Yesterday I heard a short piece regarding the Malaysian Airlines incident; once again the question ‘WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? Emerged into my consciousness. I held this question in my mind’s ‘background’ the remainder of the day.
Historically there have been many incidents for which it is near impossible to assign to an individual ultimate responsibility; I am thinking now of the ‘buck-stops-here’ that President Truman sought to embrace. One challenge arises when the individual being judged belongs to a ‘community’ (e.g. discrimination against a minority by communal legislation). Within certain contexts the individual will not even begin to believe that he or she is perpetrating evil; he or she might actually deeply believe, for example, that ‘I am following God’s will’ as determined by the community.
In 1859 (I believe it was) the following advertisement appeared in a New Orleans newspaper: NEGROES FOR SALE – a negro woman, 24 years of age, and her two children, one eight and the other three years old. Said negroes will be sold ‘separately’ or together, as desired. The woman is a good seamstress. She will be sold low for cash, or exchanged for groceries. For terms, apply to Matthew Bliss & Co.
Is it sufficient to note that slavery at the time was institutionalized in the South, and therefore the sale of human beings was both legal, ethical and legitimatized? For many of us, probably not, especially if we are to discern who is ultimately responsible for perpetrating this evil (I am assuming that most of those who will be reading this posting will judge this event as evil). It is also crucial to believe that the seller must have reconciled his treatment of Negroes with his faith-tradition (many Southerners in New Orleans were deemed to be Christians). For the ‘seller’ the Negro was an essential ingredient of the economic system, a system that received near universal approval in the South. The Negro must have been perceived as not quite human or at least devoid of or deficient in human emotions. Since they were not humans blacks could be sold like cattle. Moreover, if the ‘negro woman’ being offered for sale were devoid of human emotions she would not object to being bought separately, or she would recover from the loss of her children more quickly than would a mother with a white skin.
The owner could therefore rationalize the sale, and since the rationalization was provided and reinforced by his society, he could well have believed that he was not perpetrating an injustice (I am now thinking of a ‘moral’ injustice for it was already determined that what he was doing was ethical, legal and legitimate according to the law of the land). He might also say that he is not betraying his Christian principles for they only apply to ‘human beings’ and not to all sentient beings. Mr. Bliss, it seems, cannot be held responsible for he was simply following conventional practices (that moreover were ethical, legal and legitimate). BUT, can we really, truly exonerate him? Perhaps we can! He was, after all, socialized a certain way; he was also supported by his faith-tradition; he was also supported by the law of the land; he was also supported by his ‘mentors’ and ‘teachers.’ He might even have considered that perhaps he was behaving immorally and then rationalized his way out of naming this as a moral issue (it is not difficult for me to come to this conclusion given how he probably was socialized). Finally, he had to ‘live’ within several different ‘communities’ all of which supported the selling of Negroes; no one wants to be shunned by his community. So the question remains. . .
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?