels makes this important point when discussing how the "context of compliance" (i.e., the extent to which social institutions satisfy appropriate principles of justice) affects how we should assess the relative priority of (i) providing adequate welfare benefits to the poor, (ii) avoiding the creation of work disincentives, and (iii) maintaining equity between low-income earners. Most relevant to my concerns is Daniels's claim, which I believe is correct, that the extent to which background conditions are unjust will have implications for determining who among the jobless poor are blameworthy for failing or refusing to work. (See his "Conflicting Objectives and the Priorities Problem," in Income Support: Conceptual and Policy Issues, ed. Peter G. Brown, Conrad Johnson, and Paul Vernier [Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981], pp. 147-64.) I develop and draw out the consequences of this insight for the debate over the obligations of the ghetto poor.
2. Recent work in sociology has attempted to transcend the behavior-versus-structure debate by carefully demonstrating the subtle interaction between structural and cultural factors in the explanation of ghetto conditions. See, for example, Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1999); and Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York: Norton, 1999). Unfortunately, journalistic writing, public debate, and elite political discourse do notgenerally reflect this more nuanced view of urban poverty.
3. For helpful discussions of how the public discourse surrounding urban poverty, including social scientific discourse, is often stigmatizing and even racist, see Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York: Pantheon, 1990); Herbert J. Gans, The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic, 1995); Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); and Ange-Marie Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York: NYU Press, 2004).
4. An additional advantage of drawing on Rawls's theory is that it allows me to rebut the charge, frequently made by Critical Race Theorists and others on the Left, that this brand of liberalism, like its classical ancestor, has little insightful to say about issues of race and class.
5. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 15-18.
6. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 82; and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 55.
7. The remarks in this paragraph and the next are developed in greater detail in my "Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations," Fordham Law Review 72 (2004): 1697-1715; and "Is Racism in the 'Heart'?" Journal of Social Philosophy 33 (2002): 411-20.
8. For evidence of this, see Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
9. For forceful criticisms of this "colorblind" principle, see Bernard R. Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, rev. ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), chap. 1. Also see Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), chap. 4.
10. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 51.
11. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 173-74.
12. For a classic discussion of the relationship between being respected as an equal and the principle of equal opportunity, see Bernard Williams, The Idea of Equality, in his In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 97-114.
13. See Paul A. Jargowsky, Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), pp. 12-17.
14. For comparative accounts of U.S. ghettos with similar urban communities in Western European societies, see Barbara Schmitter Heisler, "A Comparative Perspective on the Underclass: Questions of Urban Poverty, Race, and Citizenship," Theory and Society 20 (1991): 455-483; Loïc J.D. Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on Its Nature and Implications," Acta Sociologica 39 (1996): 121-39; and Roger Lawson and William Julius Wilson, "Poverty, Social Rights, and the Quality of Citizenship," in Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social Policy: Western States in the New World Order, ed. Katherine McFate, Roger Lawson, and William Julius Wilson (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), pp. 693-714.
15. These other ethnoracialminority communities present complications for questions of justice that black ghettos generally do not. For instance, many Asian enclaves and Latino barrios contain large numbers of first-generation immigrants. Fair equality of opportunity is not an appropriate standard for judging whether immigrants are treated fairly by the social system. Their place in the system did not begin at birth, and their life prospects will obviously depend, not only on whether they receive fair treatment in the United States, but also on the social advantages or disadvantages (e.g., in education and wealth) they had in their country of origin prior to immigration. Many from poor countries can substantially improve their material condition by immigrating to the United States, and so some do not resent the existing opportunity structure but are often grateful for the chance to enhance their lives, even if that chance is not equal to that of native-born citizens. Moreover, unlike native-born black Americans, immigrants generally have the option to return to their country of origin. Indians who live on reservations, on the other hand, are nations or quasi-nations unto themselves, with some rights of group self-determination. The recognized group rights and treaties between indigenous peoples and the United States complicate questions of social justice for Native Americans. African Americans, while a protected group under antidiscrimination law, do not enjoy such group-based rights, although I do not mean to imply that they should.
16. Katherine S. Newman, No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (New York: Vintage and Russell Sage, 1999).
17. Wilson, When Work Disappears, pp. 67-70.
18. See Jennifer L. Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), chap. 4.
19. As with the term 'deviant,' by 'illegitimate' I do not mean 'unjustified.' That would beg the question. Rather, these are means, should one use them, that would violate widely recognized behavioral norms, whether legal, moral, or traditional. These norms can be "legitimate," in the relevant sense, without being fully justified.
20. See Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of theUrban Poor (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
21. It is just this distinction between having committed criminal acts and being habitually disposed to criminal behavior that is elided in Michael Levin, "Responses to Race Differences in Crime," Journal of Social Philosophy 23 (1992): 5-29.
22. The "gangster" and the "hustler" are familiar social identities in poor urban communities, and these terms are generally associated with male personas and activities. In adopting these urban vernacular expressions, I do not mean to imply that only men and boys perform these roles or accept their associated ethics. Moreover, both men and women, boys and girls, use street capital and deploy the tactics and strategies of gangsters and hustlers, though obviously not always in the same ways or with the same frequency.
23. See my "Parasites, Pimps, and Capitalists: A Naturalistic Conception of Exploitation," Social Theory and Practice 28 (2002): 381-418.
24. See Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), chap. 3; Lawrence D. Bobo and Devon Johnson, "A Taste for Punishment: Black and White Americans' Views on the Death Penalty and the War on Drugs," Du Bois Review 1 (2004): 151-80; and Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime, and the Law (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), chap. 10.
25. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh and Steven D. Levitt, " 'Are We a Family or a Business?' History and Disjuncture in the Urban American Street Gang," Theory and Society 29 (2000): 427-62.
26. Loïc Wacquant, "Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh," Punishment and Society 3 (2001): 95-133.
27. Western, Punishment and Inequality, chap. 5.
28. Venkatesh, Off the Books; Wilson, When Work Disappears, pp. 59-72; and Anderson, Code of the Street, chap. 3.
29. Jeffrey Fagan and Deanna L. Wilkinson, "Guns, Youth Violence, and Social Identity in Inner Cities," in Crime and Justice, Vol. 24, ed. Michael Tonry and Mark H. Moore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 104-88.
30. See, for example, Lawrence Bobo, James R. Klugel, and Ryan A. Smith, "Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology," in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s, ed. Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), pp. 15-41; Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000); Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliot Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
31. Joleen Kirschenmen and Kathryn M. Neckerman, " 'We'd Love to Hire Them, But⋯ ':THe Meaning of Race for Employers," in The Urban Underclass, ed. Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991), pp. 203-32; and Wilson, When Work Disappears, chap. 5.
32. For a general account of how racist beliefs and attitudes reproduce oppressive conditions, see my "Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory,"Philosophical Forum 34 (2003): 153-88. Also see Robert Miles, Racism (London: Routledge, 1989); Barbara J. Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review 181 (1990): 95-118; John T. Jost and Mahzarin R. Banaji, "The Role of Stereotyping in System- Justification and the Production of False Consciousness," British Journal of Social Psychology (1994): 1-27; Bobo, Klugel, and Smith, "Laissez-Faire Racism"; and Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap. 4.
33. William JuliusWilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 39-46; and John D. Kasarda, " Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass," in The Ghetto Underclass: Social Science Perspectives, updated edition, ed. William Julius Wilson (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1993), pp. 43-64.
34. Low-skilled inner-city workers could also get to jobs in the suburbs if they had cars, which most cannot afford. Public transportation systems in most metropolitan areas are woefully inefficient, creating long commuting times, and are often too expensive for the working poor to use daily.
35. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid; Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Camille Zubrinsky Charles, Won't You Be My Neighbor? Race, Class, and Residence in Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006); and William JuliusWilson and Richard P. Taub, There Goes the Neighborhood (New York: Knopf, 2006).
36. It is worth noting that the ghetto poor do sometimes manage to exit poor neighborhoods but then only to return to the same or a similar neighborhood shortly thereafter. Indeed, some are able to move to nonpoor neighborhoods and then these new neighborhoods become poor later, as more poor people move in and the nonpoor move out. For many poor urban blacks, the problem is not so much getting out of the ghetto but staying out. See Lincoln Quillian, "How Long Are Exposures to Poor Neighborhoods? The Long-Term Dynamics of Entry and Exit from Poor Neighborhoods," Population Research and Policy Review 22 (2003): 221-49.
37. Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, "Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration," American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 151-69; Loïc Wacquant, "From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the 'Race Question' in the U.S.," NewLeft Review 13 (2002): 41-60;see alsoWacquant,"Deadly Symbiosis." For a concise summary of the racist causes and racial consequences of mass incarceration in the United States, see Brian Barry, Why Social Justice Matters (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), chap. 7.
38. Marc Mauer, Race to Incarcerate (New York: New Press, 1999).
39. Lincoln Quillian and Devah Pager, "Black Neighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in Evaluations of Neighborhood Crime," American Journal of Sociology 107 (2001): 717-67.
40. For a discussion of the distinction between the rational and the reasonable in practical affairs, see Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 48-54. Also see T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to EachOther (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 189-94. A similar distinction, between cognitive-instrumental rationality and communicative rationality, is elaborated in Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 8-42.
41. In elaborating this distinction I draw on Rawls's distinction between social obligations and natural duties, though perhaps not in the same way he intended. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 93-101.
42. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 227-30.
43. One way to deny at least the job aspect of this conclusion is to hold that a general work requirement is incompatible with liberal principles of justice, which must be neutral with respect to reasonable conceptions of the good and must not rely on a pre-political notion of moral desert. Criticizing the ghetto poor for not working could thus be regarded as illiberal, insofar as such criticism is premised on the idea that work is good for the worker or that only those who work are deserving of equal respect and concern. However, Stuart White, relying on a Rawlsian fair-play argument, makes a strong case that an obligation to work is a requirement of civic reciprocity, provided background conditions are just and that all who are able, including the wealthy, are expected to make a labor contribution to the common good. See his "Is Conditionality Illiberal?" in Welfare Reform and Political Theory, ed. LawrenceM. Mead and Christopher Beem (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), pp. 82-109.
44. See GaryOrfield, Susan E. Eaton, and The Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: The New Press, 1996); and Jennifer L. Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick, The American Dream and the Public Schools (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
45. Again, I am not here assuming a general civic obligation to work. I am assuming that if such an obligation exists, each citizen should have a fair chance to compete for the desirable jobs and should be reasonably well compensated if he or she must choose from among undesirable employment options. It goes without saying that if jobs are not available, the duty to work could not be binding. For contrasting views on whether there is a general obligation to work, see Lawrence C. Becker, "The Obligation to Work," Ethics 91 (1980): 35-49; and Philippe Van Parijs, "Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 (1991): 101-31. Also see White, "Is Conditionality Illiberal?
46. This is a different point from the one Jeffrie G. Murphy makes in "Marxism and Retribution," Philosophy & Public Affairs 2 (1973): 217-43. Murphy argues that because capitalist societies encourage greed, envy, and selfishness, it would be unfair to punish poor citizens who, in acting on these socially sanctioned motives, commit crimes. As he says, "There is something perverse in applying principles that presuppose a sense of community in a society which is structured to destroy genuine community" (p. 239). Although I amsympathetic to Murphy's position, I amsuggesting something less radical. my point is rather that affluent capitalist societies encourage the expectation that, with a reasonable degree of effort, any able-bodied person has a fair chance to live a life of relative material comfort...
47. But perhaps not. For compelling considerations in favor of treating fair equality of opportunity as a constitutional essential, see Seana Valentine Shiffrin, "Race, Labor, and the Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle,"Fordham Law Review 72 (2004): 1643-75.
48. A similar point is suggested in G. A. Cohen, "The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom," Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 (1983): 3-33. Cohen is responding to the anti-Marxist claim that the members of the working class are not forced to sell their labor power since any one of them, or almost any, could start their own small business and thus exit the proletarian class. He raises the important possibility that some workers, out of solidarity with the others, may object to taking an individual escape that is not part of a general liberation for all. Some members of the lumpen-proletarian ghetto poor might reasonably take a similar position.
49. This point is developed, within a broadly Rawlsian framework, in Howard McGary, "The Black Underclass and the Question of Values," in The Underclass Question, ed. Bill E. Lawson (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 57-70.
50. It is perhaps worth noting that Rawls insists that even within a reasonably just society there is a limit to how much injustice people should have to endure. In particular, he thinks that the burdens of injustice should, over time, be distributed more or less evenly across different sectors and groups in society, so that the weight of oppression does not fall mostly on any one group. Thus he says, "[T]he duty to comply [with reasonably just institutions] is problematic for permanent minorities that have suffered from injustice for many years" (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 312). Even if the United States is reasonably just (according to some defensible standard for tolerable injustice), the burdens that the black urban poor are forced to carry, and the length of time they have had to carry them, might justify their refusal to comply with institutional demands; and if they do not, strictly speaking, provide a justification for such deviance, they almost certainly provide a legitimate excuse.
51. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 98-100.
52. See Venkatesh, Off the Books.
53. For a helpful discussion of this latter issue, see Douglas N. Husak, "Liberal Neutrality, Autonomy, and Drug Prohibitions," Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (2000): 43-80.
54. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 99.
55. For a particularly insightful discussion of the duty of self-respect, see Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, chap. 9.
56. See, for example, G. A. Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000); and Liam Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
57. This argument is suggested in Jennifer L. Hochschild, "The Politics of the Estranged Poor," Ethics 101 (1991): 560-78.
58. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1996).
59. See Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 18-23. For insightful reflections on the significance of a recent urban riot, see the essays in Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising, ed. Robert Gooding-Williams (New York: Routledge, 1993).
60. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 308-10.
61. For a more developed account of when a socially accepted set of beliefs constitutes an ideology, with a particular focus on racial ideology, see my "Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory."
62. There is a variant of this point of view that would appear to have traction in some urban black communities. On this alternative view, the United States is thoroughly corrupt and cannot be redeemed. Given that mass emigration would be impossible for the poor, the only viable option is to build self-reliant ghetto communities without any expectation that justice will someday prevail throughout the whole of the society. Even if this pessimistic prognosis were correct (although I do not believe it is or, rather, hope it is not), the duty of justice would still need to be honored in this black nationwithin a nation. However, Iwill not explore the practical implication of the duty in this context. For my response to this brand of black nationalism, see my We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), chaps. 3-4.
63. I owe this point to Tim Scanlon.
64. I describe the general requirements of political solidarity in We Who Are Dark, pp. 67-71. For a helpful discussion of what duties the members of oppressed groups have to each other, see Michael Walzer, "The Obligations of Oppressed Minorities," in his Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 46-70.