The Duty of Justice in the Modern Ghetto

Abstract 

The modern ghetto, understood as severely impoverished urban neighborhoods with majority black citizens, is rampant with unlawful behavior, ranging in severity from petty theft to drug dealing. Many citizens criticize the ghetto poor for failure to obey the law, however from the standpoint of Rawlsian justice, such criticisms can often be invalid. In this paper, I’ll define a framework for evaluating whether an unlawful act by a member of the ghetto poor is morally impermissible or not. To do this, I’ll first reconstruct Tommie Shelby’s argument for why deviant behavior by the ghetto poor cannot be criticized for failure to respect the law due to the fact that civic obligations are grounded in a reciprocal relationship between the citizen and the basic structure of society. Then, I’ll claim that unlawful behavior is impermissible if it violates any of the Rawlsian natural duties, including the duty of justice, which states that citizens are required to uphold just institutions that exist and assist in bringing about just institutions that don’t. After explicating the duty of justice in the context of the modern ghetto, I’ll argue for the validity of the Solidarity Inference, which claims that an unlawful act that harms a fellow member of the ghetto poor violates the duty of justice in almost all cases and thus is morally impermissible. 

I. Introduction 

The modern ghetto, understood as severely impoverished urban neighborhoods with majority black citizens, is rampant with unlawful behavior, ranging in severity from petty theft to organized crime. Many law-abiding citizens are quick to condemn these actions, arguing that unlawful behavior by the ghetto poor only worsens preconceived stereotypes and dampens the passage of assistive legislation. Progressive advocates, on the other hand, argue that what must be changed first is the fact that the modern ghetto is subject to a myriad of deep racial, political, and economic injustices. In this paper, I’ll weigh-in on this debate by considering unlawful behavior in the modern ghetto from the standpoint of Rawlsian justice. 

In Tommie Shelby’s “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto,” he argues for why certain reasons for criticizing deviant actions by the ghetto poor are invalid. He claims that because the basic structure of society in the United States is intolerably unjust towards the ghetto poor, they aren’t required to “respect the authority of the law qua law.”1 Thus, while many Americans believe that all citizens, regardless of class, race, or status, should obey the law, Shelby claims that when the ghetto poor engage in deviant acts such as “crime, refusing to work in legitimate jobs, and having contempt for authority,” they cannot be criticized specifically for the failure to respect the law.2 

But even if we accept Shelby’s claims, we don’t have a framework for evaluating whether an unlawful act is morally permissible. For as Shelby himself acknowledges, just because an action isn’t able to be criticized solely for failing to respect the law doesn’t mean it can’t be morally impermissible for other reasons. In this paper, I’ll explicate Shelby’s arguments and draw on Rawlsian notions of justice to define a framework for evaluating whether certain actions by the ghetto poor are morally permissible. I first claim that unlawful acts by the ghetto poor are morally permissible so long as they don’t violate any Rawlsian natural duties. In explaining this, I’ll draw particular attention to the duty of justice, and in doing so, I’ll argue for the Solidarity Inference, which states that in almost all cases, an unlawful act by a member of the ghetto poor is morally impermissible if it harms another member of the ghetto poor. 

II. The Ghetto Poor and the Law 

To begin, I’ll reconstruct Shelby’s argument for why the ghetto poor can’t be criticized for not “respect[ing] the authority of the law qua law.”3 To do this, it’s necessary to first define what Shelby refers to as civic obligations versus natural duties. He writes: “Civic obligations are owed to those whom one is cooperating with to maintain a fair basic structure.”4 Thus, he establishes that social justice in a society is “a matter of reciprocity” in that citizens who benefit from a basic structure must also do their part in upholding it.5 However, it is unreasonable to expect citizens who don’t benefit from, or are even harmed by, the basic structure of society to then be required to uphold it. In this sense, civic obligations are grounded in a reciprocal relationship between the society and the citizen. 

This is to be distinguished from natural duties, which “are not negated by the existence of an unjust social order.”6 Briefly, these include “the duty not to be cruel… a duty to not cause unnecessary suffering…a duty of mutual respect” as well as the duty of justice.7 So, while some members of society could be exempt from fulfilling their civic obligations, they, like all moral beings, must not violate their natural duties. 

What, then, is the threshold of injustice past which citizens are no longer required to fulfill their civic obligations? This is an important question, for it is arguably impossible for any society to be fully just, at least in the Rawlsian sense (ie. a just society is one that upholds the two principles of justice as applied to its basic structure). This logically means that there is some level of injustice below which citizens are not exempt from fulfilling their civic obligations. For Shelby, the necessary and sufficient requirement for a livable basic structure of society is “if the constitutional essentials are secure.”8 Enumerating these, he writes: 

For Rawls these essentials are the familiar basic rights of a liberal democratic regime—such as freedom of speech, conscience, assembly, and association; the right to vote and run for office; the right to due process and judicial fairness—and the political procedures that ensure democratic rule. The constitutional essentials also include freedom of movement, free choice of occupation, formal justice, and a social minimum that secures the basic material needs of all citizens.9 

Shelby treats the satisfaction of the constitutional essentials as the “standard for tolerable justice” because the constitutional essentials have an “indispensable role in creating social stability” while also “publicly affirming the equal status of all citizens under the law.”10 

Shelby then argues that the basic structure of the United States doesn’t meet this standard for those who live in black ghettos. To begin, he defines a black ghetto as having three core characteristics: “(1) predominantly black, (2) urban neighborhoods, (3) with high concentrations of poverty.”11 Furthermore, along with having a high concentration of poverty, black ghettos also have “few good employment options.”12 For this reason, many residents in black ghettos must “rely on crime to supplement legitimate income.”13 

Shelby also establishes that “the impact of institutional racism is deepest in dark ghettos,” precisely because those ghettos feature a combination of both “racism and extreme poverty.”14 For instance, those who live in dark ghettos are disadvantaged when it comes to employment, given that employers “expect blacks from the ghetto to be generally violent, dishonest, unreliable, and ignorant.”15 They are also disadvantaged when it comes to housing because a) they cannot afford to move to the suburbs due to fewer employment opportunities and b) there exists racial discrimination in housing practices in order “to segregate poor blacks in the inner city.”16 

Thus Shelby claims that, due to black ghettos’ “combination of social stigma, extreme poverty, racial segregation (including poorly funded and segregated schools), and shocking incarceration rates,” those who live in black ghettos do not have secure constitutional essentials, and the basic structure of society in the United States is intolerably unjust towards them.17 This leads to Shelby’s ultimate claim, which is that “the deviant conduct and attitudes prevalent in the ghetto” are not “unreasonable.”18 That is, given that the relationship between the basic structure of the United States and the ghetto poor is broken, the ghetto poor are not required to “honor the fair terms of social cooperation that others accept and abide by.”19 

III. The Duty of Justice in the Ghetto 

To summarize the above section, the ghetto poor are morally justified in committing unlawful acts, so long as they don’t violate any natural duties. Many of these natural duties have straightforward implications for assessing the moral permissibility of actions committed by the ghetto poor. For instance, the duty to not cause unnecessary suffering means that “[t]aking the lives of others, except in self-defense or in defense of others, is hardly ever justified.”20 

Now, the duty of justice, what Rawls calls “the most important natural duty,” poses interesting yet important implications for what acts by the ghetto poor are and aren’t morally justified.21In his article, Shelby characterizes the duty of justice as “the duty to uphold, and to assist in bringing about, just institutions.”22 However, it’s important to note that he is drawing from Rawls’ definition of the duty of justice, and as such, I will now turn to Rawls’ discussion on this subject. Rawls writes: 

From the standpoint of the theory of justice, the most important natural duty is that to support and to further just institutions. This duty has two parts: first, we are to comply with and to do our share in just institutions when they exist and apply to us; and second, we are to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist, at least when this can be done with little cost to ourselves.23 

Thus, Rawls divides the duty of justice into two parts, both of which must be met in order for the duty of justice to be upheld. Now, when applied to the ghetto poor, this duty manifests in two necessary conditions that must be met in order for an unlawful act to be morally justified. Put formally, some member of the ghetto poor is morally justified in committing an unlawful act L only if: 

1) L won’t predictably undermine just institutions that exist and apply to the ghetto poor. 2) L won’t predictably undermine the realization of just institutions that don’t currently exist or apply to the ghetto poor, at least when doing so can be done with little cost to the member in question. 

I will now discuss each of these conditions in further detail. In doing so, I’ll draw particular emphasis on the second condition and why it usually, but not always, infers the condition that any unlawful act cannot harm others among the ghetto poor. 

The first requirement of the duty of justice is to “comply with and to do our share in just institutions when they exist and apply to us,” which lends itself intuitively to the first condition.24 But this condition can largely be dismissed, for virtually any unlawful act committed by a member of the ghetto poor won’t violate it. This is because, as Shelby vehemently argues, there are no just institutions that apply to the ghetto poor. Indeed, his central thesis is that the basic structure of the United States is not only unjust towards the ghetto poor but intolerably unjust. 

Now at this point, a potential objector could argue that though the basic structure of the United States is intolerably unjust towards those in the ghetto poor, there still do exist institutions that are just, and those in the ghetto poor must ensure that unlawful acts don’t undermine them. Taking this line would require using the Rawlsian definition of institution – “a public system of rules which defines offices and positions with their rights and duties, powers and immunities, and the like'' – and arguing for the existence of an entity that matches this definition and upholds the Rawlsian principles of justice.25 

However, even if our objector could accomplish this, such an objection can be rejected, for no such institution could conceivably “apply” to the ghetto poor, if one defines apply to mean having a substantive degree of influence. For as I’ve already established while reconstructing Shelby’s claims, the basic structure of the United States and all of its major social institutions are intolerably unjust to the ghetto poor, including institutions that deal with education, housing, employment, and political life. Thus, any institution that is just to all citizens cannot be a part of the basic structure, and so, it would have a largely negligible influence on the ghetto poor. Now, the second requirement of the duty of justice is to “assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist, at least when this can be done with little cost to ourselves,” from which we arrive at the second condition.26 What must be made clear is that “cost”, as used by Rawls, should be understood as moralized cost, not cost in the straightforward economic sense. To see what I mean, consider the following hypothetical: suppose we have a despot ruling over a society of people, who routinely suffer from injustice and deprivation under his reign. Then the realization of just institutions in this society can only happen if the despot’s pernicious grip on this society is weakened, and thus justice in this society comes at a cost to the despot. This, however, cannot possibly justify the despot’s refusal to assist in the establishment of just institutions, for then the conclusion would be that anyone who benefits from unjust institutions is exempt from assisting in the realization of just institutions, which would be absurd as a principle of justice. Thus, the clause “at least when this can be done with little cost to ourselves” ought to be clarified to be: “at least when this can be done with little cost to ourselves, given that the people in question aren’t unreasonably profiting from existing unjust institutions.” Call this expanded clause the Cost Clause. 

Thinking about the Cost Clause in the context of the modern ghetto, it becomes apparent that the only members of the ghetto poor that are unreasonably profiting from injustice in the ghetto are those involved in organized crime, specifically the criminal gang leaders who generate massive profits from orchestrating the drug trade. Leaders of these criminal groups generate lucrative profits at the expense of other members among the ghetto poor, and in this sense they parallel the despot in my above hypothetical. While others among the ghetto poor are trying to get by in spite of their unjust conditions, those who operate the drug trade actively take advantage of the unjust conditions to increase their benefits. For example, knowing that many of the youth in ghettos lack basic human essentials such as the feeling of belonging and a livable income, criminal leaders entice the youth in these ghettos to join their cause and add to their ranks while promising to provide for them. Left with seemingly no other choice, the youth gradually gravitate towards gang activity, with the result of further increasing the leaders’ profits while perpetuating injustice in the ghetto. 

Clearly, then, the leaders of organized crime in the ghetto are profiting unreasonably from injustice in the ghetto. Thus, they are akin to the despot in my previous hypothetical scenario, which means that though assisting in the realization of just institutions would invariably come as a cost to them in the economic sense, they are not exempt from this duty. Indeed, it is unequivocally true that in order for justice to manifest in the modern ghetto, organized crime must first be dismantled. 

Now, excluding those who lead and perpetuate organized crime, the Cost Clause can serve to justify why other members of the ghetto poor could be exempt from assisting in the realization of just institutions. As I’ve discussed above, the injustices that plague the ghetto poor preclude them from pursuing employment opportunities that pay livable wages. Instead, the ghetto poor are required to “work for poverty wages” that generally don’t secure them an income that’s sufficient to meet their basic needs.27 And without the prospect of better employment or educational opportunities, it is indeed only rational for them to believe that they must turn to petty crime in order to supplement their sparse income. Refraining from unlawful acts and committing to working these low-income jobs, then, imposes a severe cost upon these members of the ghetto poor, for doing so means that most of them will struggle to meet their basic needs.

It is for this reason that members of the ghetto poor do not violate the duty of justice when they refuse to work menial jobs for poverty wages and instead turn towards deviant acts to generate a livable income. 

IV. The Solidarity Inference 

We have previously discussed how the Cost Clause doesn’t justify the actions of leaders of the drug trade because they profit unreasonably from injustice in the ghetto. We have also established that the Cost Clause can justify members of the ghetto poor who commit acts of petty crime in order to meet their basic needs. I will now consider the question of what unlawful acts by members of the ghetto poor aren’t justified by the Cost Clause. Ultimately, I’ll argue that in almost all cases, unlawful acts that harm others among the ghetto poor, such as stealing from or taking advantage of a weaker member in the ghetto, is morally impermissible: call this the Solidarity Inference, as it is an inference from the second condition of the duty of justice. 

To see why the Solidarity Inference is generally true, first note that refraining from acts of crime against others among the ghetto poor usually does not impose a severe cost on the actors in question. This is because the level of wealth of the average citizen in a dark ghetto is so minimal that when the ghetto poor are preying on each other, they are largely fighting for pennies. That is, they are taking from those who essentially have nothing and generating very little benefit by doing so. 

Furthermore, when the ghetto poor prey upon each other, they greatly undermine sympathetic public sentiment and the prospect of progressive legislature. Not only are these acts of crime seen by the general public as problematic in-of-themselves, but they also perpetuate a culture of hostility in these ghettos. In his article, Shelby writes that there are two “criminal ethics'' that emerge in dark ghettos: gangsters, who use violence to extract goods from others, and hustlers, who use deception to extract goods from others.28 Those of the ghetto poor who wish to “engage profitably in street crime” generally adopt one or both of these identities, for each have their own assets that benefit a life of crime.29 

And even if a member of the ghetto poor refuses to commit to a life of street crime, he still must mold his behavior in order to survive in an environment riddled with crime. This requirement generally results in the development of a persona similar to the gangster or hustler ethic. Shelby writes: 

Residents are always on guard and view strangers with suspicion, for one can never be sure that others are not looking to take advantage of you. In adapting to these conditions, many residents not directly involved in crime develop survival strategies that are similar to or mimic the strategies of gangsters and hustlers. To avoid being victimized one must appear shrewd and capable of defending oneself, with deadly violence if necessary. Here the familiar male adolescent desire to appear “tough” can take on lethal dimensions, with frightening consequences for those who live in urban communities.30 

Thus, the culture of crime in dark ghettos is highly pervasive, such that even those who abstain from crime must develop personas that are unwelcoming, thereby contributing to a culture of hostility amongst the ghetto poor. 

So, when it comes to committing acts of crime between members of the ghetto poor, the result is little monetary benefit and the reinforcement of a culture of hostility in dark ghettos. Such acts are likely to lead to increased racial prejudices as well as negative public sentiment towards the ghetto poor. Because of these consequences, the prospect of just institutions becomes increasingly unlikely in the modern ghetto. Thus, returning back to the second requirement of the duty of justice, it is generally the case that unlawful acts committed by a member of the ghetto poor against another member is morally impermissible, for doing so undermines the prospects of just institutions. Furthermore, refraining from such actions isn’t a large cost for members of the ghetto poor. From this, I arrive at the Solidarity Inference. 

Now, the Solidarity Inference would only fail to hold if harming another member of the ghetto poor furthered the realization of just institutions. To me, this could only be possible in the rare case when an unlawful act is committed that specifically harms those leading organized crime in the ghetto, assuming that this action meaningfully combats the influence of these gangs on the ghetto and is not an act that is committed out of hatred or spite. As discussed previously, the pernicious grip that criminal gangs have on the ghetto poor is suffocating and perpetuates the injustice already present. Thus, such an action, even if unlawful, would bring about the realization of justice in the ghetto poor, which is a necessary condition as specified by the duty of justice. 

In practice, however, this rarely occurs, for an action that harms the gangs running organized crime in the ghetto would surely bring with it much danger and a high probability of retaliation, considering the massive amount of violent resources at the gangs’ disposal. Indeed, this is precisely why very few people in the modern ghetto take steps to dismantle gang culture, either directly or indirectly. And given the great cost that comes with battling gang culture, these members are justified under the Cost Clause. Recall that the Cost Clause exempts members of the ghetto poor from taking action to realize just institutions if doing so comes at a significant cost to them. Thus, even if harming the drug trade would bring about just institutions in the modern ghetto, doing so is not required by the duty of justice because it often leads to dire consequences.

V. Conclusion 

In this paper, I have defined a framework for evaluating the moral permissibility of unlawful acts committed by the ghetto poor. In particular, I’ve reconstructed Shelby’s claim for why deviant acts by the ghetto poor cannot be criticized for being unlawful, and I’ve claimed that unlawful acts by the ghetto poor are morally permissible so long as they don’t violate any of the natural duties, from which we arrive at the Solidarity Inference. 

Now, as I’ve discussed above, the Solidarity Inference is especially pertinent towards the behavior of the ghetto poor. Its practical implications are, in fact, quite profound, for if the ghetto poor commit to an ethic of cooperation and solidarity, rather than an ethic of taking advantage of each other, then the path towards progressive and egalitarian legislation can be paved. Despite the fact that current members of the ghetto poor are seen as “violent, dishonest, unreliable, and ignorant,” if a culture of empathy and cooperation were to take hold, then the ghetto poor would gradually foster beneficial qualities such as diligence, trustworthiness, and empathy.31In turn, these qualities will generate the public sympathy necessary for justice to take hold in legislatures, social institutions, and most importantly, the basic structure of the United States.