Radical Philosophy Review

published on March 5, 2015

Racial Rights and Wrongs
A Critique of Derrick Darby

Derrick Darby’s book Rights, Race, and Recognition defends the seemingly startling thesis that all rights, moral as well as legal, are dependent upon social recognition. So there are no “natural” rights independent of social practices, and subordinated groups in oppressive societies (such as blacks under white supremacy) do not have rights. Darby appeals to intersubjectivist constructivism to make his meta-ethical case, but in this critique, I argue that he conflates, or at least fails to consistently distinguish, two radically different varieties of constructivism: idealized intersubjectivist constructivism, which is objectivist, and non-idealized conventionalist constructivism, which is relativist. In neither case, then, can Darby establish the shocking thesis that white supremacy objectively takes away blacks’ moral standing.