Black and White Perceptions of Justice in the City

Abstract

Justice is universally considered an important public value. Its equitable distribution is often used to assess the desirability of a political system. But justice is difficult to measure. The justice of actions may be weighed by the intentions of the actors; it is equally convincing, however, to assess justice by the perceptions of the recipients of actions. In this view, justice lies in the eyes of the beholder. Justice depends on the expectations of the consumers, their perceptions of what treatment others receive, and the interpretation of their own experiences in terms of their personal values. Official actions contribute to perceptions of justice and injustice but they do not determine them. While official actions may be considered an output of the political system, the distribution of justice is an outcome which is partly determined by outputs and partly determined by the interaction of citizens with their own values, perceptions, and expectations with these outputs.