Theorizing Racial Justice

‘My lecture this evening seeks to address the issue of racial justice and, in the process, to look also at the question of why the subject has been so little addressed in Western, and, more specifically, American political philosophy.1 For it is not as if the demand for racial justice is a new one. The protests of recent years, above all “Black Lives Matter,” have brought the topic solidly back on to the national agenda, effectively shattering the widespread “post-racial society” illusions that Barack Obama’s 2008 election had encouraged in some quarters. “