I need not tell you that we are living in an increasingly self-centered society. You would have to be dead not to have figured that out. Why, we barely pay lip service these days to the virtues of selfless behavior. Human beings have never been perfect. But there have been moral high ideals. And that is not a trivial reality. The difference between high moral ideals and no moral ideals is the difference between moral shame and no shame at all. It is the difference between there being aspirations for moral excellence and the complete absence of such aspirations.
We see the corrupt character of society in the tendency on the part of everyone to blame anyone other themselves for anything that goes wrong. Being a victim has become a work of art. It is not about what is true; it is about what one can do to get someone to cough up money one’s behalf. One need not have been wronged. It suffices that one can manipulate others to offer one “compensation” for damages, anyhow.
On a recent program, someone maintained that McDonald’s, for instance, should be required to post signs in its restaurants saying that its food is unhealthy, because it is conducive to gaining weight. If we cannot hold people accountable for what they voluntarily put in their mouths for food consumption, then what can we hold people accountable for? Nothing at all.
On one of the cans of deodorant that I have, there is the warning that the contents of the can are “For external use only”. Well, I don’t know when I ever so much as had the fantasy to use deodorant internally, let alone to have actually entertained the thought of doing so. I can’t even get a grip on how deodorant could be for anything other than external use. But this is a law suit moment.
Finally, in this regard, displays of emotion mean absolutely nothing these days. That has become a kind of performance art. I abuse a product—say I use a can of deodorant to prop up the hood of my car up. But when the can bursts and a piece of metal flies into my eye, I go into a fit of hysteria in the name of the product have been defective.
It is against this backdrop that we might look at the phenomenon of playing the race card. I can think of lots and lots of cases of genuine racism. I can also think of lots and lots of cases when what is called an instance of racism is not that at all. Rather, the charge of racism is used as a cover for wrongdoing itself.
Using the charge of racism as a cover for wrongdoing is but another way of getting ahead in a society that valorizes self-interest over moral values. It is a way of diffusing blame or avoiding either responsibility or punishment entirely.
A black man attempts to rob a white woman. However, she is black belt in martial arts and whips his ass. When the police arrive, the black man goes into a fit of hysteria over having been a victim of racism. Of course, the charge makes no sense at all. But that truth is utterly irrelevant.
But what is difference between that and parents defending their child in school when the child’s behavior is obviously inappropriate? Well, not much in the end.
True, talk about racism raises the social decibels quite a bit. In the end, though, what we have is the very same phenomenon: people attempting to excuse wrongdoing by any means available. Rich parents using the threat of a lawsuit to protect their child from punishment for the wrong he committed are no different, at the most basic fundamental level, from blacks using the charge of racism to avoid punishment for a wrong that they have committed.
There is this difference, though. Owing to the way in which opportunity presents itself, blacks are more likely to commit crimes against other blacks than whites. Thus, the irony is that using the charge of racism to avoid punishment has a most deleterious impact upon the black community. This, I think, is one of the sights at the very heart of Juan William’s new book Enough. The difference, though, is that the point applies with equal force to poor white communities.
Whites from down-trodden poor white communities are not harming poor blacks or rich whites. Such whites are harming the members of their own community. Of course, these white cannot play the race card. But they manage to excuse their atrocious immoral behavior all the same. If the game is about excusing atrocious immoral behavior, it is irrelevant whether the means by which one does that is money, the race card, or anything else.
This is a de Tocqueville moment, as the absence of foresight on the part of lawyers, judges, and juries is having an utterly devastating upon the moral climate of America.
There are lots and lots of individual “gains” in the sense that a person either receives some form of “compensation” or avoids being held responsible for his wrongful behavior. But as a result of the individual “gains” of this sort a dark cloud of moral decay is casting itself over society. Increasingly, people see no reason to act morally precisely because ostensibly acting moral does not so much as even gain them respect.
For we now look up to those who can beat the system. They have become our symbols of sophistication and shrewdness. They are the ones to emulate. By contrast, those who do what is right regardless are dismissed as suffering from some form of intellectual constipation.
Here is a simple truth. We cannot admire evil and expect righteousness to prevail. Short term gain here is none other than a recipe for a moral climate that ravishes the soul of everyone.
Whether white or black, though, the communities of the worse off in the end suffer the most. In his book Enough, Williams grasped the truth of this point with regard to blacks. I have had the temerity, as is my want, to extend the point to the worse-off generally.
