Shame and Hope

I think its interesting that shame and hope, two emotions that seem antithetical, both play into Lebron's writing. He uses shame as a tool for improving American society; shame is a necessary step on the path away from racism within ourselves and our institutions. In order to remake our national character, the white citizens of America must first feel profound shame for the systemic racism that pervades society (whether willful or unconscious). Shame, as an emotion, lingers for a long time, never really going away. The shame you feel because you have wronged someone will often leave you to conclude you must rectify your mistake, although the nature of shame is such that you will never totally be able to make up for your wrongs. Yet, within shame, and within Lebron's writings, is a sense of hope about what can come after shame. One quote from Lebron highlighted this sense of hope, so I'll include it here: "To be a disadvantaged agent is not the same as being a determined agent. We retain the capacity to be better selves than we are. This is the value of mobilizing the idea of shame..." (13). This is far different picture than many political scientists paint because it includes a a sense of agency. Despite the systemic nature of racism, we as individuals can choose to understand the nature of the problem before us and feel shame that it still exists. While institutions are vital to eliminating racism, Lebron's argument vests power in the individual to work through the shame to become a better self, ultimately helping to reduce or eliminate systemic racism.

Timeless Ideas

Something of an open question on this, but I'm not quite understanding how Lebron can reject the process of moral reasoning to attain timeless principles, while simultaneously accepting other timeless principles, namely those he believes shame refers to. Lebron seems to set his argument in an attempt to establish a nonideal. In his words, his "aim is tot take the problem in view on its own terms and respond to it as the problem itself demands here and now." (5). He goes on to reject the overlapping consensus as ahistorical. But, at some level, his arguments seem to rest on the notion of certain principles, namely that everyone is due equal respect. Lebron simply takes these principles to be just on their own accord, which might make some sense as we're talking about values we would assume everyone would agree on. But to someone like Rawls, principles become legitimate precisely because they are timeless - they would be accepted by any reasonable person at any time. Lebron, though, wants to accept other principles he assumes are already legitimate and timeless, even though he thinks the original position has a major flaw. This leads to the situation where Lebron has simultaneously accepted certain principles (or, alternatively, people have accepted certain deep principles that can be exploited) while rejecting a scenario where they can be created. Perhaps Lebron doesn't have much of a problem here though. His theory is not as broad as Rawls, in the sense that it does not wish to redesign a basic structure or rethink justice. Rather, it seeks to look at issues of institutional practice and the failings of that practice. Since that's the case, his theory can afford to be much more narrow.

The Individual and the Institution

In my last post I began to touch on the relationship between individuals and institutions in shaping national character. I felt like there was more to say on this topic. 

There is an interesting relationship between the role of individuals and institutions in Lebron's conception of national character. He wants for us to "cultivate moral excellence" at both levels, but it is somewhat unclear as to which can or should come first. He argues that national character encompasses "our self-understanding as agents possessing the power to act morally or not," indicating the significance of our attitudes and actions as individuals. He then turns to the institutional level, examining "the way circumstances of power interact with the agency of the disadvantaged" (3). These circumstances of power are predicated on historical relationships and structures, and Lebron claims that Rawls' ideas of justice are justified on premises that neglect this fact. For racial injustice to be "systemic" it must be a part of a system. And, in our system of institutions "themselves beholden to racial historical precedent" we find them passing on "bad moral lessons," that, due to their institutional origins, are granted moral worth without dispute. How could something less than morally worthy come from our morally superior democratic system, after all? It seems that institutions fail to show us "racial inequality as driven by historical relations of power," and instead are responsible for perpetuating and legitimizing our uneven distribution of social value (5). 

Lebron then moves on to the role of the individual with his anecdote that Anna touched on. When his peer made an offensive joke, he felt that the man had "betrayed more deeply held principles" that we as people should maintain (7). He seems to change his tune, claiming that "most of the necessary rules are in place" to improve our national character, but that "the players sometimes seem unwilling to play by the spirit of the rules" (8). In the face of race, we fall short individually as well. 

I think that these inconsistencies only show up when reading Lebron incorrectly. It seems that he uses the individual and the institution interchangeably, or at least sees that they are greatly connected. If "good persons must stand alongside good institutions for justice to take hold," then we are both actors in the process of reforming "our individual selves and the polity as a collective" (6). 

National Character

Lebron believes that the US possesses a "flawed national character" and seeks to develop a theory that might "remake" it by focusing on the deconstruction of the systematic racial injustice that has plagued our society (2). In constructing what might constitute our "national character" he gestures to all of racial justice, consistency, moral equality, and social value especially as it relates to the "black identity" (4). That all people should be afforded equal, just treatment is not a new nor controversial idea, yet while it seems as though the US has largely moved on from its severely prejudiced history - one would be hard-pressed to find someone who makes their racism blatant and obvious within the realms of acceptable social behavior - Lebron is concerned that even with this "relative disappearance of explicit racism" we fail to account for the "continued marginalization of blacks and black identity" (2). In this way, as a nation, our general pattern of attitudes and actions and the normative importance we place on our relationships with others are argued to fall dishearteningly short in regard to social justice, staining our national character. 

We see the grim results, but we need a better understanding of what this means. While "black suffering has become much more difficult to catalog," that systematic racial injustice exists poses an "existential threat" to Black Americans by exposing America's "lack of consistency to the idea of moral equality," which, as Lebron points out, "has real cost for black lives" (2). From this we understand two important aspects of national character: it deals in part with internal consistency (we claim to uphold certain values as a society that are not at all translated in our attitudes and actions) and with equality (as inequality "consistently and persistently diminishes the ability of blacks to conceive and/or pursue a good life" (2)). His conception of national character presupposes the moral value of equality, which I personally find no fault with, given the inherent value it holds in a democratic society (which he in fact argues contains the resources for redemption) and the power it holds over the social and political well-being of individuals. In our society, he argues, we have a problem with social value, for "blacks do not occupy an equal place in the scheme of normative attention and concern" that is used to justify the distribution of benefits and their recipients. It follows that our current conception of distributive justice is harmfully limited, as it presumes an equality of social value that we do not possess by failing to acknowledge the "value we fail to accord black identity" (4). Our failure to account for social value in our conception of justice is certainly reflected in our poor national character. 

It seems universally accepted that people can have character. Can institutions have it as well? Lebron feels that in the same way people hold values, our democratic society too holds values such as "fairness, equality, and basic social, political, and civic reciprocity" (9). He goes further, however, claiming that while people come and go, institutions "precede and outlast generations" and lend to a sense of identity in profound ways. Yet people make up institutions, so where does the change come from? Where is social value derived from? If we find that source we will surely find what actually determines our national character beyond a list of values. 

Some Self Reflection

"'You know, the guys in the hood driving the cars with the big rims'. Everyone had a good laugh at that one. Not me. Trading easy stereotypes, the teaching assistant's comment unthoughtful remark only served to embarrass me"(7).  Lebron writes that if he had shared this event with the teacher's assistant, he or she would have been deeply ashamed. Lebron will later go one to explain that this shame comes from an incontinence between values and actions.
This exchange made me think about how we, a class with no black students, are to discuss The Color of Shame . If we said something that was shameful (incontinence between our values and actions), we might not realize. Of course, it is incredibly valuable to read and discuss this work, because this topic is valuable to many Black Americans, and thus is important to all Americans.
CMC and most of American higher education is an institution where "we learn a good deal of our moral lessons"(11). Many institutions have financially benefited from the exploitation of other classes, whether historically or presently. Our discussion of race is taking place in such an institution. With that in mind, I think we have to be conscious about how talk about Lebron. It is one thing to intellectualize the logic and premises of his account, but it is another, an arguably more comprehensive method to read a philosopher, to understand why and for whom Lebron is writing this piece.  

Nigerian Americans?

Loved this. Lebron is clearly very sociologically informed, and a terrific writer to boot.

One thing that’d come across my mind when reading this was the circumstances of Nigerian Americans. I remember hearing anecdotally that Nigerian Americans do very well, and Wikipedia appears to corroborate this: "Nigerian immigrants have the highest education attainment level in the United States, surpassing every other ethnic group in the country, according to U.S Bureau Census data. Harvard University, for example, has estimated that more than one-third of its black student body consists of recent immigrants or their children, or were mixed-race.” if there are indeed groups of black people that do well in the United States, that seems to be a problem for Lebron’s social value theory (and a boost for the goods begets goods conception). But then he brings up the case of the West Indian immigrants. It seems clear to me that when Lebron refers to blacks he is referring to “American blacks,” or people who identify as American blacks (2nd generation W.I. immigrants, or maybe 2nd gen. Nigerian immigrants too.) Through the W.I. immigrants you can see plainly how race diffracts life experience.

Sentiments in Philosophy

LeBron defines shame as the "moral response we should and tend to have when we fail to uphold principles we affirm on our own account in the face of conditions that cannot possibly be thought to justify that failure" (18). Shame, he argues, is what citizens ought to feel for permitting the continuation of implicit racial inequality in our country when we are supposed to be committed to the principles of equality.

Like Smith and Baier, LeBron appeals to human sentiment in making a philosophical argument for evaluating our actions. Baier centers around the power of trust in determining our relationships and uses this feeling as a starting place for evaluating exploitative relationships. Smith devotes much of his Theory of Moral Sentiments to discussing the importance of sympathy and similar to LeBron, suggests that individuals must assess the morality of their actions from an outsiders view (Smith's impartial spectator).

Appealing to human emotion aligns with the importance LeBron places on creating a political theory. These nonideal theories must adequately search for the solution to a problem by starting from within, as opposed to creating a theory of morality or justice without consideration of contemporary societal issues. In the same way, evoking real sentiments forces individuals to directly face the problem; we cannot escape the feelings of shame, sympathy, nor trust. Nonetheless, I understand that LeBron is taking a less conventional approach so I'd like to hear how others feel about his account.