African Americans

Exceptionalism and the United States of America’s Grand Ethical Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Today’s morning headlines were full of violence in Syria, Bahrain, Libya, and the threat of new conflict in Egypt, as popular uprisings against entrenched dictatorships continue to grow. As the U.S. tries to somehow avoid a lead role in the international intervention in Libya, the question looms regarding its responsibility to other nations whose people yearn to be free—or at least freer. As important as what America ultimately decides to do will be for the futures of these nations, the U.S. economy, and foreign relations, something far more important is at stake. These difficult choices once again challenge the United States to affirm or reject its ideals, the very essence of what has made America what it is.

We have come to these crossroads four times before. Continue reading →

What Was Right and Wrong With Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” Rally

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The pundits of the airwaves, newsprint and blogosphere have issued their assessments of the Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial with predictable results: those who admired Beck before the rally liked it, and those who detest him ridiculed it. The New York Times, in its inimitable fashion, showed contempt for the proceedings by relegating its account to page 15, even though every past D.C. rally and march of equivalent or lesser size (especially those advocating social or political positions popular with the Times staff) received more prominent coverage. To Times columnist Frank Rich, Beck’s rally was part of a racist conspiracy hatched by billionaires—yes, Frank, sure it was. John Avlon, who long ago branded Beck as a wingnut, reasonably pointed out that it was a wee bit hypocritical for Beck to preach against divisiveness when his own cable show is one of the most polarizing, even by Fox news standards. And John Batchelor, who may be the most serious, erudite, and balanced public affairs radio talk show host in captivity, dismissed the rally as harmless and Beck as a clown:

“I think of him now and again as Quasimodo Lite, a deaf bell-ringer swinging from the Notre Dame of Fox, a man who is eager to confess his own unsightly warts—“I’ve screwed up most of my life”—and who is also heroically delighted to be our slightly stooped “Pope of Fools,” because this accidental role, in this Festival of Fools called 2010, wins the cheers of the crowd.”

Even less charitable was the Baltimore Sun’s TV critic, who accused Beck of “stealing Martin Luther King’s moral authority.” Less charitable still was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who seems to have been driven a little mad—or at least a little unprofessional, perhaps— by the fact that Beck had the audacity to hold his rally on the anniversary of King’s iconic “I have a dream” speech. Matthews’s hyperbole was, well, Beck-like:

“Can we imagine if King were physically here tomorrow, today, were he to reappear tomorrow on the very steps of the Lincoln Memorial? “I have a nightmare that one day a right wing talk show host will come to this spot, his people`s lips dripping with the words ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification.’ Little right wing boys and little right wing girls joining hands and singing their praise for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I have a nightmare!”

Was Beck’s bash really a nightmare? Political biases aside (Chris), the question for Ethics Alarms is what was right and wrong about the “Restoring Honor” rally. Continue reading →

“Genetic Surveillance” and Law Enforcement Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The “Grim Sleeper” serial killer was caught because California authorities found a partial DNA match with an individual in its database. That meant that the killer was probably related to the owner of that DNA, and indeed he was. We see this approach on the various “C.S.I” shows, but in real life using family DNA to identify a criminal is relatively rare, because only two states, Colorado and California, permit a  “familial search,” the use of DNA samples taken from convicted criminals to track down relatives who may themselves have committed a crime.

Why only two? The science is reliable, and a familial search can narrow the pool of suspects to the point where solving a crime becomes inevitable. Nevertheless, civil libertarians argue that the technique raises privacy concerns. Michael Risher, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, told the New York Times there was the possibility of innocent people being harassed in the pursuit of a crime. “It has the potential to invade the privacy of a lot of people,” he said. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Lena Horne, 1917-2010

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

When actress Hattie McDaniel, the imposing African-American actress who played “Mammy” in the film “Gone With the Wind,” was criticized for her willingness to accept stereotypical and often degrading roles, she countered, “I’d rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be one for $7.”  Not Lena Horne.  Breaking into the movie business as a dynamic and glamorous singer-actress in 1942, she insisted on a long-term contract with MGM that specified that she would never have to play a maid. Continue reading →

The Ethics Of Harvard’s “Racist E-mail” Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The whole sad, sordid story of a Harvard Law student’s racially provocative e-mail that is now circling the web like the deadly virus in The Stand can be read over at Above the Law. The simple facts are these: At a dinner discussion at Harvard Law School, a law student expressed openness to the possibility of future research showing that blacks were, as a group, genetically inferior to whites in intellectual ability. After dinner, she made a fateful decision to elaborate on her views in an e-mail to two “friends” who had been involved in the discussion.

The e-mail said, in part…

“…I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair…” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“For many African-Americans, these facts can be difficult to accept. Excuses run the gamut, from ‘Africans didn’t know how harsh slavery in America was’ and ‘Slavery in Africa was, by comparison, humane’ or, in a bizarre version of ‘The devil made me do it,’ “Africans were driven to this only by the unprecedented profits offered by greedy European countries.”

—Henry Louis Gates, in his New York Times op-ed, “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game,” confronting the complicity of Africans in American slavery by selling their own people to slave-traders.

Harvard professor Gates, a respected authority on race in America despite his problems with the Cambridge police, has made an admirable effort to take the issue of reparations out of the context of racial guilt-mongering and forcing advocates to deal with facts rather than emotion. The fair starting point for discussions, Gates points out, is that the ancestors of white and black Americans profited from slavery.

Does this rule out any fair and coherent allocation of slave reparations, which were conceptually problematical already? Probably, and if so, we should move on to more productive debates. Gates is brave and responsible for shining light on a genuinely “inconvenient truth.”

The Racist Slur on Tea Parties, and an Ethicist’s Lament

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I thought long and hard about whether to write this post, and I resent the fact that I had to think about it at all. But it involves piggy-backing on a theme that has been finding voice on conservative talk radio, and concerns an unfair and dishonest theme being pushed by liberal talk television and certain media pundits. That means that whatever I write will immediately be taken, by those who view the world in narrow ideological terms, as a declaration of alliance when it has nothing to do with politics at all. It has to do with unethical journalism, sloppy reasoning, and dirty politics. I resent the fact that Right Wing radio is so frequently uncivil and unfair  that it sullies every legitimate observation and position that it takes. I resent the fact that so much of the public decides what they believe, not by the quality of the ideas in question, but by the identity of who advocates them. Communication is hard enough without bias serving as a perpetual hurdle to comprehension.

Oh, well….

The effort by certain commentators, TV hosts (notably MSNBC’s troika of Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann), liberal columnists and Democratic Party flacks to stereotype the Tea Party movement as a thinly-veiled racist protest is despicable, unsupportable, dishonest and unfair.  It is also insulting to Americans generally. And yes, I resent that too. Continue reading →

The Doritos Super Bowl Commercial

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

So obsessed was I with the Tebow Super Bowl ad that I temporarily forgot that there usually are one or more product ads that inflame the culture wars.  Sure enough, this time there were two: Audi’s “Green Police” commercial, which has political implications but no ethical ones that I can see, and the Doritos ad, chosen by post-game polls as one of the best and most popular. That one did raise some ethical issues, recently collected by conservative columnist and radio host Dennis Prager.

The spot begins with an attractive woman greeting a date at the door, and asking him inside as she gets ready to leave. She has a young son, four or five years of age, who is snacking on a bowl of Doritos. We ( and the child) see the male date’s face express some combination of excitement, lust and pleasure at the sight of the woman’s comely derriere as she walks into her bedroom. He then sits on the sofa, smiles at the boy, attempts to make pleasantries, and starts to munch on a Dorito. The child sternly slaps the man across the face, and says to him, menacingly, “Put it back,” referring to afore-mentioned Dorito chip. “Keep your hands off my mama…keep your hands off my Doritos,” he continues to the shocked date, getting nose to nose with him in the process. All the actors in the spot are African Americans.

Television commercials can be culturally damaging and irresponsible if they appear to approve, encourage, or endorse wrongful behavior and attitudes. Was this such an ad? Prager thinks so. Let’s examine his objections individually: Continue reading →