“Understanding Black Patriotism” by Michael Eric Dyson
One. What is the difference between black patriotism and “lapel-pin nationalism”?
The history of black people is the history of struggle, to fight against slavery, Jim Crow, unfair incarceration laws, unequal income distribution, to name some, and this struggle for a better country through the struggle is far more in-depth and arduous than people spewing easy slogans and clichés.
If one is angry toward one’s country, then one has hope for change. True abandonment of one’s country is not expressed anger or outrage but apathy, and the percentage of people of all colors who stay at home on election days speaks to apathy.
In contrast, there is “My country, right or wrong,” which is a dogmatic credo of the ignorant peasant who subscribes, not to patriotism, but to jingoism, the act of cheerleading or being a fanboy for one’s country without doing the research or hard work concerning the relevant issues.
A jingoist is a Kool-Aid drinker or fanboy who blindly embraces all things that pertain to one’s country.
A true patriot, according to Dyson, is a critical thinker who wants an accurate diagnosis of America's ills in order to make a better America.
Two. What examples does Dyson provide regarding hypocrisy of patriotism?
Dyson points at the five deferments of Dick Cheney, hawkish on terrorism, who may have been hawkish when he was calling the shots, but when it came to him fighting he stayed home from the war five times. He really used those deferments but was eager to make others fight his war.
In contrast, African American critic of American racism Jeremiah Wright surrendered his student deferment and volunteered to join the Marines.
Essay Option
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that critical patriotism, the kind that Dyson attributes to great African American thinkers, is a superior variety of patriotism to the white jingoism described in the essay.
Sample Thesis
Pro Dyson
Those who attempt to dismiss the criticisms of great African American thinkers as being anti-American are engaging in the most vile form of tribalism and jingoism, and they would be well served to embrace these African American thinkers’ authentic patriotism, which is evidenced by __________, ___________, ___________, and ____________.
Pro Dyson
Attempts to label the great African American thinkers who have criticized US policy as anti-American collapse when we consider that these thinkers are the truest kind of patriot. This is evidenced by _____________, _______________, ________________, and ____________________.
Against Dyson
While I concede to Dyson’s point that we can criticize US policy and still be patriotic, Dyson’s examples are too extreme evidenced by _________________, _________________, ________________, and _______________________.
In the following video, we see Michael Eric Dyson make his point about true patriotism as he contrasts it with false patriotism:
False patriots apologize for abusers of civil rights.
False patriots white-wash the real narratives that define racism in America.
False patriots get defensive when truthful criticisms are put on the table.
False patriots romanticize America's ugly past, "the good old days," which were actually a toxic environment populated by racist zombies drunk on the poison Kool-Aid of White Supremacy.
Essay Prompt for "The Great White Way"
Address “The Great White Way” by developing a thesis that analyzes how race is more of a social fantasy than it is an objective reality.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" makes the persuasive case that race is a canard and a social construction that has nothing to do with scientific reality and everything to do with privilege evidenced by __________, ____________, ______________, and ________________.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" and the Rachel Dolezal controversy both reinforce the idea that race is an arbitrary social construction, an insane fantasy, and an anti-humanitarian fiction designed to give a false order of things, to provide a rationale for exploitation, and to reinforce our base tendencies for tribalism.
Race Is a Myth, a Social Construct, Not a Biological Reality
From Robert Wald Sussman, anthropology professor at Washington University:
Today the vast majority of those involved in research on human variation would agree that biological races do not exist among humans. Among those who study the subject, who use and accept modern scientific techniques and logic, this scientific fact is as valid and true as the fact that the earth is round and revolves around the sun.
Yet as recently as 2010, highly acclaimed journalist Guy Harrison wrote:
One day in the 1980s, I sat in the front row in my first undergraduate anthropology class, eager to learn more about this bizarre and fascinating species I was born into. But I got more than I expected that day as I heard for the first time that biological races are not real. After hearing several perfectly sensible reasons why vast biological categories don’t work very well, I started to feel betrayed by my society. “Why am I just hearing this now? . . . Why didn’t somebody tell me this in elementary school?” . . . I never should have made it through twelve years of schooling before entering a university, without ever hearing the important news that most anthropologists reject the concept of biological races.
Unfortunately, along with the belief in the reality of biologically based human races, racism still abounds in the United States and Western Europe. How can this be when there is so much scientific evidence against it?
Most educated people would accept the facts that the earth is not flat and that it revolves around the sun. However, it is much more difficult for them to accept modern science concerning human variation. Why is this so?
It seems that the belief in human races, carrying along with it the prejudice and hatred of “racism,” is so embedded in our culture and has been an integral part of our worldview for so long that many of us assume that it just must be true.
Racism is a part of our everyday lives. Where you live, where you go to school, your job, your profession, who you interact with, how people interact with you, your treatment in the healthcare and justice systems are all affected by your race.
For the past 500 years, people have been taught how to interpret and understand racism. We have been told that there are very specific things that relate to race, such as intelligence, sexual behavior, birth rates, infant care, work ethics and abilities, personal restraint, lifespan, law-abidingness, aggression, altruism, economic and business practices, family cohesion, and even brain size.
We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even if you are not a racist, your life is affected by this ordered structure. We are born into a racist society.
What many people do not realize is that this racial structure is not based on reality. Anthropologists have shown for many years now that there is no biological reality to human race. There are no major complex behaviors that directly correlate with what might be considered human “racial” characteristics.
There is no inherent relationship between intelligence, law- abidingness, or economic practices and race, just as there is no relationship between nose size, height, blood group, or skin color and any set of complex human behaviors.
However, over the past 500 years, we have been taught by an informal, mutually reinforcing consortium of intellectuals, politicians, statesmen, business and economic leaders and their books that human racial biology is real and that certain races are biologically better than others.
These teachings have led to major injustices to Jews and non-Christians during the Spanish Inquisition; to blacks, Native Americans, and others during colonial times; to African Americans during slavery and reconstruction; to Jews and other Europeans during the reign of the Nazis in Germany; and to groups from Latin America and the Middle East, among others, during modern political times.
In my book, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, I have not dwelt upon all of the scientific information that has been gathered by anthropologists, biologists, geneticists, and other scientists concerning the fact that there are no such things as human biological races. This has been done by many people over the past fifty or so years.
What I do is describe the history of our myth of race and racism. As I describe this history, I think that you will be able to understand why many of our leaders and their followers have deluded us into believing these racist fallacies and how they have been perpetuated from the late Middle Ages to the present.
Many of our basic policies of race and racism have been developed as a way to keep these leaders and their followers in control of the way we live our modern lives. These leaders often see themselves as the best and the brightest. Much of this history helped establish and maintain the Spanish Inquisition, colonial policies, slavery, Nazism, racial separatism and discrimination, and anti-immigration policies.
Although policies related to racism seem to be improving over time, I hope to help clarify why this myth still exists and remains widespread in the United States and throughout Western Europe by describing the history of racism and by exploring how the anthropological concepts of culture and worldview have challenged and disproven the validity of racist views.
Over the past 500 or so years, many intellectuals and their books have created our story of racism. They developed our initial ideas of race in Western society and solidified the attitudes and beliefs that gradually followed under the influence of their economic and political policies.
From Michael Hadjiagyrou, Chair of Life Sciences at New York Institute of Technology:
Beyond the Ferguson, Mo., media reports on the "racial divide," the facts require some correction: Despite notions to the contrary, there is only one human race. Our single race is independent of geographic origin, ethnicity, culture, color of skin or shape of eyes — we all share a single phenotype, the same or similar observable anatomical features and behavior.
Science highlights these similarities in our embryonic development, physiology (our organ-based systems), biochemistry (our metabolites and reactions), and more recently, genomics (our genetic makeup). As a molecular biologist, this last one is indeed the most important to me — data show that the DNA of any two human beings is 99.9 percent identical, and we all share the same set of genes, scientifically validating the existence of a single biological human race and one origin for all human beings. In short, we are all brothers and sisters. [What is the Difference between Race and Ethnicity? ]
Biologically speaking, one clear example is that most diseases afflict all of us — diseases like cancers and cardiovascular and neurological disorders, as well as viral, microbial and parasitic infections. Obviously, there are differences in how individual humans respond to various diseases or infections; some never suffer from cancer and may be immune to assorted infections. This may be due to factors such as diet, exercise, overall health or environmental conditions. However, the fact that a human population, irrespective of geography or ethnicity is susceptible to the same diseases, coupled with the existence of multiple pandemics , is a clear indication of how identical we are.
Genetically speaking, studies have shown that there is much greater genetic variation within a given human population (e.g., Africans, Caucasians, or Asians) than between populations (Africans vs. Caucasions), indicating that human variation cannot be subdivided into discrete races.
It is history, not science,that reveals how the concept of different human "races" arose, how the term has become widely misused, and how it continues to pervade our planet. In fact, the word race has come to symbolize the division of humanity into segments, divisions that often lead to conflicts. Over centuries, people have used the word to divide us into black, white, yellow, red, and other distinctions in order to fulfill selfish goals and objectives. Whether those goals were to subjugate various groups of humans, deem them inferior or simply discriminate against them, the reality is that billions of people have been directly affected as a result of the misuse of the word race.
The end result, in its extreme form, has led to a plethora of existential crises such as segregation, slavery, violence, wars and genocides. One classic example is the dehumanization of millions of Jewish people by Germany and other European nations during the 1930s and 40s, and the colonization and slavery of Africans by European and North American nations is another.
The continual use of the word race, predominantly by the media and policy makers, perpetuates the myth of multiple human races and further polarizes our society. We must not allow the media or our lawmakers to hijack this issue and continue to misuse the word. We must hold them accountable and demand that they stop misusing it, especially for sensationalistic and factually false reporting. It is simply irresponsible and feeds into the hands of those that espouse discriminatory and unscientific ideas about the single human race. Society can certainly protect the rights of minorities without invoking the word race.
Scientists and educators have even a greater responsibility to speak out and present the scientific facts. From pre-kindergarten to graduate school, society must be relentless in our goal to eradicate the word as currently used. In fact, racism , the application of the word race, together with ethnocentrism and nationalism, are indeed the biggest enemies of humanity. Historically speaking, both have been used to justify the active domination of one group of humans over another, often with disastrous and deadly consequences — purely antithetical to scientific truths.
We must all realize that the faster we eliminate the use of the word that drives a wedge between people, the better our world will be: More peaceful and prosperous and with equality and mutual respect. And it all starts with accepting a simple scientific fact: We all evolved from the same ancestors and are, indeed, all virtually genetically identical to each other, making us a single race.
Related Readings
"There Is No Such Thing As Race"
"Race Is a Social Concept, Not a Scientific One"
Essay Prompt for Rachel Dolezal
In a 4-5-page essay with 3 sources, defend or refute the proposition that Rachel Dolezal's racial identity is not authentic self-expression but the pathology of a confused fraud.
Cogent essay by Charles M. Blow about the Rachel Dolezal controversy:
"The Delusions of Rachel Dolezal"
"How One Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life" in NYTimes
“The Flip Side of Internet Fame” by Jessica Bennet
One. What is scary about a video, Facebook message, or tweet about you going viral?
For one, the information may be inaccurate.
For two, the information may be taken out of context.
For three, the infraction may be minor, so that the punishment is disproportionate to the infraction.
For four, a person may have manipulated or tricked you into “going public.”
For five, ubiquitous smart phones leave you vulnerable to be videotaped when you are unaware.
For six, you may have an enemy who enjoys cowardly hiding behind the anonymity of the web to lie about you, and if your enemy is clever enough his lie can gain traction and smear your reputation.
For seven, if you are a shaming victim, you will find you have little or no legal recourse. You would have to subpoena an anonymous IP address for starters. And cunning enemies can slip out of one IP address to another.
For eight, there is a new environment for shaming; it's called social media, and the social media community acts like a mob and too often goes into a feeding frenzy when it smells blood in the water.
For nine, it's easy to be a self-righteous lazy activist on Twitter since tweeting does not take an investment of time or energy.
For ten, tweeting can be impulsive with no filters and even if the accuser has regrets later, it's too late.
But even with all of the above conditions met, a viral video becomes a frenzied false kind of “truth” that defies reality.
This frenzied false kind of “truth” destroys your reputation, incites others to harass you, blacklists you from job opportunities, stigmatizes you in areas of romance, and generally paints you as a demon homunculus who may be forever incapable of redemption.
In the digital age, people are so eager to find connection through viral videos and tweets that they discard the moral component, empathy, to the target of the frenzy.
The speed of which this demonization can occur has no historical precedent. In less than a day, a life can be ruined.
Two. “The Flip Side of Internet Fame” has many things in common with Ty Burr’s “The Faces in the Mirror.” Identify some of those commonalities.
Both essays address the disparity between a real person and the public persona.
Both essays address our preference for public persona over reality.
Both essays suggest that there is something morally bankrupt and perhaps even insane about a culture that obsesses over false images at the expense of preserving the humanity of real people.
Both essays suggest that a certain kind of loneliness, disconnection, and lack of empathy inform the sick obsession with public or fake personas over reality.
Both essays tap into the toxic energy from the "mobocracy." A mobocracy is a mob that is so desperate for connection and unity that they will resort to irrational hatred of a scapegoat to achieve their goal.
Essay Prompt
Compare our obsession with celebrity and our obsession with viral videos. What common pathologies can you identify that fuel these obsessions?
Both essays show that the mobocracy is a pathological juggernaut evidenced by ____________, ____________, _____________, and _______________.
Essay Prompt
What is the connection between how we view ourselves and how others view us? How does the Internet alter this dynamic?
Social media encourages what David Brooks calls "The Big Me," a state of self-aggrandizement that results in solipsism, narcissism, bipolar moodiness, and depression.
Essay Prompt
Defend, refute, or complicate the notion that online shaming is so catastrophic and prevalent that we need to add free speech restrictions that would discourage online shaming. What would those restrictions be? How would we enforce those restrictions? Would those restrictions be justified? Explain.
While I agree with those who point out the catastrophes that ensue from online shaming, it would be impractical to draw free speech boundaries on the Internet because _____________, _____________, _______________, and _________________.
Essay Prompt
Write a causal analysis of public shaming in the context of "The Flip Side of Internet Fame."
Whenever an instructor gives you a causal analysis assignment, she is asking you to analyze the causes for something. For example, a causal analysis of California's water shortage would focus on global warming, carbon emission, and lackluster water-saving measures.
When an instructor gives you causal analysis essay, either typed or in-class, you want to develop a clear strategy to explore the topic.
According to The St. Martin's Handbook, you need to match a series of questions for the type of essay you've been asked to write.
We read, "Originally developed by Aristotle, the following questions can help you explore a topic by carefully and systematically describing it:"
What is it? Public shaming
What caused it? Social media
What is it like or unlike? Public shaming moves so quickly that we have no cultural precedent.
What larger system is the topic a part of? Public shaming is part of a larger social pathology: bullying, cowardice (hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet), and the hunger for power ("look what I can do!").
What do people say about it? Many feel safe, but others, with good reason, feel vulnerable. Public shaming could happen to anyone.
When your instructor asks you to write an argumentative essay, you ask a series of different questions:
What claim are you making about your topic?
What good reasons support your claim?
What valid underlying assumptions support the reasons for your claim? In argument, the assumption is the logic you use to connect your support to your claim.
What backup evidence can you find for your claim?
What refutations of your claim should you anticipate?
In what ways should you qualify your claim? When you qualify a claim, you set conditions.
“Unspeakable Conversations” by Harriet McBryde Johnson
One. How does Johnson effectively get our attention in her essay’s introduction?
“He insists he doesn’t want to kill me.”
Two. What kind of hubris (excessive pride) and arrogance inform Singer’s philosophy to kill deformed babies?
He seems to know that the “suffering” disabled babies go through, and the parents’ suffering, justifies killing them.
Is there a definitive suffering scale, and even if there were, would such a scale justify the killing of certain kinds of babies?
Additionally, Singer argues that “individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn’t consider them persons” should not live.
Again, how do we definitively measure such perceived impairments, and even if such a measurement were available, could we justify this practice of killing people?
Again, his insanely mathematical formula used to justify infanticide is an oversimplification. As HMJ writes, “the presence or absence of a disability doesn’t predict quality of life.” Her brother Mac who is not disabled has flaws and gifts “that cannot be measured on the same scale.”
For Singer, a disabled baby is “worse off” than a healthy baby so the disabled baby should be killed. But what does it mean to say someone is “worse off”? What about a healthy baby who as a toddler proves that he is a sociopath who tortures cats and dogs? He gets to live?
At another point of debate, Singer says healthy children can have fun at the beach but disabled children cannot and therefore they should be put to death. Does this make sense? “You, child, are unable to have fun. Now die.”
I’m less shocked by the stupidity and evil of the argument (because there will always be madmen spewing made theories) than by the fact that Singer is a venerated philosopher who is a hired professor at Princeton.
Three. How does HBJ's appearance present challenges, some of which are for her insufferable?
People assume she needs pity.
They assume her life is horrible.
They assume she is in immense pain.
They assume she needs to be treated like a child or patronized like a slow person.
They don’t see her. They see stereotypes based on her appearance.
Lexicon of Terms Pertinent to Peter Singer’s Moral Philosophy.
One. Utilitarianism, the philosophy that we should sacrifice the individual for the greater good of the collective whole.
From Economy: Definition: Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy, generally operating on the principle that the utility (happiness or satisfaction) of different people can not only be measured but also meaningfully summed over people and that utility comparisons between people are meaningful. That makes it possible to achieve a well-defined societal optimum in allocations, production, and other decisions, and achieve the goal utilitarian British philosopher Jeremy Bentham described as "the greatest good for the greatest number."
This form of utilitarianism is thought of as extreme, now, partly because it is widely believed that there exists no generally acceptable way of summing utilities across people and comparing between them.
Two. “quality of life” argument: human life is only valuable if a certain “quality” can be achieved; otherwise life is better off destroyed.
Three. “normal children”: They can achieve a “quality of life” and should take priority over “abnormal children” who should be euthanized.
Four. “infants are replaceable”: we should replace abnormal infants with normal ones for the “greater good.” The moral imperative is that we are reducing suffering and adding more productive citizens to society as opposed to citizens who put a burden on society.
Five. Eugenicist, one who defends the idea that we should select what humans are desirable based on genetics and which ones should be replaced, that is euthanized, for the betterment of society. The eugenicist also develops the criteria for making these choices.
Six. Nebulous definition of “personhood.” The ability to imagine the future. What does that mean?
Seven. Intrinsic value of human life, called the sanctity of life vs. conditional value of human life based on “quality of life.”
Eight. Apologist for eugenics. An apologist takes controversial or unpopular ideas and makes them appealing by defending their validity and showing why those views are correct.
Nine. Peter Singer is an advocate for genetic re-engineering.
Ten. Market-driven and peer-pressure-driven forces for genetic re-engineering. The result will be a loss of diversity. Most women will like Salma Hayek and Beyonce while most men will look like Will Smith and Brad Pitt. See the New Eugenics.
Part Two. Peter Singer’s Major Arguments
One. Peter Singer’s quality of life argument for infanticide:
His stated reason, rather, is that such children have diminished prospects of eventually enjoying an adequate "quality of life", in his words, and to allow them to live would take away resources from what Singer calls "normal" children. He therefore advocates killing "disabled" infants, if the parents so choose, and replacing them with "normal" ones. The terminology of "replacement" is Singer's own; his philosophy "treats infants as replaceable", in his words (Practical Ethics p. 186).
Why, then, does Singer argue that infants born with this condition can justly be killed? Because they are "abnormal" and do not have "good prospects" (Rethinking p. 214).
This notion of "prospects" runs like a mantra through Singer's discussion of Down syndrome children: "the future prospects of life may be so bleak" (211), "the prospects are clouded" (213), and so forth. But what sort of prospects does he have in mind? On p. 213 of Rethinking he lists several activities which a person with Down syndrome will supposedly never be capable of: "to play the guitar, to develop an appreciation of science fiction, to learn a foreign language, to chat with us about the latest Woody Allen movie, or to be a respectable athlete, basketball player or tennis player."
This list reads like a parody of bourgeois myths of achievement, success, and respectability. To Singer, however, these are legitimate reasons for killing a newborn. After all, if you can't do your own financial planning, why should you be allowed to live?
Two. Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument for infanticide:
What counts as a "severe disability" for Singer? He intentionally leaves the term vague to allow for a broad range of parental discretion, but he has discussed a number of specific examples, both hypothetical as well as actual cases.
The conditions he has explicitly named as sufficient justification for active infanticide include Down syndrome, spina bifida, and hemophilia. Here is Singer's reasoning on the latter condition, taken from his popular textbook Practical Ethics (P. 186): "Suppose a woman planning to have two children has one normal child, then gives birth to a haemophiliac child. The burden of caring for that child may make it impossible for her to cope with a third child; but if the disabled child were to die, she would have another. . . . When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him."
Three. Peter Singer’s definition of a “person” or someone who is worthy of the label “personhood”:
a conscious being, a creature who has the capacity to imagine the future. This definition can apply to humans, animals, and creatures. A “person” should not be killed, but a human baby suffering severe retardation or some other handicap is not a “person.”
Four. Utilitarian Slippery Slope:
If we agree that we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people and that handicapped people burden the “greatest good,” at what point do we stop at defining who constitutes a “burden”? Smokers, the obese, criminals, the handicapped, the autistic? Where do we stop?
Five. Peter Singer’s “Worse Off” Argument:
Disability makes a person worse off and therefore that person should be killed. And Peter Singer is comfortable judging who’s “worse off” and who’s not, a very subjective condition. See page 97 and page 106 top.
Six. Peter Singer’s Eugenicist Position:
The eugenicist position endorses selection according to desirable and undesirable genetic traits, and favors the elimination of the latter. Singer's argument sorts people into two categories, "normal" and "abnormal", and declares the ostensibly abnormal ones fair game at birth. He doesn't even bother to try to provide "objective" grounds on which to classify some human physical or mental conditions as "defective" (a term he used in earlier editions of Practical Ethics) and contrast them with "healthy" ones. Instead he simply welcomes whatever arbitrary social norms happen to prevail, thus turning his argument into a vehicle for prejudice. But of course there is no perfect, flawless version of the human form against which putatively "inferior" specimens could be measured.
Seven. Harriet McBryde Johnson’s quality of life argument:
Studies show that the public underestimates the quality of life for most handicapped people based on stereotypes.
Essay Option:
Defend or refute Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.” Here is how the assignment looks for a 5-page essay:
Write a 5-page critique of Peter Singer’s philosophy as rendered in “Unspeakable Conversation” (92). In your first page, explain Peter Singer’s philosophy and the methods he uses to defend it. Then in your next page, begin a thesis paragraph that defends or refutes Singer. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 5 sources.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis One:
While Singer’s argument for infanticide is consistent with his utilitarian worldview, his position collapses under the close eye of scrutiny in which we detect huge holes or flaws in his reasoning. These flaws include __________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis Two:
If we accept Peter Singer's utilitarian argument as a just rationale for infanticide, then we are paving the way for genetic re-engineering as a tool to create a Super Baby that all parents will be forced to breed. This forced breeding of the Super Baby will result from ______________________, __________________________, ______________________, and ____________________________________.
Defense of Peter Singer: Thesis Three:
McMahon has treated Peter Singer’s infanticide argument with gross unfairness. While McMahon is correct that Singer needs to tidy up some of his vague definitions, Singer’s general argument can be ethically defended as actually helping the human race when we consider _________________________, _______________________, ___________________________, and _______________________________.
Some Salient Titles
Must I Conform to Peter Singer's Definition of Happiness So I Can Live?
Be Happy Singer's Way . . . Or Die
Let Go of the Stale Past and Become New and Improved, Peter Singer Style
We Limit Ourselves By Dismissing Peter Singer So Quickly
McMahon Commentary on “Unspeakable Conversations”
Peter Singer’s theories of “selective infanticide” insulate him from the reality of flesh and blood:
His theories are abstractions and as he percolates his ideas behind the university walls, he loses touch with reality. Specifically, Singer does not see the human face of “disability” and this human face is Harriet McBryde Johnson. According to Singer’s theory of eugenics, HBJ’s parents had the right to kill her since someone with her disabilities could not lead a “quality of life” and as such she doesn’t deserve the title of “person.” Nor does she possess, to use Singer’s term, “personhood.”
To the contrary, HMJ has a lot of richness in her life that defies the stereotypes too many people have about people with disabilities. Part of HMJ’s gifted life is her intellect, which allows her to see the “bone-chilling” theories of Peter Singer for what they are: monstrous. For example, Singer believes in “selective infanticide” under the guise of “preference utilitarianism” (96), which states that disabled babies are disposable and that is preferable to replace them with healthy babies who have a better change for a flourishing existence.
One of the horrifying qualities of Peter Singer is that during his debate with HMJ he remains affable, lucid, and logical. We can infer that Singer has succumbed to his abstractions so fully that he has lost his humanity and his sanity. He is clearly an congenial monster, polite on the outside, roiling with his murder doctrine on the inside.
One of the striking inadequacies of Singer’s theory, we read on page 97, is his belief that someone like HMJ is “worse off” (106) as he projects condescending pity for the disabled based on his ignorance and stereotypical beliefs (104).
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