The Place of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture
in Moral Theory
Lawrence M. Hinman
Department of Philosophy
University of San Diego
5998 Alcalá Park
San Diego, CA 92110-2492
619-260-4787
hinman@sandiego.edu
The following remarks are intended as an initial foray into moral topography, an attempt to map out the places in which race, ethnicity, and culture[1] may have a role in moral theory. As such, they point the way to interesting journeys. Yet before beginning this exploration, I would like to make a few remarks about the philosophical reasons underlying the neglect of race and ethnicity in moral theory in the past.
Why have race, ethnicity, and culture been given such little place in moral theory? There are at least three aspects to the answer to this question. One relates to the notion of the moral agent in traditional moral theory; the second focuses on the ways in which particular traits have been construed as universal; and the third focuses on the way in which the philosophical canon has been so narrowly construed.
Traditional ethical theories have ignored issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural diversity in part because of the notion of the moral agent which is at the heart of traditional ethical theories. Both Kantian and utilitarian theories are deeply committed to a notion of the moral agent radically stripped of almost all vestiges of individuality, and hence quite different from an embodied moral decision-maker with a particular racial, ethnic, and cultural identity. The moral agent, to use Alasdair MacIntyre’s felicitous phrase, “became a ghost.”
The Kantian Moral Agent. For Kant, moral agents are rational self-legislators, autonomous beings who give the moral law to themselves. Cultural background and ethnicity are excluded from relevance, for Kant’s question is always how any rational agent would act. The very idea of universalizability implies that one acts in the same way as any rational agent would act in the same type of situation. Any considerations of individuality, gender, or culture would be set aside in order to act like a purely rational being.
The Utilitarian Calculator. Utilitarians exhibit a similar impartiality. The utilitarian moral agent is essentially an impartial calculator, a person who disinterestedly computes the utility of competing courses of action and chooses the one which maximizes utility. In calculating utility, the utilitarian may include factors relating to gender and ethnicity in the overall equation, but the utilitarian moral agent as such exhibits no allegiance to a specific individual identity, gender, or ethnicity. Cultural diversity would seem to have no more place in utilitarianism than it does in calculus.
Thus we see the first, and most properly philosophical, reason for the neglect of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity: the two major traditions in ethics both presuppose a notion of the moral agent that is so reified, so abstracted from the concrete situation, that no traces of individuality, gender, or ethnicity remain.
There is a second reason why race, ethnicity, and culture appear to have no place in moral theory. Often moral theory masquerades as universal, cloaking the particularities of race, ethnicity, and culture in the mantel of universality.
Again, one can turn to the central figures of modern moral philosophy—Kant and Mill—for examples of the ways in which ethnic and cultural biases masquerade as universal characteristics of human beings in general. Think, for example, of Kant’s characterization of the moral man as someone who may have “little sympathy [in his] heart” and may be “cold in temperament and indifferent to the sufferings of others” on an emotive level; nevertheless, he may have the highest moral worth because “he does good, not from inclination, but from duty.”[2]
This individual is, in many ways, the epitome of the repressed Prussian: unable to express feelings, formal and distant in personal relations, and scrupulous in following the letter of the law. Yet Kant raises him—and his peculiarities—to the level of the universal. While I have no wish to condemn such an individual, I do think it is important to realize that this is a situated, culturally-specific individual whose particularity has been mistaken for universality.
Similar considerations apply to Mill. Consider, again, a single example, which I hope is representative. Think of Mill’s conception of utility. It is, ultimately, the life of an upper class English gentleman which largely determines the scale of utility. Mill’s conception of happiness, and in particular his understanding of the higher pleasures, is firmly rooted in the life of the English leisure class. Again, this is not to condemn such a portrait; it is simply to underscore the ways in which it is a culturally-specific view.
All of this is made possible, of course, by the audience, which usually shares the author’s cultural background. In order to be conscious of one’s race, ethnicity, or culture as not universal, one needs to perceive a contrast between one’s own particularity and the particularity of others in these respects. But precisely when philosophers are addressing their work to their own, to persons who share the same background, they are unlikely to become aware of the particularity of their own background.
Thus we see that the neglect of race, ethnicity, and culture is in part only an apparent neglect; that is, we find in the history of moral theory clear instances of culturally-specific views which are presented under the guise of universality.
There is, of course, yet a third reason why race, ethnicity and cultural background have played a relatively minor role in moral theory: the canon has been shaped in such a way that virtually the only works recognized as central to the tradition are those done by white males. It is not that no one recognizes that race, ethnicity, and culture play an important role in moral theory; it is just that those who do so are often not recognized as being in the mainstream of moral theory. And if they are recognized as being in that mainstream, then the elements which are usually valued in their work have little to do with their views on race, ethnicity, and culture.
Consider the case of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose work was in many ways equal to Mill’s. The standard histories of moral philosophy rarely even accord her a place, and when they do it is usually a peripheral one. Consequently, her work is read less, has less influence, and thus its perceive importance diminishes further.
These second and third factors interact in an interesting and often powerful way. Particularity is presented as universality, and this justifies excluding from the tradition those who do not share this alleged universality. The tradition thereby insulates itself from the possibility of developing an awareness of its own particularity.
If we are to remap this territory in which that allow race, ethnicity, and culture to have legitimate places in ethical theory, we must begin to reshape our views. Let me suggest, in the remainder of this paper, some of the places in which race, ethnicity, and culture have a more legitimate place than is usually acknowledged. First, there is more room for considerations of race, ethnicity, and culture in utilitarianism than is often assumed, both in terms of consequences and in relation to the issue of who is to weigh those consequences. Second, other consequentialist doctrines, most notably group egoism, provide ample room for such considerations. These are most interesting in terms of their possible justification of separatism. Third, although there seems to be little room for such considerations in the Kantian tradition that emphasizes universalizability, an enlarged notion of the Kantian doctrine of respect may well recognize the moral importance of race, ethnicity, and culture. Fourth, the moral tradition of appeals to human rights hold an interesting promise in regard to the issue of special rights for minorities. Fifth, and most interestingly, the growing philosophical interest in the issue of particularity in the moral life opens the door for a much fuller and more finely textured appreciation of these issues. Let’s consider each of these areas.
Utilitarianism is, at heart, an impartial moral doctrine, and as such it does not give any special weight to the concerns of any particular group, whether racial, ethnic, or cultural. But its impartiality is, in many ways, also its potential strength for minority groups with little power, for utilitarianism says that their suffering and unhappiness counts just as much as the suffering and unhappiness of those who do hold the power and influence in society.
One of the interesting issues in utilitarian theory is whether utilitarianism recognizes consequences that are harmful to groups racial, ethnic, or cultural groups as such, not just to the individual members of the group.
Hate speech legislation provides an example of this type of consideration. One of the proposed justifications for banning hate speech has been that hate speech is typically demeaning and harmful to minority groups as groups, even in those instances where we cannot show that some specific individual was directly harmed by the speech. In at least some versions, such protection is explicitly restricted to minority groups. The majority group, in our society white males, is not offered the same protection.
For this type of argument to work, we need both empirical and normative premises. On the empirical side, we need premises that show that a given behavior–such as hate speech–is in fact harmful to a specific group. This is primarily the domain of the social sciences, and there is extensive data to support claims of this sort.
On the normative side, we need a premise to the effect that the continued existence of a particular group is of value to society. Alternatively, we might substitute some premise to the effect that all groups are of (equal?) value to society, and that there is a value in encouraging diversity as such. The potential difficulty with this argument is that this promotes skinheads and neo-Nazis as much as any other groups. Supporters of such an argument would presumably want to claim that there is a value in diversity as such. They might well point to a similar issue in environmental ethics, where some would maintain that we ought to encourage biological diversity on utilitarian grounds. We can never predict, they maintain, what might ultimately become biologically valuable to our survival. Consequently, we should strive to preserve all species as biological “money in the bank” against some future disaster. Similarly, professing epistemic ignorance, some may maintain that we should encourage the continued existence of all groups in society, since they may ultimately preserve resources for society’s preservation and flourishing that would otherwise be lost.
Given such premises, it seems possible in principle to develop sound utilitarian justifications for special treatment of racial, ethnic, or cultural groups.
One of the attractions of utilitarianism is that it promises impartiality and objectivity grounded in quantification. If everything can be translated into units of utility, then there is an objective basis for deciding between competing courses of action. Ultimately, the numbers decide for us.
Yet as the inhabitants of India well knew when the Empire applied its utilitarian logic to them, it makes a difference who is doing the calculating. When one group in society does the calculations for another group, it is all too easy for those calculations to become miscalculations. What mattered to the native inhabitants of India was very different from what the British thought mattered to them, as Gandhi was to prove.
Similar considerations have certainly applied in the United States, where we have seen time and again that one group (usually white, upper middle class, and male) has made decisions for others group (including ethnic minorities). Even when it has done so with good will, it has often been wrong.
This is, at least in part, an epistemological point. Although I have little patience with group claims to epistemic insularity, I do believe that, all other things being equal, those most directly affected by consequences are in the best position to estimate the importance of those consequences for themselves. But there is also a moral and a psychological point here. The moral one is that those who will bear consequences should have a voice in determining those consequences. The psychological one is that people are more likely to bear onerous consequences when they themselves have had a voice in choosing them.
Thus considerations of race, ethnicity, and culture have an important place in a utilitarian framework in regard to the calculator. All other things being equal, it is better that identifiable racial and ethnic groups be represented among the calculators of utility and that one group not assume the role of calculator for all other groups.
Ethical egoism, at least to me, has always been a suspicious moral doctrine, more to be recommended for its insights into the psychology and epistemology of the moral life than its insights into the normative dimension of ethics. Indeed, it seems as though egoism, or at least selfishness, is precisely what ethics should be seeking to overcome. We hardly need a moral doctrine that exhorts us to further heights in this area.
However, egoists do seem to be right in at least two respects. First, it is important to recognize that concern for oneself has a legitimate place in the moral life, even though egoists tend to see it as occupying the entire place. Second, ethical egoists certainly have a valid point about the epistemology of the moral life: individuals are usually the best judges of what they want for themselves.
One of the attractions of group ethical egoism is that it seems to provide a moral justification for separatism. In effect, group egoists say to themselves and other members of their group, “Act in ways that promote the well-being of our group.”
Separatism can be very powerful. It may provide a moral motivation that is much more compelling than alternative motives, which are often associated with external and sometimes oppressive forces. Think, for example, of the Mennonites and Amish, who have sustained a separatist morality for over a century in the United States. These ways of life provide powerful moral motivations that are tied directly to the welfare of the group and the continuation of a way of life which would otherwise be wiped out by the larger culture. Think, even more obviously, of the appeal of Minister Farrakhan. The tremendous motivational pull of group egoism is strongly demonstrated in his work.
From the standpoint of minority groups with comparatively little power in society, group egoism is unfortunately a dangerous doctrine. While superficially it may be attractive in that it justifies an appeal to their own group simply to take care of themselves, in fact it opens the justificatory door to majority groups–operating on the same maxim–to continue many of the practices of oppression that the minorities found so onerous in the first place. It seems that utilitarian-based justifications for separate treatment hold less of this danger, and for that reasons may be preferable.
The Kantian tradition would, at first glance, seem to offer little room for any moral considerations about race, ethnicity, or culture. Indeed, I think this is the case when we focus on Kant’s version of the categorical imperative that involves willing our maxims as universal laws. However, there is another version of the categorical imperative–the one which focuses on treating persons as ends in themselves and never merely as a means–which offers more promising ground.
Kant’s comments about respect for persons constitute one of the most important contributions to moral philosophy in the modern age, but his notion of respect is typically narrow in its scope. Respect for persons, both others and oneself, is a categorical imperative for Kant, but what is it that we respect in persons? For Kant, we clearly respect rationality and the good will, that is, the will as guided by reason. What we respect in persons, in other words, is not anything personal about them, but rather their universality.
For those who wish to develop this tradition, two general philosophical questions demand attention. First, can Kant’s notion of respect be enlarged in scope sufficiently to include factors other than reason and rational will? Ought we, for example, to respect another person’s feelings, not just their reason and will? I would certainly want to argue that Kant’s notion of respect ought to be expanded sufficiently to include those core feelings and commitments that comprise personal identity, what Bernard Williams in another context has called a fundamental project.[3]
Second, once one enlarges the scope of respect, one is still left with the thorny question of determining how this translates into action. This is not, by any means, an unanswerable question, but it is certainly one that merits finely-textured attention, the kind of attention that illuminates the nuances of the moral life.
Once the scope of respect is enlarged sufficiently to include core elements of personal identity, then we must consider the question of whether race, ethnicity, and culture are sufficiently close to the core to count as objects of respect.[4]
Here, I think, there is a potential danger in regard to who answers this question. The danger is this. For those in the majority and in power, it is easy not to perceive racial or ethnic or cultural identity as being at the core of one’s sense of self. For example, in the United States, historically it was easy for upper middle class whites not to see their racial identity as crucial and deserving of respect, simply because they did not experience it as being challenged in any way. Moreover, it was psychologically more self-affirming for such individuals to attribute their successes to personal talent rather than to the color of their skin. The situation for minorities has been very different. They have suffered because of their racial identity, and consequently have had a heightened awareness of themselves as minorities. Thus affirmation of their racial identity in a racist society has been more fraught with potential contradictions for them, and it is precisely the overcoming of these contradictions which is so important to who have been the objects of such discrimination.
Yet these issues of identity are complex, subtle, and sometimes tricky. Think the standard way of distinguishing between race and ethnicity as, roughly, a distinction between the biological and the social. Race is an elusive notion, as Kwame Anthony Appiah has shown.[5] The phenomenon of mixed raced adds further complexity to this question, a complexity that Naomi Zack and others have explored with great subtlety.[6] It is clear that there is something here, and that for many of us it stands very close to the center of who we are, but much more remains to be done in describing exactly what it is at the core of our identity.
There is little doubt that the single most powerful moral notion in the twentieth century–at least in terms of hits ability to effect moral change–has been the notion of human rights. There are two ways in which the notion of human rights is relevant to issues of race, ethnicity, and culture.
The classical tradition of human rights has maintained that human rights and universal and equal for all human beings. Little needs to be said in support of this notion, because it is so obvious. Indeed, if the notion of equal human rights were taken seriously, then a significant amount of the injustices in the world would already be eliminated. If equal rights were in fact available to all minorities, then we would already have made considerable moral progress.
The more controversial question here is whether minorities–whether racial, ethnic, or cultural–have special rights. There is a semantic issue which deserves attention. Claims about minority rights–and here Will Kymlicka’s work[7] provides a model–may be interpreted in either of two ways:
¨ the claim that (certain) minorities have specific (basic) rights that the rest of the population does not possess; or
¨ the claim that, in order for (certain) minorities to be able to exercise the rights that everyone possesses, it is necessary to provide special protections and entitlements that need not be provided to the majority.
This is an important difference, and the latter interpretation is the more easily defensible. Consider this issue in regard to language. The former interpretation might suggest that some groups have a special right to their own language; the latter interpretation would maintain that all groups in society have a right to their own language, but that some minority groups require special protections for their language because their ability to exercise this right would otherwise be undermined.
Given this distinction, I think it is possible to argue that all groups have a right to their own culture and that minorities deserve special protection to insure that they can exercise that right, protection that is not necessary for the majority. Even here, one needs an additional premise, specifying that these are positive rights, not just negative ones, and thus that the state is obligated to take some positive steps to insure their exercise. Those who hold that all rights are negative would not be bound by this type of argument.
Finally, it is important to distinguish between the rights of minorities in general and the rights of aboriginal peoples, for they often exist in a different relationship to the state. In many cases, minorities are composed of, or descended from, people who have come voluntarily into a particular country and who have thereby chosen to become part of its state. Aboriginal people, on the other hand, were present before the establishment of a state and have had a state superimposed–often crushingly so–upon their own society. The rights that they deserve may better be understood in terms of the relationship of one state to another than of the relationship of a state to a particular group of its citizens.
One of the most interesting developments in contemporary moral theory which has opened up great room for appreciating the importance of race, ethnicity, and culture has been the attack on impartiality mounted by Bernard Williams, Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Blum,[8] and others.
The overall structure of the attack against impartiality has been to suggest that there are morally salient factors in a given situation which traditional impartialist moral theory–whether utilitarian or Kantian–either fails to recognize at all or else either undervalues or misconstrues. Typically, impartialist moral theory tends toward ‘thin’ moral descriptions, i.e., moral descriptions that pick out only the most general features of a moral situation, consigning most details to the realm of moral irrelevance. We are all familiar with such descriptions from examples given in moral philosophy texts. Utilitarianism seems particularly prone to such examples, and it is not uncommon to encounter examples in which some utilitarian calculator must weigh hedons and dolors in some highly schematic situation, usually involving life and death alternatives. Should we blow up the one boy scout stuck in the mouth of the cave in order to let the rest of the trapped boy scouts out of the cave before they die? Such examples are not the exclusive domain of utilitarians. Recall, for example, Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famed violinist and trolley examples.
Critics of impartiality claim that impartialists typically fail to see morally relevant aspects of a situation because of the thin moral descriptions that fit so neatly into their theoretical perspectives. Let’s see how this works in practice in regard to the issue of race.
Recall Bernard Williams’ famous example[9] of Jim in a small South American town where twenty (apparently innocent) Indians are about to be executed. Jim, as a distinguished visitor, is given a choice by Pedro, the captain in charge. Jim may either execute one of the prisoners himself and the other nineteen will go free, or he may decline and Pedro will have his men shoot all twenty. Now Williams uses this example to show how utilitarianism has a flawed notion of personal responsibility because it fails to distinguish sharply enough between the consequences of actions we directly perform (Jim shooting the one prisoner) and actions we can foresee and prevent but which are committed by another (Pedro’s killing the twenty prisoners). He also wishes to show how utilitarianism fails to recognize personal integrity as an issue. If Jim were to refuse, it could only be seen as a kind of moral squeamishness that good utilitarians would try to discourage.
Williams is, I think, quite sensitive to the issue of particularity and the importance of thick moral descriptions, but this example is curiously lacking in this regard. Let me make a general observation about the thinness of Williams’ portrait of Jim here and then some specific comments on the importance of race and ethnicity in this example.
We know virtually nothing about Jim from this example, except that he was on a botanical expedition. Yet Jim’s personal identity may be quite relevant to understanding this situation. Imagine, first, that Jim was an out-of-work mercenary soldier who in the past had killed often and with little provocation. Imagine, secondly, that Jim was a person whose whole life had been devoted to nonviolence and respect for life–a person like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, or Mother Theresa. In the first case, there is virtually no conflict between the utilitarian demands of the situation and personal integrity, while in the second case the conflict is extreme. It makes a difference, in other words, who Jim really is.
Nor are race and ethnicity irrelevant to this example. Jim, judging from his name and his status as a distinguished visitor on a botanical expedition, is probably from outside the country, and probably Anglo. Pedro, judging from his name and position, is probably Hispanic, coming originally from Spain. Those about to be executed, described as “Indians” by Williams, are probably indigenous people. Suddenly we have a more complex and finely textured moral situation with layers of oppression that are certainly potentially morally relevant. Acts may then be described under multiple descriptions, at least some of which would involve reference to racial, ethnic, or cultural terms. The most neutral of these descriptions can be found in the question, “Should Jim shoot the one or allow Pedro to shoot the twenty?” Yet Jim might phrase the question that has been thrust upon him in a quite different way: should he side with Pedro or with the indigenous people? Jim’s choice certainly occurs within a complex web of social meanings about oppression and revolution, meanings which can become part of the act description or be left aside.
Again, Jim’s identity becomes relevant. If, in addition to conducting biological field trips, he is an ardent supporter of the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the world and an opponent of all forms of colonialism, it seems clear that the relevant act description for him would include reference to these terms. Presumably Jim would see Pedro’s act as the act of an oppressor, and would see his acceptance of Pedro’s offer as acquiescence to that oppressor and complicity in further oppression. If, in contrast, Jim is simply a nerd-like but sociopathic biology student with neither political consciousness nor conscience, then it is likely that the relevant act description will contain no reference to these issues. It will simply be a description of the choice between one death and twenty deaths.
The introduction of thick moral descriptions certainly does not simplify moral reasoning; indeed, it makes it more complex. The complexity, however, may well be a welcome one, for it moves it much closer to the ways in which we actually think about moral situations.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, my intention here is to provide a map for exploration. The excitement is, I think, ultimately in the voyage itself, not in the map. However, if the preceding remarks help more people to venture out beyond the confines of standard interpretations of moral theory into some of the areas I have charted here, then these remarks will have served their function.
[1] Race, ethnicity, and culture are standardly seen as distinct concepts that may overlap. Race is primarily a biological phenomenon that manifests itself in characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, body shape, and the like. Ethnologists generally distinguish among three main racial groups: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Despite beliefs to the contrary, race is not a very precise concept, for there is a tremendous amount of variation within racial groups and a significant amount of overlap among them as well, as Steven Jay Gould has shown in The Mismeasure of Man. These variations are intensified by interracial reproduction. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is standardly seen as a cultural phenomenon. It refers principally to an individual's identification with a particular cultural group. There are many more cultural groups than there are races, and often differences in cultures are overlooked by outsiders. There are, for example, many southeast Asian cultures, but non-Asians often lump them all together as “Indochinese.” This would be roughly equivalent to lumping the English, the Irish, the Portuguese, the Finns, the Spanish, the Italians, the Lithuanians, the French and the Germans together as “Europeans.” Although it is true that they all come from countries in Europe, they often perceive themselves primarily in terms of national and ethnic identities. They are only Europeans to outsiders. Cultural background refers directly to individuals’ ethnicity and only indirectly and accidentally to their race. For example, a Caucasian American infant raised in Thailand by Thai parents may well be Caucasoid by race but ethnically and culturally Thai.
[2] Kant, The Moral Law: Kant’s “Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals,” translated by H. J. Paton (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1948), pp. 63-64.
[3] Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). See, in particular, his discussion of the chemist, pp. 97 ff.
[4] One of the most interesting explorations of this issue is to be found in Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition,” with a commentary by Amy Gutmann, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)
[5] Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Illusions of Race,” in In My Father’s House (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 28-46. Also see the papers by Anthony Appiah, Maria C. Lugones and Thomas Wartenberg presented at an APA symposium on Gender, Race, Ethnicity: Anthony Appiah, “‘But Would That Still Be Me?’ Notes on Gender, ‘Race,’ Ethnicity, as Sources of ‘Identity’,” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 87, No. 10 (October, 1990), pp. 493-99 and the commentaries by Lugones and Wartenberg.
[6] Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race
[7] Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
[8] See, especially, Blum’s essays collected in Lawrence A. Blum, Moral Perception and Particularity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
[9] Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against, pp. 98 ff.