Moral Health

In commenting upon my entry on Michael Richards’ tirade, a reader asked whether or not I would deem Richards a racist if, as in the case of Mel Gibson with respect to his antisemitic tirade, Richards had gone into a racist diatribe owing to having become totally inebriated.  As the reader observed: “. . . sometimes drugs or alcohol act as a “truth serum”.  The commentator has raised an extremely important question in general, namely: What is it that makes a person a racist or antisemitic?  I want to answer this question; and, as shall become evident, I hold that anyone of any ethnic group can be racist or antisemitic.  In answering this question, I hope also to say something about the particular question that the commentator posed regarding the difference between Richards and Gibson.

My first observation in this regard is that if the only time any of us would merit a clean moral bill of health is when it is true that we would never utter anything morally despicable about a group when we are entirely inebriated, then I am afraid most of would come up short.  In fact, I am pretty sure that I would fail that test; and I am rather confident that I am better than most in this regard.

Most of us, I am afraid, have some prejudice or the other that we manage to keep in check.  Or, to put the point another way, while there may be individuals here and there who are entirely free of any horrific misconceptions regarding some ethnic group or the other.  It is simply false that ethnicity as such gives one immunity in this regard.

While it has become fashionable to say that blacks cannot be racist, this is just plain silly.  Even if we should concede for the sake of argument that blacks cannot be racist towards whites, blacks most certainly can be racists towards other ethnic groups: Asians or Native Americans or Arabs.  And so on.  (more…)

A smart racist does not commit professional suicide.  So while it may true that Michael Richards is a racist, and I do not claim that he is, we should be careful not to be so content with saddling him with that assessment.  I have no commitment to Richards being a racist.  I have no commitment to him not being a racist.  Rather, it is merely my view that we need a more careful examination of what took place.

In discussing the remarks by Richards at the Laugh Factor in Los Angeles (17 November 2006), not a few of those with whom I have spoken have suggested that he merely revealed his true self.  On this view, the real Richards who is racist finally came to the fore.  Unfortunately, this cannot be quite right.  For the question immediately arises why didn’t he keep his true self undercover this time, just like he has been doing all along; for it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out that if one is white and in the public eye, then repeatedly referring to a black as a “nigger” is not good for one’s career.  Even a dyed-in-the-wool 140 lb KKK person has enough commonsense not to call a black line-backer a “nigger” to his face.  That would more or less be rather like committing suicide, since one imagines that the black line-backer would tear into the 140 lb KKK man with the ferociousness and strength of a lion going after a dear.

Now, I always say that when a smart person does what is so brazenly imprudent and thus contrary to her or his self-interest, then we probably need to look for an explanation other than the obvious one.  If indeed a 140 lb KKK person called a black-line back a “nigger” to his face, we would all ask what one earth possessed him to do that.  An adequate explanation would not be, and could not be, simply that our KKK person is a racist.  For we already know that.  What we would want to know is what on earth made him, the person whom we know to be a racist, risk his physical well-being by calling a black line-backer a “nigger”.

This is precisely the case that we have with Michael Richards.  Calling him a racist is not a very insightful as an explanation for his diatribe—in a very public setting no less—using the word “nigger”.

Now, some people have maintained that a black comedian could have easily gotten away with saying “nigger” repeatedly.  Well, I am not so sure about that.  Even among blacks, there is all the difference in the world between using the word “nigger” in a sketch and calling someone in the audience “nigger”, where this is actually addressed to a particular person.  What is more, the cool, “What’s up, my nigger?” is one thing; whereas it is quite another to use the word repeatedly: “You nigger this” and “You nigger that” and “Nigger you once had nothing”.  And so on.  This would not go over well at all.

Among blacks, there is not the freedom to use the word “nigger” indiscriminately.  If I say to a black “You are nothing but a dumb nigger”, I have hurt him on two accounts.  I have told him that he is intellectually bereft; and I have added insult to injury by calling him a “nigger”.  Whites who think otherwise are either radically misinformed or more than a little naïve.

It is also said that Richards should be cut some slacks because, after all, black comedians say all sorts of horrendous things about blacks.  Again, my sense is that blacks talk about whites as honkies and as crackers and so forth.  I do not condone this.  But once more, it should be noted that this is never to a specific white person in the audience.  That is, it is never done to denounce a white person in the audience.

I suspect that Richards might have been able to get away with using the word “nigger” had he done it in right way.  The problem, then, is not so much that he used the word “nigger”, but that he used the word to denounce blacks in the audience; and contrary to what many seem to think, using the word “nigger” to denounce a black person is not acceptable among blacks.

So what on earth would make the white person named Michael Richards go into a diatribe of denouncing some blacks in the audience by using the word “nigger” repeatedly, when it takes not an ounce of commonsense to grasp that this is tantamount to committing professional suicide?  That is the question.

I do not have an answer, but I am confident that it is not enough to say that he is a racist.  The blacks who do so are, I am afraid, too busy playing the game of being hurt.  The whites who do so are too busy congratulating themselves for being able to call another white racist.  Both ought to be ashamed of themselves.

A man self-destructs on a stage in front of everyone, and all that people can fix upon is that he used the word “nigger” repeatedly in the throes of that self-destruction.

If in the middle of a lecture I started referring to women as “bitches and whores”, it will be manifestly clear that I will have crossed that line.  But it will also be manifestly clear that my behavior is so out of character that something in my life must be terribly wrong.  This would not excuse my calling the women students “bitches and whores”, but it would shed some insight into why I have done so.

It could be that I had just learnt that morning that my formerly cancer ridden wife, whom I nursed back from death, is having an affair with someone.  This would not excuse my language.  But it would make sense of it.

What I do know is that if the only thing that people could say is that I am now sexist and that I have been sexist all along, my response would be that they are more interested in pointing a finger of accusation at me than attempting to understand me.

Let me be clear.  To understand why something happened is not thereby to excuse it or to forgive it.  But there is a world of difference between merely being accusatory and actually understanding why a person behaved as he behaved.

We might easily accuse the 140 lb KKK person of being a racist for calling the black line-backer a “nigger” to his face.  But we have some insight into why he did that if we know that his wife had just been raped and killed by several black football players, though we do not excuse the KKK’s racist remark.

Racism as such is not the explanation for Richards’s behavior.  I suspect that some very deep pain is.  This holds even if we allow that Richards has always been a racist.  For one thing, none of us is perfect.  Racism, like sexism or antisemitism, is not an all-or-nothing of matter.  Like the others, racism admits of degrees.

No doubt all of us have feelings that we should not have.  But if we manage to keep those feelings in check, then that is to our credit.  If I have great sexual desire for Joachim’s wife, but I never in any way let on that I have such feelings for her, then I am doing what is right although my feelings are inappropriate.

If Richards has been a racist all along, then it is no small feat on his part that he has been so masterfully able to keep his feelings in check.  For that, he deserves credit.  Thus, we can ask: What happened that Richard was no longer able to keep his racist feelings in check, and so engaged in a diatribe in which he denounced blacks by repeatedly using word “nigger”?

I suspect that Richards knows what happened.  But I also suspect that Richards knows that revealing the explanation will only make matters worse.  Why?  Because we live in a society that takes more delight in being accusatory than gaining insight into a person’s behavior.  A man has a total melt-down and all people can seem to fix upon are the word “nigger” that he repeatedly uttered while the melt-down was taking place and then content themselves with calling him racist.

If this is right, then what seems like a tremendous concern with social and racial injustice, given all the finger pointing, is really none other than a great many folks being more than a little self-absorbed.  Is it not conceivable that determining what occasioned the Michael Richards’s melt-down is at least as important as saddling him with the charge of racism?  But one shouldn’t expect self-absorbed people to think that.

If it is true that actions speak louder than words, then American society has got to be one of the most hypocritical societies on the face of the earth, singularly lacking in a sense of perspective.  On the one hand, we go on and on about protecting our children.  On the other, we seem to lack the moral resolve to do just that.  Insofar as it is indisputably true that children are the future, it seems to me unquestionably clear that we must make a concerted effort to protect them.  This brings me once again to the enormously popular website, MySpace.Com

As you may know MySpace.Com is extremely concerned with copyright infringement.  So persons who post videos with copyrighted music playing in the background must remove the music if they want their videos to remain available.

The very, very important point here is that MySpace.Com is itself taking whatever steps necessary to insure that there is copyright infringement.

Yet, the very same sight that will pursue copyright infringement to the hilt, nonetheless allows convicted criminals on death row to have a regular MySpace-page.  The criminals do not have direct access to the internet.  Rather, they have friends and families that create the site for them.

I understand the concern of free speech.  There is also, however, the issue of the normative force of punishment.  This should not be obliterated.

It is not in any way a good thing that so powerful a medium as the internet should blur the distinction between law-abiding citizens and the guilty.  Something has gone wrong when a person who is in prison for being a serial rapist or murderer, say, can appear like a “normal guy” on MySpace.Com because his family “loves” him.  (more…)

There is universal agreement that Christianity was used to justify the institution of slavery.  There is the so-called curse of Ham story (Genesis 9:20-27) regarding being cursed with dark skin and there is the Apostle Paul’s claim that servants should be obedient to their masters (Ephesians 6:5).  On the other side, there is the very poignant truth that the leading abolitionists were also Christians.  Today, ne’er a contemporary Christian is proud of the use to which these passages were put.

One of the striking things about Islam is that there is so much debate over whether (1) the Qur’an permitted or justified the practice of slavery or not.  But whether the Qur’an did or not, all that really matters at a practical level is that (2) self-avowed Muslims practiced slavery and claimed that it was justified in some way or the other.

After all, the wrong of slavery at the hands of Christians does not get wiped away if it is true, as no doubt can be argued, that the biblical passages to which I referred in the first paragraph cannot be rightly taken as a justification of slavery.  If self-avowed Christians, justified slavery by appealing to those passages or some other passages or some other forms of reasoning, the bottom-line will still be that slavery is wrong and Christians justified the wrongful practice of slavery.

Whether the Qur’an can, as a matter of fact, be shown to have justified slavery: If Muslims practiced slavery, then the bottom-line will still be that slavery is wrong and Muslims justified the wrongful practice of slavery. (more…)

There is symmetrical trust and there is asymmetrical trust.  Assuming an equal level of trust, we have symmetrical trust when two people trust one another with respect to roughly the same things.  We have asymmetrical trust, given an equal level of trust, when people trust one another with respect to fundamentally different things.  Trust between people who differ significantly in age is typically asymmetrical, as is trust between people who differ widely in terms of their economic resources.  This should be obvious.

What strikes me as rather interesting is that trust between married individuals of the opposite sex is inherently asymmetrical.  And no amount of political ideology will change that.

The issue that brings this to the fore is pregnancy.  When a woman brings a child into the world, she never ever has to wonder “Is new-born mine?”  The affirmative answer here is settled by the nature of the sequence of events that transpire.  The woman sees an infant coming out of her very own body. Women have epistemic certainty in this regard; for she sees an infant coming out of her body.

By contrast, it is manifestly clear that men have nothing even comes remotely close to epistemic certainty as to whether the baby which has been brought into this world by the woman they are with is theirs.  Insofar as, the man knows that the baby is, this is via the woman.  That is, he must trust her.

Oh, to be sure, paternity tests are possible; and a man can always insist on one.  But demanding a paternity test is to trust what gravity is to a heavy object that has been knocked off the top of a building.  To demand a paternity is to insist that one does not trust the woman; and the damage, irreparable in most cases, has thus been done.

So we have an immutable asymmetry between a woman and a man who are married to one another.  At the most profound biological level possible, namely with respect to the issue of progeny, a man has to trust a woman; whereas a woman never has to trust a man.

You never hear anyone talking about this differential.  In particular, you never hear women taking about the reality that men need to trust them in a way that women never have to trust men.

Sexism is no doubt real enough; and I would never want to suggest otherwise.  But the point to which I am drawing attention is the most sublime truth that the complete end of sexism would not put an end to the asymmetrical trust that I have identified.  Yet, you never hear anyone speaking to this unshakable reality.

This is most fascinating; for the unspeakable difference between women and men pertains to nothing other than trust itself; and the most fundamental level of trust between a woman and a man pertains to the issue of trust regarding progeny.

I understand, to be sure, that men can lie about whether they are having an affair and that men can father children without acknowledging this to anyone.  A good marriage requires that a woman trust a man in this regard.  I have not denied this.  Nor would I think to do so.

But this objection misses the point.  Why?  Because the fact that a husband can be dishonest with regard to whether he is having sex with a woman other than his wife or with regard to whether he has fathered children has no bearing at all upon the epistemic certainty that a woman has with regard to whether the child that she bears is her own.  A man’s cheating does not change that one iota.  Indeed, in this regard both a woman and a man are more or less equal.  After all, women can have affairs, too.  And while they cannot much lie about being pregnant, they can indeed lie about who the father is.  To be sure, it is absolutely wonderful, I suppose, when a child resembles her or his father.  However, there is nothing about biology that requires this to be so.  A few recessive genes here and there can result in a child bearing features which are quite unlike those of the father’s—or the mother’s, too.

So we are back, then, to the immutable asymmetry between women and men with regard to the matter of trust.

Interestingly, this asymmetry has become even more acute in a world where women and men are equally of supporting themselves financially.  In a world where women needed the support of men in order to survive, it was at least prudent of women to be faithful.  But not so in a world where woman can survive perfectly well without men.

So we end up with a most surprising result, namely that economic equality has exacerbated matters of trust between women and men.  Or more forthrightly, it has made the issue of men trusting men considerably more acute.  If this is right, then we have a quite unexpected factor that serves as part of the explanation for why the divorce rate has been rising so sharply.

If there is one thing on the face of this earth that one cannot paper over, it is trust.  A less than perfect meal may nonetheless but quite edible.  A house that falls considerably short of being ideal may yet be quite acceptable for living purposes.  But if we lack trust in a given area, there is no second-best good that we can fall-back upon that is close enough to being trust without in fact being trust.

To be sure, there are degrees of trust.  But where our trust is not complete with respect to a given matter, then what we have is simply not good enough.  With regard to their belongings, my dearest friends in France, the Rougemont family, trust me profoundly.  Whenever something in the home cannot be immediately found, it never occurs to anyone to wonder whether I might have absconded the item.  Their trust is more affirming than words can tell.  But that is just the point, were the trust anything less than that it could not sustain the friendship that we have.  Either we have that level of trust or we don’t.  And if we do not, no amount of fancy conversations will make it the case that we do.

Trust between a woman and a man who are married has to be precisely like that but all the more so.  And that is not possible in a world that refuses to acknowledge from the outset the immutable asymmetry between women and men regarding trust as it pertains to the issue of progeny.

There are many forms of power.  But there is no getting around the truth that having epistemic certainty with respect to offspring constitutes a considerable power that women have, which men will never ever have.  It is a power that women may find less preferable to other forms of power.  All the same, it is a power that is immutably theirs and theirs alone.

For the record, I did not say that men cannot trust women.  I do not believe that at all.  Suffice it to say, though, that trust begins with the acknowledgement of differences where they exist.