Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform is a major contribution to black political thought and the theorization of racial justice more generally. In these brief comments, I begin by situating Shelby’s work both in the Anglo-American political tradition and the Afro-modern political tradition. While praising the accomplishment that Shelby’s book represents, I nonetheless go on to point out some obstacles to his project arising from the tensions between these traditions. Using the concept of “dark mores” (a racially differentiated ethic coming in both white and black versions), I argue that Shelby’s racially revisionist Rawlsianism is pre-empted by Rawls’s own restrictions on the scope of his theory, while Shelby’s invocation of “reciprocity” as a key norm is undermined by the structural asymmetries of a racist society.

汤米谢尔比的黑暗贫民窟：不公正、异议和改革是对黑人政治思想和更普遍的种族正义理论化的重大贡献。在这些简短的评论中，我首先将谢尔比的作品置于英美政治传统和非洲现代政治传统中。在赞扬谢尔比的书所代表的成就的同时，我继续指出由于这些传统之间的紧张关系而对他的项目造成的一些障碍。使用“黑暗习俗”（一种在白人和黑人版本中出现的种族差异伦理）的概念，我认为谢尔比的种族修正主义罗尔斯主义被罗尔斯自己对其理论范围的限制所取代，而谢尔比对“互惠”的援引”作为一个关键规范被种族主义社会的结构性不对称所破坏。