Democracy, Race, and Authority; Or, Rescuing Democratic Authority from Global Oppression

Abstract

Democracy is a powerful ideal; so powerful as to make it plausible that the genuinely democratic decisions of a democratic state have legitimate authority for all that state's citizens. If they have such authority, then citizens are morally required to obey and not interfere with those decisions. Yet we live in a world characterized by global Dark oppression (GDO). This is a condition in which people classed as Black, Brown, or Red are greatly disadvantaged compared to the world's other racial groups, are and were massively economically exploited by other racial groups, and are seen as culturally and cognitively inferior. I shall argue that democratic authority must be rescued from GDO. The first part of the argument shows that under GDO, no state has democratic legitimate authority over its Dark members, even if it is perfectly democratic. The argument's second part shows that to rescue democratic authority, we must ensure that democracy is not embedded in a system of global oppression. On the first argument, GDO is what T. Christiano illuminatingly calls an 'undercutting consideration' against democratic authority. The basic argument runs thus. (1) A political system and its core political organizations have democratic legitimate authority over any member of one of that system's organizations only if that organization provides the person with a fair chance to participate in democratic decision-making and either (a) the organization gives the person a reasonably equal say in the process of deciding political questions; or (b) the organization’s decision procedures are such that there is no arrangement of procedures that all could reasonably agree would better serve substantive justice. (2) GDO is a political system such that any state in a GDO world is one of the system's core political organizations. (3) Under GDO, neither (a) nor (b) is satisfied for any Dark member of any state, even if her state is perfectly democratic. Therefore, under GDO, no state has democratic legitimate authority over its Dark members, even if it is perfectly democratic. In the second argument, I show that to rescue democratic authority from GDO, we need to ensure that democracy is not embedded in a global system of oppression.

Keywords: democracy, authority, race, oppression