Justice beyond ’Just Us’ : Dilemmas of Time, Place, and Difference in American Politics

Notions of justice and community in the United States are increasingly challenged by trends like immigration, multiculturalism, and economic inequality as well as historical legacies like Jim Crow-era racial segregation. These dynamics continually re-shape the communities in which people live, whether by generating new forms of interdependency and inequality, creating new social cleavages or exacerbating existing ones, or generating new spaces in which cross-boundary contact, conflict, or cooperation is possible. Revealing the ways in which notions of justice and community overlap in American politics and public discourse through concrete political questions which emerge when considering dimensions of time, place, and difference, Gregory W. Streich offers a fresh re-examination of the normative ideas of justice and community. He encourages Americans to move from a view of justice that applies only to people who are "like us" to a view of justice that applies to people beyond "just us." Those reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (in all its iterations) conclude by promising fealty to a republic with "justice for all," yet a cursory look at US history suggests that there are many times and situations for which this really means "justice for just us." In this work, Streich (U. of Central Missouri) explores American historical discourses that have embedded the idea of "justice for just us" or the idea of "justice beyond just us" as they have been normatively and politically articulated at different times and places in American history and considers the various factors that have tended to favor one or the other discursive framing of the notion of justice in American political thought. The emphasis is entirely on promoting "justice beyond just us" to the entire national polity, although he briefly acknowledges the importance of the question beyond national borders. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Revealing the ways in which notions of justice and community overlap in American politics and public discourse through concrete political questions which emerge when considering dimensions of time, place, and difference, this title offers a fresh re-examination of the normative ideas of justice and community. Cover 1 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 1 Introduction 10 2 Justice and “Us” 24 3 The Politics of “Us versus Them” 44 4 Dilemmas of Time 66 5 Dilemmas of Place 86 6 Dilemmas of Difference 108 7 Competing Discourses: Justice for or beyond “Just Us” 130 8 Conclusion 154 Bibliography 172 Index 192 Justice and "us" The politics of "us versus them" Dilemmas of time Dilemmas of place Dilemmas of difference Competing discourses : justice for and beyond "just us".