Liberal democratic justice and identity politics in education: the structural theory of obligation as an approach to anti-racist education

Abstract Drawing on Courtney Jung’s structural theory of obligation, this article proposes a novel interpretation of the relationship between liberal democratic justice and identity politics. This interpretation, in turn, justifies an anti-racist curriculum in the context of liberal democratic education. According to Jung’s theory, the liberal state has an obligation to improve the status of oppressed identity groups in society in so far as the state itself has participated in the formation of their identities through historical and continuing structural injustices. Based on this theory, the article argues that anti-racist education should be understood as receiving its justification not from the recognition of particularistic identities as such, but from the state’s obligation to compensate for the structural injustices, which have contributed to the formation of the identities in question, and which are incompatible with liberal democratic justice. Furthermore, the article elaborates on a form of anti-racist curriculum broadly compatible with the liberal democratic aim of fostering political and personal autonomy of students.