If we accept the premise that exploitative tenancy, credit, and employment relations are fundamental to the enduring patterns of low human wellbeing in much of rural Asia, Africa, and the Americas, then changing those relations is the critical factor for improving human development in the coming 50 years. But if we also recognize the current …
New thinking about generational change about race
The United States has a long history of racism against African-Americans, at multiple levels. At the level of individuals, we have a history of negative attitudes, stereotypes, fears, and antagonisms that are built into the social consciousness of white men and women about African-Americans. Racist attitudes about "genetic inferiority", crime, and other negative stereotypes have …
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Confronting race through Rawls’s political philosophy
Rawls believes that a just society must be a pluralistic society, and that means that it must be neutral across (reasonable) comprehensive conceptions of the good. Citizens must be enabled to pursue their own comprehensive conceptions without interference from the state. Does this imply that a comprehensive conception based on the idea of ethnic or …
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Racial assumptions in western political philosophy
MLK, Rousseau, Rawls (Gemini) A prior post asked whether liberal political philosophy can be "anti-racist". Charles Mills addresses a related question in much more radical terms. He offers a fundamental critique of European/American liberal philosophy grounded in his view that the "social contract" tradition rests upon a comprehensive "racial contract" that embodies racial hierarchy and …
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A political philosophy for an inclusive multicultural democracy
We might say that a political philosophy is a formulation of the normative ideals that the philosopher holds to be primary in implementing the moral and social facts of "assemblages of free individuals in society, with conflicts of interest and belief". How should such a society be organized? What values should it aspire to realize …
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The consequences of a trillion dollars
Many thoughtful people in the US are concerned about the effects that the 2025 federal budget reconciliation law will have on poor people in many states who are currently enrolled in Medicaid health coverage. KFF has put together a comprehensive analysis of the implications of this omnibus act for Medicaid patients here. I asked Gemini for a summary …
Caillebotte’s silences
Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. Artist Gustave Caillebotte. A current exhibition of the paintings of Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) at the Art Institute in Chicago is quite remarkable. It demonstrates the eye, the hand, and the sensibility of this great late-Impressionist painter. But the exhibition is remarkable in another way as well: there is almost no …
Real multicultural democracies
Chicago is a highly diverse city, and it is a good example of life in a multicultural democracy. The image above is a photo of the crowd on Navy Pier on a recent Saturday summer evening. According to local estimates, as many as 120,000 people visit Navy Pier on a Saturday night, and it is …
Stock ownership as system-wide exploitation?
A prior post made an effort to gain greater analytical clarity concerning the unfairness involved in the separation between the "one percent" economy and the rest of us. In what ways is the wealth owned by the super-billionaires an "unfair" extraction from the rest of US society? How can we account for the very rapid …
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A new form of exploitation
Much thinking about economic justice for working people has been framed by the nineteenth-century concept of “capitalism”: owners of enterprises constitute a minority of the population; they hire workers who represent the majority of the population; wages and profits define the distribution of income throughout the whole population. This picture still works well enough for …
Understanding Society 