INTERGENERATIONAL justice is a weird concept. It is one I tried to explain to Wits University philosophy students in a lecture on affirmative action last week. This generated discussion that is worth rehearsing. One of the more serious objections to affirmative action is that it is unjust to expect young white South Africans to bear the brunt of the social and economic cost of affirmative action for a history that was beyond their control. In effect, young white South Africans are being made to pay for the moral sins of their parents.
This notion of intergenerational justice seems like no justice at all. Why should the Mandela generation pay for the actions of others? The expectation that they do is surely unjust. This objection is wholly compatible with recognising that black SA has a claim of justice against the perpetrators of apartheid. The problem is that a lot of those perpetrators are dead or dying. How is it morally acceptable to hold Hendrik Verwoerd’s grandchildren responsible? And if it is not fair to do so, then surely the moral foundation for policies such as affirmative action and black economic empowerment collapses?
The government does not understand this moral problem that lies at the heart of affirmative action. This is why it has often shown little empathy for young white South Africans, who are tempted to leave their country of birth. This objection is in fact deeply challenging and must be taken seriously. Merely taking it seriously will itself persuade many young white South Africans that there is not a blind, unreflective racialism driving demands for social justice.
It seems correct to say someone should be held morally and legally accountable only for that which is within their control. But if voluntary control is a necessary condition for the attribution of blame, then presumably no one could be blamed for activities that took place before they were born. It makes no sense to indict someone’s future self.
We can apply these ethical intuitions to the affirmative action debate. A 20-year-old white South African could not have prevented apartheid from coming about. Therefore any policy that demands sacrifices from innocent young white South Africans in order for victims of racism to enjoy compensatory justice is itself unjust.
This objection should not be dismissed lightly. Doing so would be intellectually dishonest and politically dangerous. One should acknowledge the coherence, cogency and emotional substance behind the intuitive sense of injustice that someone born in 1990 might be feeling. These feelings are heightened by the knowledge that your friend, Sipho, who has been at a private school with you, might get prioritised over you for a job “simply” because he is black, even though you appear to have indistinguishable life journeys behind you.
Yet, while compelling, this objection is ultimately answerable. The key to understanding social justice demands is to grasp the conceptual distinction between moral sins and moral burdens. No one should be forced to inherit the moral sins of others. That violates natural justice considerations.
However, we can inherit moral burdens. If, for example, I have benefited unjustly from the wealth acquired by my immoral, murderous and racist father, who exerted force over others in acquiring that wealth, then I inherit moral burdens stemming from this fact. The immoral origins of the wealth I have inherited set up the moral burden. This is wholly compatible with recognising that I myself am not morally or legally responsible for the unjust wealth acquisition.
Consider the somewhat remote but illustrative example of Saartjie Baartman’s remains. Would it have been morally acceptable for contemporary France to say: “We admit our forefathers did immoral things that resulted in Saartjie eventually dying and being buried here. We are blameless, though, and so have no moral burdens to repatriate her remains.” Surely not — history hands down moral duties unconnected to our immediate lives.
This is the nature of the moral foundation of affirmative action. The average young white South African still has a better shot at living a flourishing adult life than does her black counterpart as a direct result of unjust historical facts whose structural impact lingers. Even your friend Sipho, who seems to speak your language, faces challenges he does not share with you and which stem from our racist history, all of which you have the luxury to be blissfully unaware of. This genesis of contemporary inequalities gives us an overriding moral reason to implement policies aimed at redress. It also constitutes a moral reason why young white South Africans, though blameless, are fair targets of policies aimed at redress.
Whether these policies, such as affirmative action, work adequately in practice is a discussion for another day. What is clear, however, is that these kinds of policies do have a moral justification, albeit a complex one. It would help, of course, if the government was able to appreciate these complexities and show sensitivity by engaging young white South Africans in a caring and non-alienating manner on such potentially divisive topics.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=84803
Friday, October 23, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Professor Jonathan Jansen: reconciliation by fiat?
And there I was thinking that Desmond Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) are so last year! Until....along comes Professor Jonathan Jansen and tries - while Tutu is still VERY much alive and well - to (re)invent himself as something of a Tutu-incarnation within the education sphere. Honest motives for sure - he is one my favourite people in this challenging rainbow country of ours: super smart, sincere, and visionary. And yet, I cannot say for certain that his unilateral - unilateral being an important qualifier - decision to invite the four racist boys back onto University of the Free State (UFS) campus was necessarily his finest moment. Here are some of the things that trouble me about his decision.
First, if you do opt for a model of restorative justice as the preferred tool for engaging issues of racism and healing divisions between persons that came about because of racism, then certain preconditions need to be satisfied to justify letting go of more retributive forms of engagment.
For one thing, all parties need to buy into the process. Else you are not 'restoring' anything but rather paying lipservice to the 'restorative' bit in 'restorative justice', thereby making a mockery of reconciliation. This is EXACTLY the case in this instance. The Student Represenative Council (SRC) was not consulted, nor other student bodies, let alone the student body more widely. The victims of the racist actions were not asked for an opinion either. This is turning out to be a case of reconciliation by fiat. It was ill thought through procedurally which in turn robs the process of the possibility of being a catalyst for healing and reconciliation.
Another precondition, surely, is that one requires the offending parties to show remorse of some sort? This was the case with the TRC and the Amnesty process. Now obviously these more grand national processes are very different to the silly bits of naughty behaviour of 'mere' students and one should not melodramatically compare them for longer than a second or two. But hey, it is Jansen himself who draws on the reconciliation motif! So it is fair to ask if he is right to analogise, not least because that is the *rationale* for his decision.
And the answer is 'no'. Although many guilty folk did not show remorse during TRC hearings, nevertheless to the extent that the TRC process was a success, an ingredient of that success was the demonstration of remorse. These four racist boys have shown none.
Second, we should be careful to excuse the actions of individuals on the ground that that there are grand narratives that have structured those actions. Yes, that it is not untrue - to some extent. But we are not automatons who lack control over our actions. Quite simply, they deserved tougher censure rather than being allowed to be let off the hook courtesy of our history.
In the end, Professor Jansen has bought himself MASSIVE social capital from the Afrikaans community on campus - no doubt. That is important not least because he is their first black rector. But he might be miscalculating in not realising that black support in turn is not automatic and so he needs to be courting the black, university community as craftily as he is courting the the more traditional, white Afrikaans lot.
Yes, this is a complex and somewhat crass racial game. Such is the reality of the UFS - and our country. Prof Jansen has a great track record. We should all support him and wish him well.
Equally, it is important to point out that he has erred on this occassion, so that next time round he will opt for consultative processes, rather than imposing reconciliation - or other solutions - by fiat.
First, if you do opt for a model of restorative justice as the preferred tool for engaging issues of racism and healing divisions between persons that came about because of racism, then certain preconditions need to be satisfied to justify letting go of more retributive forms of engagment.
For one thing, all parties need to buy into the process. Else you are not 'restoring' anything but rather paying lipservice to the 'restorative' bit in 'restorative justice', thereby making a mockery of reconciliation. This is EXACTLY the case in this instance. The Student Represenative Council (SRC) was not consulted, nor other student bodies, let alone the student body more widely. The victims of the racist actions were not asked for an opinion either. This is turning out to be a case of reconciliation by fiat. It was ill thought through procedurally which in turn robs the process of the possibility of being a catalyst for healing and reconciliation.
Another precondition, surely, is that one requires the offending parties to show remorse of some sort? This was the case with the TRC and the Amnesty process. Now obviously these more grand national processes are very different to the silly bits of naughty behaviour of 'mere' students and one should not melodramatically compare them for longer than a second or two. But hey, it is Jansen himself who draws on the reconciliation motif! So it is fair to ask if he is right to analogise, not least because that is the *rationale* for his decision.
And the answer is 'no'. Although many guilty folk did not show remorse during TRC hearings, nevertheless to the extent that the TRC process was a success, an ingredient of that success was the demonstration of remorse. These four racist boys have shown none.
Second, we should be careful to excuse the actions of individuals on the ground that that there are grand narratives that have structured those actions. Yes, that it is not untrue - to some extent. But we are not automatons who lack control over our actions. Quite simply, they deserved tougher censure rather than being allowed to be let off the hook courtesy of our history.
In the end, Professor Jansen has bought himself MASSIVE social capital from the Afrikaans community on campus - no doubt. That is important not least because he is their first black rector. But he might be miscalculating in not realising that black support in turn is not automatic and so he needs to be courting the black, university community as craftily as he is courting the the more traditional, white Afrikaans lot.
Yes, this is a complex and somewhat crass racial game. Such is the reality of the UFS - and our country. Prof Jansen has a great track record. We should all support him and wish him well.
Equally, it is important to point out that he has erred on this occassion, so that next time round he will opt for consultative processes, rather than imposing reconciliation - or other solutions - by fiat.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The temptations of moral vegeteraniasm
I flippantly mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had been tempted for a split-second to become a vegetarian but that I had never found the arguments for vegetarianism persuasive. Because I don't find them compelling, I need not feel like a moral failure - not that moral shortcoming is necessarily a reason to beat onself up; virtuous behaviour on a full-time basis strikes me as rather dull! Instead, I always felt pity for those missing out on bacon, burgers, braais and other meaty goodies. Yet, these damn veggie arguments are still simmering in my head. What to make of them? Let me set out just one of the arguments that still bother me. Please help me find a response before I go to Kate's braai this forthcoming Saturday...
To cut very crudely to the chase, if it is not ok to eat some sentient creatures, why are others more deserving of landing on my plate? This is of course old hat; it is an argument as stale as a piece of left over braaied meat itself. But truths can be stale - that's an aesthetic problem with them, not a logical one :)
The only response, it seems to me, is that there must be stuff about human beings, besides their capacity for pain/pleasure, that mark them out for special ethical consideration in my moral reasoning such that I can treat non-humans who lack these special traits, differently. But of course it is impossible to figure why the hack Samantha or Simpiwe - I made them up, people - are more special than the sheep outside. Special in a sense that justifies differential moral weight in my ethical reasoning?
Seems the answer must be 'no'. Unless, of course, we simply stipulate that morality is a human enterprise and non-humans by definition do not form part of the moral community. But that sort of ad hoc circularity leaves me cold.
On the other hand, we might try our luck by pretending that the key to why I do not eat humans is that humans have language, intelligence and other human-specific capacities ... well, uhm, not all of us do. So we still have not justified a general law that says, "be kinda nice to ALL other humans...and at the very least don't eat 'em."
How do I avoid the following dillemma? I must either become a vegetarian or in principle accept that humans do not have unique moral value ....indeed in principle I should be open to human burgers, not just beef or veggie ones.
Please tell me I'm simply engaging in bad moral philosophy or else I'd have to take veggie burgers to the braai on Saturday ....
Eish.
To cut very crudely to the chase, if it is not ok to eat some sentient creatures, why are others more deserving of landing on my plate? This is of course old hat; it is an argument as stale as a piece of left over braaied meat itself. But truths can be stale - that's an aesthetic problem with them, not a logical one :)
The only response, it seems to me, is that there must be stuff about human beings, besides their capacity for pain/pleasure, that mark them out for special ethical consideration in my moral reasoning such that I can treat non-humans who lack these special traits, differently. But of course it is impossible to figure why the hack Samantha or Simpiwe - I made them up, people - are more special than the sheep outside. Special in a sense that justifies differential moral weight in my ethical reasoning?
Seems the answer must be 'no'. Unless, of course, we simply stipulate that morality is a human enterprise and non-humans by definition do not form part of the moral community. But that sort of ad hoc circularity leaves me cold.
On the other hand, we might try our luck by pretending that the key to why I do not eat humans is that humans have language, intelligence and other human-specific capacities ... well, uhm, not all of us do. So we still have not justified a general law that says, "be kinda nice to ALL other humans...and at the very least don't eat 'em."
How do I avoid the following dillemma? I must either become a vegetarian or in principle accept that humans do not have unique moral value ....indeed in principle I should be open to human burgers, not just beef or veggie ones.
Please tell me I'm simply engaging in bad moral philosophy or else I'd have to take veggie burgers to the braai on Saturday ....
Eish.
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