The object of the [14th] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. (Plessy v. Ferguson 1896, 544).

This opinion is another instance of Arendt’s allergic reaction to what used to be called the social question. In its classical form, the social question referred to the status of the working classes and Jewish citizens (as a religious minority) in the newly forming democratic-constitutional states of Western Europe; more recent forms of the social question pertain to the status of women and racial and ethnic minorities. In her political theory, the social (which Arendt treats as the private matters of the oikos, the household) had no place in the political public sphere (the polis); in other words, political discourse should not concern itself with policies aimed to create conditions of equality in the social sphere (construed as the sphere of private life). The effort to achieve equality in political rights is permissible; the effort to achieve equality in social existence is not. “What equality is to the body politic – its innermost principle – discrimination is to society” (Arendt 2003: 205). Arendt’s intention in “Reflections on Little Rock,” I believe, is to extend an ethical affirmation to “social differences” and, at the same time, to criticize the use of the social differences as a justification for the denial of equal political rights.

Let me note a few things about Arendt’s reflections: first, today we think nothing of asking “children” or the “younger generation” to change the world, namely, they are seen as the basis for a “post-racial” social order. According to one popular narrative of Obama’s election in 2008, racial antipathy is a disposition common to older generations, but not to younger ones. Second, the distinction Arendt makes between the political and social is easier to maintain in theory than in practice. Social inequality has been contested on all fronts (the latest battleground is struggle over the legal recognition of “same-sex marriage,” which is viewed as impacting social equality). Third: one view expressed by Arendt continues to predominate (in a slightly different form) in contemporary social life. Whereas Arendt attributed natural differences among individuals and groups to the realm of the social, and race for her meant visible, physical differences, there is today a vocal consensus that what could be called “natural cultural differences” are self-evident features of society: one instance of natural cultural differences is the racial group. Moreover, what Arendt called the “social custom of segregation” that is based on these self-evident racial groups is as tolerated today as it was in the past.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).