Current Issue: Spring 2007 (Vol I)
Cura Personalis: A Philosophy to End Racism
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With hearts heavy and enflamed, the victims cried out across the Quadrangle at noon that once again racism’s grotesque specter had flown through the night; once again, the words and actions of hatred had with piercing force been hurled from white to black and back again; once again, the Boston College community could not stand idly by and allow enmity’s putrid wound to fester—now was the time to make the battle cry of the oppressed resound from the towers’ heights.
Yet just days later, more flyers were found, more racist remarks made, and the wounds of racial hatred cut ever deeper. The demands of some members of the AHANA community (as some at Boston College call those of African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American descent) followed soon thereafter: a new hate-crime protocol; a database of hate-crimes; and a restructuring of the “Euro-centric” history core curriculum.
Racism will not, however, be ended through hate-crime protocols and a “diversified” history core curriculum, for these are but surface remedies for the symptoms of a disease whose root cause lies in the very heart of what it means to be human. To understand where real solutions to this problem lie, we must first examine the very nature of racism from which spring the malevolent, invidious thoughts and acts that so infect and weaken our society.
In my view, racism as a systemic feature of society arises essentially from the fact that humans are diverse in physical appearance. Skin tones range across a wide spectrum that we have conventionally classified as “black,” “brown,” “yellow,” “red,” and “white.” Furthermore, certain other physical traits, such as hair color and texture, eye color, and facial features such as the height of cheekbones or the thickness of lips often correlate to these skin colors. Because man is a very visual creature, his first instinct is often to take cues from these physical traits in trying to sort out the vast amount of sensory data that he receives every second—that is, in trying to begin to make sense of the physical world around him.
It is certainly no oddity that we use such visual markers to make distinctions and to organize and compartmentalize information, nor is it even strange that we should use such distinctions to assign value. From a red stop light to that certain shade of hair that elicits physical attraction, we use visual cues to evaluate our world every day. Racism, then, is the application of this process of evaluation to skin color. Logically, we should differentiate between the initial act of distinction, which we may term neutral or distinctional racism, and the subsequent assignment of value based on those distinctions, which we may call judicial racism. The first type, like all observations or distinctions of a neutral condition, cannot by its nature be controversial. The second type of racism then becomes just one of many factors that contribute to value judgments we make about other human beings.
The hateful acts of racism that have so wounded our community arise out of this judicial racism, for they are motivated by a negative valuation of another skin color. We can likewise see that many acts of hatred directed by one person against another arise from the negative valuation of some factor that differentiates the two: gender, culture, creed, sexual orientation, class, political opinion—the list could go on and on.
At the same time, we often do rightly make negative value judgments. For example, we can rightly assign a negative value to hateful views, such as the anti-Semitism espoused by Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden, as distinguished from our own views; but this evaluation is, of course, based not on innate physical characteristics but on developed characteristics established by beliefs. The question then before us is by what distinguishing factors is it right and by which is it not right to assign value?
We do often and appropriately make value judgments based on physical features, as when we define physical attractiveness. These value judgments, even when they are negative, can yet be morally acceptable—as when I decline to ask a woman out on a date because I do not find her physically attractive. In such a situation, the valuation is made concerning not her character but her physical appeal, and while a woman’s physical features have an actual effect on her physical attractiveness, they do not have an actual effect on her character.
Likewise, skin color has an actual effect on one’s physical appearance but does not have such an effect on one’s character. It follows, therefore, that when distinctional racism is used as the basis for forming negative character judgments, i.e. when a negative judicial racism arises from the neutral distinction, this negative judgment is fallacious because it draws a conclusion that cannot logically be drawn from the premise. As history has shown, negative (and often monstrous) acts of hatred, such as slavery and apartheid, follow from this faulty conclusion. It should also be noted that positive judgments based on skin color are just as illogical.
At this point in the argument, we must step back and examine the fundamental assumption that underlies this conclusion—that there exists a moral standard by which such negative character judgments are themselves judged to have negative value. In other words, do we conceive of human nature as possessing certain natural rights that are violated by such a negative character judgment, and if so, why?
Whole volumes, indeed entire libraries, have been written on this question, but let us at least briefly attempt to answer it. Certainly, such natural rights have been and can be affirmed by the tenets of natural law, which relies on nothing more than man’s own reason to perceive his own nature. We may, however, go further. Man is made in the image and likeness of God, and it is in this creation that he is endowed with that very nature in which our reason has perceived the natural law. One basic property conferred upon the human person in this creation is the dignity of being made in the image of perfection. Skin color, on the other hand, is not a characteristic that signifies worth, in so far as no one skin color can be held to be more worthy than another and as God cannot be said to have a specific skin color in which is expressed a unique and valuable aspect of His own perfection. It is this dignity inherent in each individual human as an inalienable property of his created nature that is violated when its value is judged by a criterion entirely foreign to it, i.e. when skin color (on which dignity does not depend, nor which depends itself on dignity) is nevertheless used to judge that dignity.
If, then, it is a faulty understanding of the nature of the human being and his dignity that gives rise to negative racial judgments, it becomes clear that the solution to the problem of racial injustice is to correct man’s view of man in order to eliminate that process by which judgment of human worth is based on racial characteristics. It is a philosophical solution that requires not the legislative institution of policies and dictates, but a formative dialectic between individuals. A proper philosophy of the person, like any philosophy, is founded upon the exercise of human reason to examine human nature and the nature of the world in order to ascertain their truth.
What steps, then, can Boston College take to encourage the dialectic of this philosophical solution? A guiding principle of the Jesuit philosophy of education upon which this university was founded is cura personalis—the idea that an education is the formation of a whole human person. Students are not invited to Boston College merely to excel in academics or in the arts, or in sports; rather, we come to Boston College to excel in humanity—that is, to excel in being human. This concept is, of course, founded in the very nature of man as a creature in the image and likeness of God, and it seeks to form the person unto his perfection. The formation of a proper philosophy of the human person is the sine qua non of this perfection.
I propose, therefore, that Boston College establish a course of study to be required of all first year students (for though dialectic cannot be legislated, a suitable forum for it can be), the central task of which would be the formation of this philosophy. It would engage students in a dialectic aimed at answering questions central to the cura personalis project: What is our philosophy of the person, and what should it be? What implications does it have for how we understand ourselves and others, and for how we treat ourselves and others? If our behavior and treatment of ourselves and others is not commensurate with our philosophy, how do we modify them in order to harmonize them? In short, how do we become better human beings?
Ultimately, it is hoped that the dialectic would not be limited to the time spent in the classroom, but would spill over into the lives of the students outside of it. Indeed, if the dialogue were to remain theoretical and academic, it will have failed. The central goal of such a course is not to indulge in the strictly academic pursuit of philosophy; rather, it is to engage students in an actual dialogue about how we make decisions in our everyday lives.
The affirmation of a philosophy of the human person that values the absolute dignity of each and every individual is, indeed, the key to ending many of the great evils that have infected the world. It is a flaw in our understanding of the dignity of our fellow human beings that allows us to engage in violence against them. By the same flaw, others stand idly by while some, dismissing the dignity of others because of arbitrary and inconsequential differences, wreak havoc upon them. Fundamentally, this flaw gives rise to the indifference, to the growing darkness in the heart of man, from which springs the suffering of those whose natural right to live alongside us is negated: it is a cancer that preys upon the other, accepting him not in his common humanity, but rejecting him in spite of it. Violence, be it racist or of any other type, is a sickness of a society whose philosophy of the human person lacks a foundational respect for human life and the dignity of that life. Its cure lies in applying the balm of renewed respect and in binding the holes of the heart with the bandages of dialectical engagement.
Nathaniel Campbell is a senior in the school of Arts and Sciences studying Classics and German. His academic interests include Classical and Medieval Latin. He is especially interested in the Middle Ages and the relationship between the sacred and the secular as well as between faith and reason during that time period. He plans to continue work in Medieval studies at the graduate level, pursuing a Ph.D. and thence teaching and conducting research on the university level.