Rawls and Racial Justice

This chapter explores the conceptual relation of facts about racial injustice to two key aspects of Rawls’s ideal theory. First, it explains why Rawls excludes race from his representation of a well-ordered society and why he believes this exclusion does not mean that justice as fairness cannot support racial justice. Second, it considers three recent accounts of the justificatory role of facts about racial injustice in justice as fairness, focusing on the methods of the Original Position and Reflective Equilibrium. It concludes with a reinterpretation of the method of Reflective Equilibrium that shows why it provides a promising pathway for showcasing the explicit role of facts about racial realities in ideal theory. Namely, their consideration can add justification to the idea of justice as fairness.