The immorality of sexism, racism, labor exploitation, and ...yes. .. even rape and child abuse.

I have often remarked on the moral view of a deontologist (duty-based actions) vis-a-vis that of a consequentialist (self-proclaimed 'pragmatists' or utilitarians) and cited Kant's Categorical Imperative as the pole star of my ethical system. One of the formulations of the Categorical Imperative is

"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means"

In my view, the failure to act in this manner is at the heart of the objectification of human beings - an objectification that results in viewing another person without empathy, without respect, and merely as a means to sate one's own appetites, whether those appetites are in the sublimation of greed, anger, or even the perversions of lust.

When the "means of production" is human labor, it must be recognized that ownership of the means of production (the very definition of capitalism) is the objectification (commoditization) of human labor ... and of humanity itself.

At the core of Imus' remarks there was absolutely no discernible consideration or respect for the inalienable humanity of the members of the Rutgers basketball team. They became mere grist for the commercial activities of a talk show host and the network corporations (both MSNBC and CBS) - where a corporation is merely a creature whose sole drive is the 'love of money' (the root of all evil).

In my view, even gossip is a violation of the moral imperative. When the lives of others become grist for our own transient 'popularity' as the peddler to prurient interests, we're both treating others and ourselves as a means to an end that has little to no social value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

So ... that's my $0.02 again. Since I see this at the core of a plague of all manner of predations we repeatedly address in this forum and almost never discuss the common moral precept, I feel this deserves a greater consciousness in this, our DU community.

Whenever I hear people justifying this or that program based on how much money it will save (and also help a group of people or the environment), then I know this is the wrong approach. Good relations should not be a by-product.

I think these issues of race have a long way to go, because as soon as you identify yourself as belonging to this group, and see others as outside of it, already there is a coldness that has set in. And yet we all need our own plot in the sun to grow completely.

When I was a kid we lived, briefly, in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. We were bused to an all-white school. One day, the bus stopped at a light, and as we were sitting there an old black man with a cane hobbled by. My fellow teen-aged students leaned out of the windows and screamed "Nigger!" and spit at him. That was in 1958.

Years later, I watched, in horror, a little black girl being escorted to a school by troops and having "Nigger!" screamed at her by a white mob.

When I was in the Marines, stationed in Japan, in 1962, a bunch of civilian "contractors" were put in our barracks on their way back to the States after a stint in Vietnam. They showed us photos of (literally) piles of bodies of men, women, children, that they identified as "slopes", "slants", or "Cong".

Today, it's impossible not to see whole categories of people killed, abused, enslaved, starved, worked like animals, crushed by poverty, hopeless, and blamed for their own plight by the powerful who have reduced them nameless, faceless, metaphors without humanity.

Stalin said, "One man's death is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." Those words are all too true when applied to the millions of dead, starving, diseased, abused, tortured, raped, people that were, or are, simply statistics to those who wield power.

"nappy-headed ho's" aren't individual people with lives, hopes, fears, courage, desires, faults, they are symbols to be used to elicit a laugh and appease an audience that is expected to purchase whatever the advertisers seek to sell.

When I lived in the South, there was one kind of person 'lower' than a n_____ ... and that was a "n_____-lover" - something I've been called more times than I can count in many places I've lived over the years.

... from people who didn't have the foggiest notion of who Kant was.

Unfuckingreal.

Why did I think the right has a monopoly on racism?

... folks can take up a Crusade Against Racists ... and still use people as grist for a self-serving mill. There is apparently no 'side' or 'cause' that is free of the immoral objectification of human beings. It's a cancer in our psyche, imho.


(I find myself often wondering whether someone is really battling racism ... or whether they're merely targeting those human beings infected with it. There's a difference.)