rom “colored” to “Negro”, to “black”.  Now, the term in vogue is “African-American".   It is has been around since the early 90s.  And it was intended as an improvement over the term “black”, because it identifies black people with their roots in Africa.  My view is that this was a horrendous mistake.  Indeed, it has done more harm than good. 

First of all, the term is terribly divisive.  Blacks in the United States have no more of a claim to the continent of Africa than blacks in Canada or England or France or anywhere else outside of the continent of Africa.  Second, blacks in these other countries do not prefix their nationality with “African”.  Blacks in France do not call themselves “African-French”.  Blacks in Canada do not call themselves “African-Canadians”.  And so on.  Nay, not even blacks in the West Indies prefix their nationality with “African”. 

Needless to say, these individuals are no less aware of their African origins than American blacks.  And if truth be told, the average black in France of French nationality has more of a claim to being African than the typical American black, as that black French person is more likely to have been born in a country in Africa or this is true of the individual’s parents. 

So the term “African-American” literally divides blacks Americans from other blacks throughout the world.  This I find odd for all those who insist upon black unity.  From the standpoint of black unity throughout the world, the invocation of “African-American” was exceedingly myopic.

And the use of the term was misguided at another level.  The move from “Negro” to “black” was brilliant.  It served to undercut the vast ocean of negative connotations that were associated with calling a person black.  Thus, time was when an American black upped the ante if, instead, of merely saying, for example, “You mother fucker,” she or he uttered instead “You black mother fucker”.  However, the move from “Negro” to “black” effectively changed that.  It took the sting out of the word black.  And that was such a good thing.

Of course, no one is really black.  Or certainly very few are.  But then the same holds for being white.  So the move from “Negro” to “black” introduced a desired parity between blacks and whites.  And that was a very good thing.  The slogan “I am black and I am proud” really spoke to a most profound transition: I am no longer ashamed of the darkness of my skin.  Once more, that was a very good thing.

Has the move to “African-American” been equally salubrious?  I see no indication that it has.  And if I were born in a country in Africa, I would in fact find the term rather offensive.  But never mind that black Americans might offend other blacks.  After all: “We were slaves.  So whatever we think about all black people is right.”  What can one say?  This is none other than sheer arrogance on the part of American blacks towards black people born and raised in Africa and other parts of the world. 

And there is no better sign that people are in the grip of an ideology than the most glaring shortcomings of the ideology entirely escape them.  Indeed, some “African-Americans” hold the ludicrous thought that all blacks throughout the world should refer to themselves as—guess what?—African-Americans!  So my friend who is a French black woman who has no shame whatsoever regarding the fact that she is black has had to deal with black Americans telling her that she is “African-American”, though they are fully aware of the fact that she was born and raised in France.  On the one hand, this is beyond absurd.  On the other, it is indicative of what it means to be in the grip of an ideology. 

But from my perspective it gets worse than that.  Suppose that the widespread use of term “African-American” had had an ameliorative impact upon black communities throughout America.  Crime and teenage pregnancy nose-dived, whereas commitment to education and community service became the defining feature of black communities across the nation.   Needless to say, these changes alone would more than justify the use of the term “African-American”. 

Most regrettably, nothing of the sort has happened.  Thus, unlike the move from “Negro” to “black”, the move from “black” has not had an ameliorative impact upon black Americans.  To be sure, the use of the term has no doubt flattered black academicians who fancy themselves the leader of blacks, especially as these ivory tower blacks have watched whites tripping over themselves to use the term.  Must be rather empowering.  Never mind that African-Americans kill more African-Americans than non-African-Americans do.  I mean why let the fact of black murder and teenage pregnancy among blacks get in the way of one’s having a sense of power with respect to getting whites to change their terminology?

I cannot think of one positive change that has come about for black people as a result of the use of the term “African-American”.  And I don’t think for a moment that whites respect blacks more.  No, what I think is that whites simply take the easy way out; for as we all know there is no more irrefutable, non-diffusible charge than the charge of racist.  For the typical white, the attitude is “Call me anything but a racist!”  

So the term “African-American” has gained its ascendancy.  Surely, it is just a matter of time before we talk about the “NAAAAP”: the National Association for the Advancement of African American People.  Or, for short, N, then A to the 4th, P. 

I do not know much about the world.  Indeed, many blacks suppose that I am nothing but an Uncle Tom.  But I have always been a very practical kind of person.  If something produces change for the better without making anyone worse off, then I am for it.  But delusions sicken me.  This is especially so when the salient facts of life lay bare a painful reality to the contrary.  I have asked myself time and time again “How can it be that people get more worked up over being called African-American instead of black than the systematic loss of life in the black community?”  There is no good answer to that question. 

The social reality is quite simple: A term has flourished whilst a people have floundered.  And in the hollow halls of Black-Make-Believe it is repeatedly uttered: This is a good thing.   

Philosophy 191 at Syracuse University

he saying is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  As far as I can tell, the mere desire for power is pretty good at bringing about corruption as well.  Many people will do what is egregiously wrong for no other reason than to gain power.  So much so that by the time they gain power, it is not at all obvious that there is room for them to become even more corrupted.

When I look at American politics, I see more corruption than I ever thought that I would see.  And from where I stand, one of the most striking ways in which this corruption manifests itself is that in order to gain power people will deny just about any and every truth—even where the denial of that truth is detrimental to the well-being of the country itself.

I have always held the view that the European Union and the United States ought to have presented a united front against Iraq, and should present a united front against the Arabic world.  Of course, that did not happen in the former case.  And all sorts of American politicians have seized upon that truth.  What gets conveniently left aside, however, is the reason why the EU did not stand with the United States.  This has just about everything to do with fear of Arabic reprisal in the EU, and next to nothing to do with the view that Iraq did not present a problem, even if only symbolically.  Never mind the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis murdered by their own leader.

In general, the EU is afraid to attribute any wrongdoing to Arabs; and, in turn, far too many Arabs in Europe are playing the “ethnic” card.  A most blatant example of the former is the extraordinary anti-semitism that was coursing through EU states just a year or two ago.  The EU tripped over itself not blaming Arabic youth for such antisemitism when any reasonable person on the streets knew that these youths were precisely the culprit.  Either that or one believed in some form of spontaneous combustion.

As an aside, another sign that the Arab world has gotten masterful at playing the race card is that Arabs, in the name of attaining a political ally, consistently refer to blacks as their brothers.  But when you ask Arabs about their enslavement of blacks people even prior to the Middle Ages, Muslim Arabs seem to have a massive failure of memory.

But let me return to the United States.  My own view is that President George Bush has many faults.  However, he is in fact right about one thing, namely that the Muslim Arabic world in general is a vicious one that seeks nothing but the destruction of the West, beginning first with the United States.  And this the Muslim Arabic world seems to want even if it entails its own destruction.

For one thing, if compromise were a possibility, then there would already have been peace long ago.  In this regard, I notice that I do not seem to hear any criticism from other Arabic nations as Iran asserts that Israel needs to be blown off the map and as Iran insists that it will hold a scientific conference in order to ascertain whether the Holocaust really occurred.  Yeah right: What fact does anyone suppose that Iran is missing.  Germany, of course, is laboring under a massive delusion in thinking that there was once a Nazi Germany that had as its aim the annihilate of the Jewish people, to say nothing of France and its despicable treatment Jews.  Or so Iran has to believe. 

For another, the Arabic world has spent huge sums of money in the name of violence even as the vast majority of its citizens go lacking in mere basic needs.  There is no denying that poverty remains in the United States.  However, there is not even the slightest parallel.  Mr. Arafat, rather like Jesse Jackson vis a vis downtrodden blacks, became wealthy pleading the case of poor Palestinians.  But he kept much of the money that he received for himself and his wife’s home in Paris.

With all of his faults, Bush understands the Muslim Arabic world is intent upon destroying the West, even if this means destroying themselves; and people who are honest with themselves will admit this. 

Is this is a matter of demonizing the Arabic world?  Well, let’s us.  Many have claimed that Jews eat the blood of non-Jewish children.  This claim has no basis in reality.  That is demonizing a people.  If, on the other hand, the religious and political leaders of an ethnic group explicitly and unequivocally express their intention to destroy a nation, taking their claim seriously is not tantamount to demonizing them. 

Some people can only see racism committed by whites.  Any non-white, by contrast, can do whatever she or he damn well pleases and there is at the very least an excuse that operates.  More often not there is even a justification that is proffered.  So people who could see the slightest wrong of the least Israeli past blithely over the fact that Arafat was getting rich off of money sent to help the Palestinian people. 

Quite poignantly, I find that many Democrats refuse to acknowledge these simple truths about the Muslim Arabic world.  And they cannot fathom the fact that, by contrast, a great many Americans see these truths and acknowledge them.  Indeed, it is painfully clear to me that far too many Democrats would rather demonize Bush for political gain than acknowledge that he is right about the issues to which I have drawn attention.  Is he right about everything?  Obviously not.   But is he right about something of fundamental importance to the very survival of this nation?  I would that I could say otherwise.  And I would that I could say with confidence that Republicans would act integrity were the president a Republican.  Alas, I am not persuaded of that. 

What made Abraham Lincoln great is just that fact he was able to see past his own interests to the good of the nation.  Though a man of few relatively few words, this nation is forever in his moral debt owing to his having the wherewithal to act in an upright manner.  Today, there is no shortage of verbal cacophony.  Oh how wonderful it would be if that deafening noise were matched by a semblance of the integrity that Lincoln exhibited.  Once again: a nation would be saved.

s a general rule, of course knowledge is a good thing.  A very good thing, in fact.  Yet, at the realm of the particular, there are lots and lots of things that no one needs to know.  An even stronger claim is possible, namely that in some instances knowledge does more harm than good.  I hold this to be the case with children seeking the identity of anonymous sperm and egg donors. 

Quite simply, mere biological relatedness should not in and of itself suffice to override the conditions of anonymity under which a person has chosen to become a donor of eggs or sperm.  Letting it do so runs up against the donor’s right to privacy, becoming utterly unwieldy as I shall illustrate at the end. 

Mere biological relatedness has never been held to override a person’s right to privacy.  If Mary moves away from the family, she is entitled to her privacy no matter how much the family may want to get in touch with her, even if this is because the family needs to know whether she has the rare blood type that some other family needs for a blood transfusion in order to live.  And if the family does manage to get in touch with her she may steadfastly refuse to submit to any tests to determine whether she has the right blood type.  Truth be told, Mary can actually get a restraining order against her family.

There is no wide-ranging right to know based upon blood propinquity. 

As I noted at the outset, there are lots of particular instances when knowledge does more harm than good.  Here is a simple example.  Suppose that Aaron has had a very fleeting but also very real sexual fantasy about someone else’s wife.   The woman is, in fact, Paul’s wife; and Paul and Aaron are the dearest of friends.  There can be no doubt in my mind that everyone would be better off if John kept this little fact to himself.  It is irrelevant that it is acknowledged by all that Paul’s wife is a woman of stunning beauty, intelligence, and charm thereby making Aaron’s fleeting sexual fantasy of her all too human.  This reality notwithstanding, I submit that everyone is better of if those untoward fleeting sexual fantasies are never mentioned to anyone.  The problem with revealing such a fantasy is that, even when no one has a pugnacious character, there is simply no way to rein it in once it has become known.  The knowledge makes all parties concerned uncomfortable: Paul and his wife, on the one hand, and Aaron and his, on the other. 

Moving closer to the case of donors, consider Case 1: Susie and Joseph had non-identical twins.  Alas, medical tests showed that one of the twins would be born blind.  As it happens, the other twin died from medical complications 6 weeks prior to birth.  And Susie and Joseph were presented with the option of having the eyes transplanted to the one who would be born blind; and that is what Susie and Joseph chose to do.  The operation was successfully done in the womb.  Now, does the surviving twin born with sight, thanks to the transplant, have a right to know what had happened?  If the surviving twin does, then it follows that the parents wrong the child in some way merely by not telling the child what happened. 

Here is Case 2: Suppose that Rachel and Jesse have twins and that Rachel puts her very life on the line to give birth to the twins.  Medical complications made it such that giving birth to the twins would infect her liver resulting in her death almost immediately.  She chose to give birth.  Her liver was indeed infected.  And it is a mystery to all that she lived long enough to have transplanted the liver that became available quite unexpectedly.  But alas she did.  There is one complication, however: the mother will die from an irrecoverable liver infection within 20 or so years.  And that is just what happens.

Do the twins in this case have a right to know why Rachel died so early?  I cannot think of any decent mother wanting to lay that sort of guilt trip upon her children: “Come, my darlings, we need to have heart-to-heart talk.  I am going to die soon because I put my life on the line for you at birth”.  Quite frankly, any mother who would tell her children this really, really cruel. 

So, if

(1) A right to know follows merely from the fact that one’s body or life was involved with respect to a most serious matter,

then

(2) We have a right to know in both Case 1 and Case 2. 

We have seen, though, that no such right obtains in Case 2. Hence, (1) is false.  In fact, we seen something even stronger, namely that it would be downright cruel, in Case 2, for the mother to impart the knowledge in question. 

I have not made this claim in Case 1.  The strategy was to raise the issue of just how a person is wronged by not being informed, and then to give an example in which, just the opposite occurs, namely that conveying the pertinent information is wrong.

As I have said, there is no wide-ranging right to know based upon blood propinquity.  The case of donors is different yet again.

When persons donate eggs or sperm under the conditions of anonymity and then individuals avail themselves of the appropriate reproductive cells in acceptance of the condition of donor’s, then that anonymity ought to be respected.  Two reasons why this is readily come to mind: A person may want to donate her eggs or his sperms without having any desire whatsoever to have personal relationship with the resulting offspring.  Or, the person may have made the donation and then went on to start her or his own family.  And the last thing on this earth that the person now wants is a half-sibling to her or his children showing up on the doorsteps.  

I understand that the child who is born as a result of a donor’s contribution did not accept any of this; and I shall explicitly speak to that in a moment.

As the case of Mary (in the 3rd paragraph above shows), these individuals are entitled to that privacy. 

We could, of course, give donors a choice between anonymity or non-anonymity.  Or, we could allow donors to reconsider their choice periodically.  But it is entirely wrongheaded and shortsighted to cast aside conditions of anonymity, under which all parties acted, in the name of someone badly wanting to know who her or his biological parent is.  Wanting something very badly does not give one a right to it. 

People generally invoke the concern of health as kind of trump card that fells all opposing considerations.  Not so, however.  In terms of acquiring knowledge about one’s health, there is probably nothing that surpasses regular check-ups.  This holds more so now than in time’s past, given our ever-expanding knowledge of genetic influences along with our ever-increasing ability to read and understand genetic coding. 

No one has a right, in the name of blood propinquity alone, to crudely and rudely intrude upon the private life of another.  This holds, for example, for siblings who grew up together.  So this holds all the more so in the case egg and sperm donation, where the condition of perpetual anonymity was known and accepted by all parties to the arrangement.

Now, as I have noted, it is obvious the child who is born under these circumstances did not accept the arrangement.  But, alas, no child who is born accepts any arrangement at all with regard to her or his birth.  It is more or less a conceptual truth that a child cannot be party to the circumstances under which she or he is born.  Not only that, there is the morality that the donors do not bring a child into the world.  Rather, it those who avail themselves of the materials provided by donors who do that. 

Suppose that both parents are murdered upon the birth of a child conceived with a donor’s sperm or egg.  Clearly, it would be absurd to maintain that an obligation to care for the child automatically passes on to the donor.  Suppose that the donor found out about this.  It would be very nice of her or him to step in.  But the individual has no moral obligation to do so; and the child has no right against the individual that she or he so behaves.

Needless to say, this example is absolutely telling against the idea that a child born of a donor’s sperm or egg has a right to know the identity of the donor. If the donor has no obligations to the child who, at the very beginning of life, unfortunately finds herself or himself without any parents all, then surely the donor has no obligation to the child under far more favorable circumstances.  Surely not owing to desire to satisfy a mere curiosity or owing to supposed concerns about matters of health—concerns readily addressed by health professionals. 

Finally, we might look at the matter from the other side for just a moment.  If the child has right against the donor, then does the donor not have rights against the parents or the child?  Surely not.  The very integrity of the family precludes this possibility.  But the donor might have health needs, too.  A bone marrow transplant, for instance.  Clearly, the argument from alone health is hardly persuasive here.  Nor should it be.

To allow that child born of an egg or sperm of a donor has a right to know the identity of the donor is to open up Pandora's box precisely because there are no good arguments for doing so--only myopic and narcissistic desires masquerading as a moral justification.  It is a conceptual feature of rights that desires alone do not suffice to generate a right.  This does not change in the case of a child whose genetic material comes from a donor’s egg or sperm, even if it is remotely understandable that such a child is curious upon occasion.  If all goes well, though, the curiosity should be dwarfed by the love, care, and support of the child's parents.  In that case, the child's curiosity should be dwarfed by her or his depth of gratitude towards the parents who made her or him the never-ending object of their love.

Thanks to Ms. Clive Tucceri, Philosophy 191 has gotten off to a quite excellent start.  She suggested that courage can be essentially understood as overcoming fear.  This makes courage a morally neutral concept.  Thus, Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther King can both have courage.  Or, to put the point another way and more generally, there is nothing about being an evil person that makes it the case that courage is less within her or his reach. 

Now, it has been pointed out by various individuals that, as a matter of fact, Hitler not all that courageous at all.  That is, although he himself did some rather mean talking, his behavior did not in reality match his words.  This point has been made in writing by, for example, Mr. Gavin Jones.  However,  Tucceri can acknowledge this point without supposing the the substance of her claim is diminished.  For though it may be true of Hitler that he was actually a coward, this does not mean that he could not have been courageous in the way that Ms. Tucceri is understanding the term. 

Ms. Clare Rutz does not reject the importance of overcoming fear, but she adds a most important qualification, namely that the act must be selfless in terms of its motivation.  Messieurs Bach and Meisel are of the mind that courage need not be all that selfless; and they both both offer a similar type of example: the underdog who is told to go away, but who hangs in there nonetheless and who ultimately proves to be rather successful. 

Kyle Maynard is undoubtedly a case in point.  Born with a birth defect that left him essentially without fully-formed limbs, he went on to become a very successful wrestler.  What is surely the case, however, is that at the outset many people did not take him seriously, supposing that he was merely joking or that he had a most ludicrous wish.  But he prevailed and went on to gain the admiration of all around him. 

the blame game, of course, is well underway.  Is the school to blame for not having reported the scars of Nixzmary Brown?  Should state protective services be held to blame for not performing a kind of moral intervetion?  No doubt we can do plenty of finger pointing in this regard.  Indeed, I think that excoriating criticisms can be leveled in either case.  It is sheer commonsense that something is very, very wrong when a 7-year old child weighs only 37 pounds or so.  Still, it is not with either the school or state protective services that my criticisms first begin. 

I begin, instead, with the mother of Nixzmary Brown, a Ms. Nixzaliz Santiago.  She leaves me absolutely cold.  For you see, I am still trying to figure out just how it is that any women could be so indifferent to the well-being of life that issued from her body.  I could not abide such brutality being visted upon a stranger in the next room, let alone my very own child.  And I maintain that her husband was so shamelessly brutal with the children precisely because he knew that she would tolerate it.  After all, there was a pattern of brutality on his part, as opposed to a single wildly unexpected incident that resulted in the little girl's death.

When we read novels like Sophie's Choice, a factor that generates the angst of the moment is precisely the reality that a mother is the person who has to make this choice.  To be sure, one could certainly have the very same dilemma with a father.  All the same, part of what would be missing in the drama of a father having to chose is the simple reality that he is not choosing with regard to life that issued from his body.  That this is true of Sophie, the mother, plummets her choice to a depth of mmoral agony that has no equal in this world. 

A mother: We have long venerated the idea of motherhood because the absolute bedrock assumption that has animated our thought, however impercetibly, is that a mother protects her children at any and all risks to herself; accordingly, it is simply not possible for a mother to standby while her children are being harmed, let alone brutally harmed.  There is simply no getting around the fact that Nixzaliz's new husband, Cesar Rodriguez, was unquestionably brutal and violent in his mistreatment of Nixzmary Brown.   

It is my view that as gender equality has risen there has been a de-valuing of the role of motherhood.  I do not for a moment think that there is a logical connection here.  Rather, I hold that this has been the strategy employed in the push for gender equality between women and men. 

Motherhood has been characterized as a waste of talent, a clear impediment to genuine flourishing.  And the very idea of becoming pregnant has been made to seem more like a mere biological event of inconvenience, say, a more complicated form of menstruation, rather than something remarkable and precious. 

This is the flaw that lies in treating gender equality on the order of ethnic and racial equality.  Since men cannot have children at all, then the only option left was to devalorize the having of children by women.  Lest I appear to be a morally depraved and misguided soul, I certainly wish to acknowledge that there has been and continues to be much abuse of women, and that the work of women in the home has often gone woefully unappreciated.  Moreover, it does not even occur to me to think that a woman's place in the home. 

A woman should have the option to work or stay at home as a mother.  This way of viewing things does not require de-valuing the role of motherhood.  And there is rub.  Rather than continuing to venerate motherhood, but insist that women should have a choice, as surely they should, the strategy has been to devalorize motherhood, explicitly claiming in some instances that a woman who would rather be a stay-at-home mother instead of holding a high-paying corporate job is failing to value herself properly. 

Here is the discrepency, though.   There are many options in life that we highly praise, even though they do not earn us a six-figure salary or give us the use of a cooperate jet.  Being a school teacher is one of them.  People choose the career of teaching because, of all things, they find it fulfilling.  And we quite understand that.  So why wasn't being a stay-at-home mother characterized in precisely this manner.   Certainly, this is the right way to characterize being a stay-at-home mother.  Is there really anything more important that giving nurturance, moral instruction, and guidance to a new life?  From where I stand, the failure of feminist to valorize motherhood bespeaks the grip of sexism upon their very own thinking. 

The relevance of all this to Ms. Nixzaliz Santiago is no doubt too obvious for words.  The moral sensibilities that once upon  a time would have automatically moved a woman to protect her child from the sort of brazen acts of violence committed by Cesar Rodriguez against Nixzmary have been numbed mightily by our social cutlure.  Protecting one's child is no longer identified as one of the defining features of motherhood; for women should be as free as men.  Accordingly, just as a man is in fact free to walk away from his children, a woman should be equally free to do the same.  From this, it is easy enough to suppose that a woman should be free to choose a lover over her child.  Certainly no less free than a man is.  So in order to hold on to her man and to have the love life to which she has been told in the name of gender equality that she is entitled, Ms. Santiago thought it reasonable enough to sacrifice her child.   

In general, we have privileged personal relations in such a way that the well-being of children has fallen between the cracks.  So I am not all that surprised that protective services and the school missed the moral mark.  

In many respects, then, this blog-entry shows signs of a more radical form of feminism than most envision.  For on my view, the model for women is not always men.  Indeed, I should think that in some instance it really ought to be the other way around, namely that women should be the model for men.  Parenting, no doubt, is a case in point.  Or so it is on the old view of the venerated mother.  In destroying that model of motherhood, we have hardly made for a better world.  Quite the contrary, we have made the world a far more precarious place for the most innocent of all, namely children.  Once upon a time, a child could almost certainly count upon mom for protection, at least to a much greater degree than is presently the case.  And now that even reality has become more like a fairy tale as moms increasingly do what is utterly abominable by way of their children.   

Lying upon the bed, after she had been battered and tossed about like a rag-doll by the stepfather, the viciously bruised daughter pleaded for her mother to come into the bedroom and comfort her.  The mother remained in the other room.  Though this is not the kind of world  that we claim to want, the reality is that this the world that we have unwittingly nurtured, as we adults have put our needs above those of the children whom we have brought into this world.