Agency and Autonomy

One of the advantages of understanding race as social value, according to Lebron is that it "straddles the divide between agency and social construction by at once being sensitive to the way social power impacts beliefs and attitudes but denies that it does so in a manner that rejects the possibility of agency, thus agents can still be held accountable for their racial beliefs and actions after they have been made aware of how they offend against racially egalitarian principles" (48). 

(1) This certainly adds an important block to understanding race as a social construct or as "goods begets goods." Under the goods begets goods conception, it is unclear what we “choices” we have if everything is determined by our access to some level of goods. Under the social construction theory (to simplify) race is a construct in our heads, allowing us to freely engage or not engage with race as an aspect of our society. My question is: what does Lebron’s “straddling” of these two ideas actually look like? He wants to both acknowledge agency and the power of institutions to impact our behavior. I find this argument very compelling, but wonder if he is actually able to do so. He argues later that, “social observation suggests to a rational person in that position is that blacks must not be worth much. Thus, social value suggests itself as being the underlying causal principle in any case” (50). I struggle to see how we can have true agency what race can simultaneously account for our rational decisions. Such a force would take away autonomy. Lebron continues to show that institutions constrain us as well. “Institutions do more than constrain – they produce. Further, while they certainly structure incentives, they also moderate normative aspects of human interaction that depend on ethical commitments that may or may not have a relationship to the idea of incentives” (54). Finally, Lebron’s hypothetical interaction in the corporation reduces his autonomy: “In this scenario my value to the corporation is no longer measure by my role and performance but by arbitrary norms articulated by those with more or less overwhelming power; thus I am reduced to something less than a fully autonomous, intrinsically valuable agent” (56). All of these further examples prove to me that our agency is constricted by outside forces, but Lebron does not go on to explain where our agency comes into play. This concerns me – without addressing the positive role of agency in these hypotheticals that he purports his social value theory has, it is unclear what type of choices or freedoms we really have.

(2) If we are accountable for our racial believes and actions after we “have been made aware of how they offend against racially egalitarian principles,” does that mean that we are not beforehand? At what point is the responsibility on society to make us see the discrepancy between our own purported moral values and our actual behavior? I’m not sure if Lebron is suggesting that as long as we can plead ignorance, we cannot be held accountable. I would argue that at least in American society, it would be very difficult to be completely ignorant of our failure to meet our moral values – thus the responsibility falls on ourselves to be aware of how our actions and beliefs offend racially egalitarian principles – which would mean we can all be held accountable.