Derrick Darby’s Rights, Race, and Recognition and Ronald R. Sundstrom’s The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice are two recent efforts to answer the challenges that race and racism pose to liberal theory. Darby draws upon civil rights and abolitionist discourse to advance an “externalist” account of political rights, while Sundstrom explores the strains placed upon liberalism by recent demographic trends. In this review essay, I provide a brief account of their overall arguments, and offer some further critical considerations.

In On The People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy, Philip Pettit offers a conception of freedom as non-domination that is, he claims, compromised by any regime other than democracy, yet is fully compatible with coercion by a suitably democratic state. However, as I argue, Pettit has difficulty trying to deliver the latter half of this promise. This essay offers an analysis of Pettit’s definition of freedom as non-domination, specifically, his approach to invasion and controlled interference, demonstrating that it is incapable of doing the work he wants it to do. I argue that he ought to surrender not his definition, but rather the claim that a democratic government can avoid compromising the freedom of its citizens.