ABSTRACT
This chapter criticizes an ideal of justice that defines liberation as the transcendence of group difference, which it refers to as an ideal of assimilation. This ideal usually promotes equal treatment as a primary principle of justice. An emancipatory politics that affirms group difference involves a reconception of the meaning of equality. The assimilationist ideal assumes that equal social status for all persons requires treating everyone according to the same principles, rules, and standards. In "On Racism and Sexism," Richard Wasserstrom develops a classic statement of the ideal of liberation from group-based oppression as involving the elimination of group-based difference itself. A truly nonracist, nonsexist society, he suggests, would be one in which the race or sex of an individual would be the functional equivalent of eye color in the society today. Whether eliminating social group difference is possible or desirable in the long run, however, is an academic issue.
