The autonomous-individual ideal of citizenship structurally prevents acknowledging group-based harms.

Evidence

The idea of a monocultural, secular state works to consolidate who is understood to be the ideal citizen. Since the ideal citizen is an individual without any sort of group-based identity, a non-citizen is someone who remains trapped within group-based identities. The terrible danger of the autonomous individual as citizen is the closing down of the possibility of acknowledging group-based harm, as well as group-based privilege. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 381

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the MOC thread’s claim that the definitional/citizenship frame determines what harms are even sayable; echoes earlier chapter’s point that the autonomous-citizen ideal renders group injustice invisible. — connects to: Welfare maximization self-undermines by denying the collective community’s existence and judgment it depends on — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 59; Citizenship as uncritical law-obedience is ethically indefensible when states harm communities. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 268; Individualism treats humans as autonomous accumulators detached from community. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 551