Abstract

This chapter argues for a forward-looking basis for grounding the shared political responsibility to address unjust racial inequality. This is attractive given what is known from empirical research in social psychology. This knowledge includes the limits of playing the blame game and how majority in-group members frame inequality as a problem of minority disadvantage rather than majority privilege to avoid blame and collective guilt. Also included is how placing blame on the majority can be an obstacle to majority members forging the political solidarity with the minority that is necessary for collectively changing unjust social institutions. This argument is developed by drawing upon the role that basic societal institutions—on which everyone depends and has a stake in sustaining—play in shaping the distributive outcomes that stem from a unified system of social cooperation.