A Narrative Account of Shared Responsibility

Abstract

In this chapter I sketch a new theory of shared responsibility among members of identity groups. I do not presume to give a fully articulated and defended theory. Instead, my goal is to show how an alternative account of broadly shared responsibility might go. More specifically, my aim is to give an account of ‘white’ responsibility for racially motivated hate crime. It is possible that the account may generalize to include other identity groups and other types of harm; however, my immediate task is to provide a theory capable of explaining responsibility in the Ward case. With this in mind, I argue that broadly shared responsibility is best understood as a kind of ‘role responsibility’ based upon the burdens and benefits of identity group membership and one’s participation in constructing or maintaining a faulty group norm. On such a view, if one’s personal contributions, be they fully, obliquely, or partly intentional, promote or maintain morally faulty norms (which in turn prompt members to cause harm), then one shares responsibility with others in one’s group for that harm.