here seems to be a most interesting correlation between suffering and excuses, namely that those who have suffered seem to hold the view that either they can do no wrong or, in any case, the wrong that they do is absolutely inexcusable.  One sees this with feminists; one sees this with blacks, one sees this with gays.  Indeed, blacks go so far as to make the extraordinary claim that they cannot be racist.  That, of course, is a rather silly view.  If a black can be an Uncle Tom, and all sorts of blacks agree to that, then surely a black can be a racist. 

One of the most striking forms of self-defense is known to flow from what is called the battered wife syndrome.  Suppose that a woman has been battered by her husband for years.  Well, one day he hits her and then goes to sleep.  The wife, in turn, pulls out a gun and shoots him to death or she hits him over the head with a frying pan until he dies.  In these circumstances, it has been argued with some success that what we have here is a case of self-defense.  To be sure, it is not the “classical” case of self-defense where one kills another in order to free from oneself from the very life-threatening attack that the person is making against one.  The battered wife syndrome is seen as an extension of this “classical” case.  She wasn’t being threatened at that very point in time when she killed her husband, but her life had been so threatened and demoralized all these many years, that this small detail is irrelevant. I shall say more about this momentarily.  For the matter is instructive.

Folks who do not embrace homosexuality have been called among other things Nazis.  I understand that Nazis were ideologically opposed to homosexuality.  Just so, it is simply false that all those who have some difficulties with homosexuality are even close to being Nazis.  But never mind this truth.  There is the thrill of invoking this excoriating label.  One has been a victim and one is entitled to do whatever pleases one in order to advance one’s cause.

The moral prize of victimhood, if you will, is that it excuses behavior that would otherwise be utterly inexcusable morally. 

At the heart of the idea of suffering excuses behavior is the idea of justified moral outrage. 

Now, I take moral outrage to be a serious and appropriate moral phenomenon.  If you have wronged me in a particularly horrible way, expressing moral outrage towards you would be quite appropriate.  I may with great justification want you to grasp just how much you have damaged me.  Make no mistake about it, people sometimes need clarity as to the damage that they have done. 

Alas, what moral outrage does not justify in any way is my hurting you.  And merely harming another does not, whatever else it may do, bring about clarity to the harm that one has suffered. 

In this regard, the battered wife syndrome is rather unlike the suffering of gays or blacks.  The two cases would be more analogous if there were indeed this one non-black or non-gay who did all or most of the wrong in question, which is what we have with the battered wife.  She is rightly seen as having an on-going fear of a single man who has inordinate power over her.  The husband is, in a very straightforward sense of the word, guilty.  This may excuse her killing him, but it does not excuse her killing other men.

So the battered wife syndrome is not a moral friend of those who use their suffering as an excuse for the wrong they do.  For they seem to think that they may randomly be hostile and derisive to individuals—individuals who are in fact innocent.  Admittedly, people can be mistaken about their innocence.  But that is uninteresting, since people can also be mistaken about who is not innocent.  There is almost nothing under the sun about which a person cannot be mistaken. 

Another reason why the battered wife syndrome is so unlike these other cases is that one can rightly point to the wife’s on-going fear for her well-being and safety.  This is manifestly demoralizing.  Gays and blacks and other groups are not at all in a continuous state of fear regarding their safety and well-being.  This is true notwithstanding the fact that there are racist or homophobic or sexist outbursts here and there. 

It is no doubt annoying to be followed around by a clerk in a store.  But there is no parallel here at all to having the on-going fear that one might be brutalized by the very the person with whom one lives and with whom one is intimate.  So it would be if the same clerk followed me around every single time I went into the store. 

I might rightly think the clerk stupid or lacking in insight or lacking in sophistication.  But by hypothesis, there would be nothing analogous to a woman’s fear of being beaten by her husband. 

Both in France and in the United States, I am struck by the use of racism as an excuse for violence against others, whites especially.  In the United States, this is primarily among blacks and Latinos; in France, this is primarily among Arabs and blacks. 

The other day I was in a computer store in Paris called the FNAC; and a security guard seems to have conveniently placed himself in the vicinity of wherever I went throughout the store.  Honestly, I must say that it was more amusing than annoying.  For one thing, he could not do anything to me unless I did something inappropriate.  For another, I got to keep him on his toes, as they, as I moved about here and there touching one thing and then another.  In the end, I walked out with precisely what I wanted, precisely when I wanted to do so.

I do not deny that I am in something of a privileged position vis à vis many folks, be they black or white.  But the guard did not know that.  He did not go “Oh, let me follow that Syracuse University professor around who regularly flies between the two countries”. 

If this is right, then the deep, deep point here is that any black could have done just what I did: ignore the guard or be amused by him.  Neither requires status or privilege.

I am perfectly willing to concede for the sake of argument that the FNAC guard’s following me around was a form of racism.  But it was most certainly not a form of suffering.  And this brings me to the very poignant point that not all forms of racism or sexism or homophobia constitute a form of suffering.  Alas, you would not know that nowadays, when the world of hyperbole permits us to turn any annoyance into the most horrendous thing that has ever happened to us.  Never in the history of the world have people who have so much claimed to have suffered so much. 

Living well is very much an attitude.  To be sure, certain things are necessary.  Indeed, certain comforts are necessary.  The rest of it, though, is simply about attitude.  The reality of racism or sexism or homophobia does not change this truth.  It is simply foolish to suppose that one cannot feel at-ease in the world until every last vestige of these forms of behavior has disappeared. 

There is indeed suffering that others cause us.  But if I am right, there is no small amount of suffering that we bring upon ourselves simply because we have brought to the moment the wrong attitude.  As I remarked in connection with the FNAC store: I brought what I wanted and left when I wanted.  That really is just about all the freedom that I needed.  Whether the guard was racist or not, his following me around did not, in the end, detract one iota from the freedom that I had and wanted to have at that moment in time. 

Part of what means to take ourselves seriously as equals is to bring to the moment the moral power that we have to transform it.  Between complaining about a moment as opposed to transforming it, the latter is the more preferable choice on every account, not the least of these being that we affirm our moral powers.  Some important aspects of equality is tied to work that we must do for ourselves.