Image: Katharine Birbalsingh, CBE, founder and headmistress of Michaela Community School
This year, students at my alma mater asked the university to topple a statue of Abraham Lincoln on campus. In its place, they wanted a plaque detailing Lincoln’s supposedly sordid past. So how is it that a few undergraduates feel entitled to castigate the man who ended slavery in the US and reunited the nation after the civil war? Have they really done more for racial justice than Lincoln?
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that he didn’t want his children judged by “the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Many progressives judge men not by the content of their character, but by the purity of their opinions. Thus, a graduate student who has retweeted an ideologically approved op-ed may believe that she has done more for racial justice than Lincoln.
This new ethic stems from the idea of systemic injustice—that justice depends not on individual acts of right and wrong, but on right or wrong laws and systems. Critical theorists postulate that even if every individual in a system acted justly, the system would still produce unjust outcomes because of the way in which it was formed.
Many ancient Greeks advanced an ethic of right living and proper action. In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius contends that actions ought to be virtuous regardless of circumstances. An action is right if it’s courageous. A discourse is proper if it’s humble. While the Stoics considered knowledge of the truth an essential element in an ethical life, it was only one consideration among many. They believed that it is the small, habitual actions that determine the morality of an individual, not her political beliefs or connection to systems.
Cicero contends that the use of another person’s wealth or property does not constitute generosity—only someone’s own individual sacrifice deserves that designation. Consider the discussion of poverty relief in the west. In the US, the left favors wealth distribution through taxation and the right opposes it. Because of their policy proscriptions, Republicans have a reputation for disregarding the poor when they actually provide disproportionately higher charitable contributions. The actions of individual Republicans don’t matter: only their view of taxation.
In the critical worldview, action is less important than opinion. CEOs of companies and even regular workers often get cancelled for heterodox opinions, regardless of their commitment to the company concerned or the quality of their work. A Twitter campaign has castigated Chris Pratt for his political views, while disregarding his acting skill and philanthropy.
It is not the color of people’s skin, their gender, or even their actions that determine the ethical judgement heaped upon them: it’s their ideology. A right action undertaken within a broken system is considered wrong. Nothing Lincoln could have done would have warranted praise since he existed within a capitalist economy. Systems remain preeminent and only the opinions of those who seek to topple the system are just.
Many of the consequences of this ideological shift are obvious: effective policies suffer ridicule merely because of their association with a specific political party, virtuous individuals suffer public scorn for their heterodox views and public pressure can cripple freedom of expression.
There’s another fallout to this line of thinking, too—truly improving a society is difficult work. Determining the best route of action requires intellectual rigor. When we reduce our ethics to op-eds, social media campaigns and virtue-signaling, we disincentivize that work.
I’ve taught at a poor, inner-city school. Discovering how to do that well takes endless hours of work, introspection and commitment. Comprehensive reviews have found that charter schools outperform traditional state schools, especially for the poor and for students of color. Pioneering teachers like Katharine Birbalsingh and Doug Lemov have published bestselling books to spread the secrets of their schools’ success. They are actively improving the educational landscape.
Nonetheless, both figures regularly find themselves under fire. Reviewer Peg Robertson has decried as “shallow” the very techniques that have rocketed schools like Lemov’s to success. Twitter users frequently pile on Lemov for his insistence that students keep screens on during online learning. Since charter schools are linked with conservative policy, media pundits malign them, regardless of their results.
Protests are an essential part of any democratic society. But taking down a statue requires little effort. Sitting down with a child and teaching her to read takes hours of committed work. If we hold individuals accountable for their opinions in place of their actions, we may sap people’s motivation to put in the effort to improve the very society they hope to correct.
To add another famous quote ” : “Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.” transl. “There is no right life in the wrong [one].”
by Theodor Adorno in his “Minima Moralia §8.
First, the point of the author is absolutely correct: the ideological purity test does nothing to solve the problems but the woke seem to think it does. Let us assume that there is such a thing as systemic racism. Does tearing down a statue do anything to address it? Tearing down “capitalism” (in quotes because there is no such thing) will only bring chaos and poverty. The idea that communist societies were not racist is simply historically false. Wokeness does nothing to solve the shootings in south side chicago. It does not make schools there better. Second, no one can be 100% pure either morally or ideologically (unless your ideology is stupid simple). The catholic church understands this which is why saints are rare. Humans are fallen and imperfect. We commit crimes, hate others, are rude. Third, people had been trying hard not to be racist but the recent riots… Read more »
I’m with you, T. Peter Park. Wokeness has two detachable facets. I think many, e.g., Bernie supporters align strongly with the woke on economic and environmental issues but disalign strongly with them on matters of identity. I think a lot of people feel this way, but their voice is smothered out by a media that loves to lump people together as wokes or Trump lovers.
Confessions was written by Augustine — not Marcus Aurelius, who instead wrote Meditations.
“A Twitter campaign has castigated Chris Pratt for his political views, while disregarding his acting skill and philanthropy.”
Why does anybody take any notice of Twitter, which is used by no more than 20% of Americans, of which only 2% make most of the Tweets?
“Consider the discussion of poverty relief in the west. In the US, the left favors wealth distribution through taxation and the right opposes it. Because of their policy proscriptions, Republicans have a reputation for disregarding the poor when they actually provide disproportionately higher charitable contributions. The actions of individual Republicans don’t matter: only their view of taxation.“ Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with the overall piece, and would also agree that judging someone’s decency and compassion by comparing charitable giving vs performative rhetoric is valid, it needs pointing out that one of major criticisms of Republican reliance on charity is that it makes for terrible public policy. There’s a reason why poverty levels are much higher In the US than many wealthy nations despite so much philanthropy and charity. It simply can’t deal with problem on its own. It certainly doesn’t make Republicans and white people bad or uncaring, but on… Read more »
Great article! This reminds me of how looting, a despicable act of destroying other people’s hard work, is justified if done for the “correct” ideology, with the “academic” wing of the illiberal left even providing justification for their “militant wing” (eg. in defence of looting). Same case with ACB’s Haitian children adoption – the virtuous act of raising a foreign child from a community in distress voluntarily somehow makes you a “white colonist” if you hold the wrong ideas and opinions. This article sums up what I – and perhaps many other – often forget about: that the illiberal left cares only about your various identity factors after you have been shown to deviate from their orthodoxy. As long as you stay in line and jump through the various hoops like they demand, you can be a white while rioting, looting, and destroying impoverished inner city neighborhoods. Many people –… Read more »
Good food for thought, Daniel. It seems the new fault line in the discourse about race is “liberal vs woke.” Do we want to see less racialization in our value judgments about people (liberal) or more racialization of our value judgments about people (woke)? This is especially critical for educators like you. If you guys don’t answer the question in the correct, compassionate way, then what hope do our kids have of moving toward a more ideal union of racial harmony? Keep up the good work!