Charles Mills

Charles Mills died, too young, on the 20th of September, of cancer.

I hadn't heard of him until Robert Paul Wolff mentioned him.  But if Professor Wolff praises someone, it's generally worth following up.

So, topping my YouTube search was Mills' 2020 Tanner Lecture on Human Values.  It was well worth watching.  The two hours sped by pretty quickly, and Mills is entertaining, clear and analytically astute.  His sense of humour is a delight.

But most importantly Mills gave me something to think about that I hadn't considered before.

Some background (as always, I may misunderstand things; happy to be corrected):

50 years ago John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice.  In so doing, Rawls helped draw new attention to Social Contract Theory, and his veil of ignorance thought experiment was dramatically thought provoking.

Fundamentally, what it's about is trying to figure out what sort of society we should have.  But a problem is that people with vested interests keep giving their biased, self-interested views.  How do we know which is the right approach, with all of that bias?

In the real world we can't all suddenly become virtuously selfless.  But it's possible to be pragmatic and work with that self-interested part of our nature.  We can still get to an answer.

The idea is to imagine that we don't know who we are going to be in life.  We don't know our social position, our place of birth, our gender, our race, and so on.  We're positioned behind a veil of ignorance.  (We still know good science, though, including psychology and sociology.)

Given this ignorance, self-interestedly, what sort of society would we most like to be thrown into?

Presumably, we would not want a society that is too uneven or unfair, just in case we happen to end up at the bottom of the heap.  Presumably, we (or most of us) would want a society that is mostly decently fair and just.  Rationally and self-interestedly, we thus jointly agree to a social contract to protect ourselves.

The details, from this point, are what this fairness and justice would amount to.

Seems plausible.

But Mills questions this.  As well-intended as it is, it misses an important point.

Mills argues that this approach only works if our current society we are living in is already not too bad.  It assumes our society is already quite close to the ideal.  In those cases, Rawls' veil of ignorance thought experiment enables us to tweak the details of what we are already doing.  It merely improves on a society that already functions pretty well.

But if our current society is too far away from the ideal, then mere tweaking is not going to be enough.

So, Mills proposes a modification to the veil of ignorance thought experiment.

In it, we're still ignorant of who we are and what place we will have in society.

But instead of asking what sort of society we would ideally like, Mills asks us what modifications we would like to make if we were thrown into our currently existing (far from perfect) society.

This is an important difference.

In Rawls' thought experiment our society doesn't have any past baggage to deal with.  But in Mills' thought experiment we are needing to incorporate the existing real world baggage of past injustices.  For Mills, it is not simply about creating a more ideal society but also potentially about correcting past wrongs, which may result in things needing to be done differently.  The Mills-style improved society is thus a unique response to the specific society in question.  It is not a universal, generalised ideal society.

This means that sometimes, for Mills, we will rationally agree to social rules/policies/practices that might otherwise (when thinking ideally) be seen as illiberal.  Using Mills' thought experiment we would agree to put into action policies to rectify past injustices.  We would agree that some groups should be allowed special treatment not permitted others, because they are starting out at a disadvantage thanks to what has gone on in the past.  In other words, with Mills' version, thinking up ways to correct past problems would be at the forefront when figuring out the details.

In case it's not already obvious, Mills has been mostly talking about racial injustices, and in particular those in the US.  (A lot of his work is on race issues, but I decided to ease into the topic!)

Mills makes an important distinction between societies that have racism versus racist societies.  Approximately, societies that have some racism might be close enough to the ideal so that Rawls' thought experiment works.  But racist societies are too far away, and require Mills' modification.

Mills is not the first to point out, very plausibly, that the US is a racist society.  It was founded on racism, and racist practices were an essential and central component of its development.  Too many people are in the social/economic positions they are today because of that racism, and in many places racism still persists.  (Some, though not all, of this racism is more a secondary effect of economic practices in a capitalist society.)

At 1hr 22min 10sec into the video, Mills puts it directly.  When the veil of ignorance lifts, you are going to find yourself in a white supremacist society.

As Mills puts it, imagine you were born a black woman in a ghetto in South Side Chicago, or a Latina somewhere in the southwestern US, or a Native American on a reservation.

What principles of justice, what structures of public policy, would you want to see put in place so as to make sure that you are not going to be radically handicapped in this social situation?

This modification to the thought experiment makes racial justice centre stage rather than off stage altogether.

To me, as a New Zealander, I can comfortably look at the US in this way and acknowledge the work that should be done there to improve their society.  It's a foreign country with some serious problems that need fixing.

But I shouldn't be too complacent.

When Taika Waititi says that New Zealand is "racist as fuck" (while still being "the best place on the planet"), New Zealanders need to pause and think.  And act.

When some Maori are saying that they won't get the Covid vaccination because of the racism they have experienced throughout their lives from police and government workers, and the consequent (understandable) distrust, there's some serious racial issues going on.

Maybe Mills' thought experiment should apply to New Zealand, just as much as to the US.

(Mama pointed out to me that of all the (non-medical) reasons she has heard for people refusing to get Covid vaccinated, this is the only one she could accept.  I agree.)