Ethics Term Paper

ETHICS, TERM PAPER INSTRUCTIONS
Please follow all the instructions for this paper, as found in the syllabus, including the due date (AS FOUND IN THE ANNOUNCEMENTS – NO LATE PAPERS ACCEPTED AND NO PAPERS ACCEPTED THROUGH EMAIL — ALL PAPERS MUST BE SUBMITTED THROUGH CANVAS).
This is how you should plan your paper:
Page 1 – please summarize with great detail(showing you watched carefully) the “White Like Me” Documentary (found online:

(**CREDIT CANNOT BE GIVEN IF YOU WATCH THE TRAILER ONLY, SINCE THE TRAILER DOES NOT SHOW CRUCIAL PARTS**)
Page 2 – please answer these questions:
a) What was the weakest argument or point made in the film?
b) Please explain if you find X.) or Y.) more compelling (stated below), and then explain why the OTHER side (i.e. the one you disagreed with most) was not convincing – please be specific.
X.) “Mr. Wise, I have three objections to your film.

A.) Your movie is COUNTER-PRODUCTIVEto racial equality. You are not helping to heal wounds but are only making things worse by bringing up that which divides us as a nation. We need to MOVE BEYOND RACIALIZED THINKING, not see it ALL THE TIME. If we want a color-blind society, then we must actually practice being color-blind. Talking about white people’s privileges keeps us in the racist past, not moving forward toward a future where we ‘are judged not by the color of our skin by the content of our character’ (King).

B.) It is time to stop the ‘blame game’ and the ‘guilt game’ and accept that we ALL have problems, not just racial minorities – very poor whites, for example, are, on average, suffering much more than middle class Hispanics and middle class African Americans; why not talk about their plight, too? You are clearly FIXATED on race, yet economic CLASS matters a great deal, as well; why FORCE EVERYTHING into a racial framework, when reality is more complicated than that? Of course, racism still exists, and we should fightit. But there are A LOT of other issues that are equally – or in some cases, more – deserving of our attention, if we were really objective about it.

C.) You act as if racial minorities today are just HELPLESS VICTIMS of white supremacy(how empowering is this characterization?), as they truly were during the horrors of legalized chattel slavery. BUT IT IS NOW THE 2000s, and people have CHOICES now how they live their lives, which means we ALL have PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. EVERYONE has a responsibility to bring themselves up, no matter where they are at in life. We ALL have a reason to complain and blame our bad circumstance on someone else – but promoting a “Black and Brown skinned people are victims” mentality is doing them no favors. Racial minorities today need the OPPOSITE message of “DREAM BIG” and “ACHIEVE SUCCESS through YOUR OWN HARD WORK AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE.” White people alive today do not force racial minorities to live in high crime areas, or refuse to go to college, or have shorter life spans because of personal choices to have bad diets. White supremacy is NOT the ONE and ONLYcause of every single problem in African American and Hispanic communities. Yet your documentary assumes it is all the ‘white man’s’ fault. This is hardly fair or accurate, and, I’m sorry to say, shows you have an agenda and areNOT an objective researcher.”
Or…
Y.) Mr. Wise, or his supporter, might reply this way: “A.) Being color-blind is itself a form of white privilege. If you are facing horrible stereotypes, internalized racism, unfair treatment from the criminal justice system, etc. everyday, this society will REMIND you ALL THE TIME that we have not achieved a color-blind society. The only way to heal our society is to ADMIT we have a serious problem with white supremacy, that we white folks still get unearned advantages because of our skin color, and resolve to do what we have to do to FIX THIS PROBLEM, NOT BRUSH IT OFF, ONCE AGAIN. We should only stop talking about and seeing race when race will no longer affect how you fare in life, as it unfortunately does now.

B.) Of course, other groups besides racialminorities suffer terribly, and these other injustices should end. But you committed a Red Herring fallacy. Why are you focusing on all these other issues – please make your own documentary about poverty and poor white people, and I would eagerly watch it; but please don’t change the subject – I made a film on the uncomfortable contemporaryreality of white privilege. As has been said before, “It begins with the Jews, but it does not end with the Jews.” As the saying goes, if you hate Jewish people, you will probably hate many other groups, as well. In a similar way, some of us BEGIN fighting white supremacy, but soon learn that we need to fight poverty, sexism, anti-LGBT, religious discrimination, and so forth. Racial minorities, like white folks, have all kinds of economic classes, genders, sexual orientations, and religions, so, yes, we definitely have to fight for the rights of EVERYONE. “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King).

C.) Most of the problems you mentioned ARE indeed clear LEGACIES of the slave/Jim Crow experience, which have been passed down to each generation, even until today. Remember that ‘emancipated’ slaves were NOT given reparations – they were given the LEGALIZED TERRORISM of the KKK and hostile/apathetic white folks. That huge amount of RELENTLESS INTER-GENERATIONAL TRAUMA and FINANCIAL LOSS you do not simply overcome with a positive, ‘can do,’’pullyourself up’ attitude. That is WAY too simplistic. However, even if you are correct and racial minorities do have SOME share in responsibility for their plight, SOMERESPONSIBILITY IS NOT TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY. We white folks can do a lot to recognize our white privilege and do whatever we can to oppose white supremacy, fight bigotry, and become anti-racists – that’s what we SHOULD do, so why don’t we?”
Pages 3 & 4 – please summarize (showing you watched EACH ONE carefully, with many examples), and explain what the moral/spiritual costs are for those who see grossly unethical practices and yet say nothing (we all know the financial and other costs of speaking up, but what about the HIDDEN costs of staying silent in such situations?).
a) “The Whistleblower”:
https://www.pbs.org/video/playing-rules-ethics-work-whistleblower/
b) “The Corporation” (excerpt):

Page 5 – please read Martin Luther King’sfamous essay, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (Available many places online).
For the first half of the page, please summarize carefully what he was arguing, with many details.
For the second half of the page, please explain why you choose a) or b) to be more compelling:
a) Dr. King’s personal example in his own lifeand the inspiring argument he offers here are both amazing. However, if you are not religious, you are likely to be puzzled to some extent by his constant and unnecessaryreferences to religious language and ideas.

But is his argument even conceivable OUTSIDE of a religious worldview?:
“If there is even one moral absolute, it invites the question, “What kind of world view explains the existence of this moral rule?”
Atheism can’t make any sense of it. Neither can most Eastern religions. If reality is an illusion, as they hold, then the distinction between good and evil is ultimately rendered meaningless. Something like the Judeo-Christian or Muslim idea of [G-d] must be true to adequately account for moral laws.
Morality grounded in [G-d] explains our hunger for justice—our desire for a day of final reckoning when all wrongs are made right, when innocent suffering is finally redeemed, when all the guilty are punished and the righteous are rewarded.
This also explains our own personal sense of dread. We feel guilty because we are guilty. We know deep down inside that we have offended a morally perfect being who has the legitimate authority to punish us. We also know we will have to answer for our own crimes against [G-d].
In the end, we’re forced to accept one of two alternatives. Either relativism is true or morality is true. Either we live in a universe in which morality is a meaningless concept and are forever condemned to silence regarding the problem of evil, or moral rules exist and we’re beholden to a moral [G-d] who holds us accountable to His law.” (https://www.str.org/articles/evil-as-evidence-for-god#.W8joyS6-MzQ)
As a result, even if (G-d forbid) 100% of humanity was so foolish to believe some obvious evil – blatant crueltyto the innocent, blatant racism, blatant child abuse, etc. – are good, IT WOULD NOT MAKE THESE EVIL THINGS GOOD.
THEY WOULD STILL BE OBJECTIVELY WRONG, and you KNOW this is true!
Why?
It is NOT my or your opinion that they are wrong – they are OBJECTIVE FACTS ABOUT THE WORLD, since ethics is GROUNDED in Absolute Moral Laws, created by the Almighty.
And you know these are objective, spiritual facts about the world when you ask yourself, “Where does my sense of right and wrong come from?”
Parenting, biology, evolution, etc. cannot adequately explain our profound ‘moral sense’ that, just like Dr. King showed so clearly in his powerful article, something can be moral yet illegal, and legal yet immoral. The human law is NOT the DIVINE LAW.
MORALITY IS NOT JUST ONE’S OPINION – there is a RIGHT AND WRONG.
Even if we debate the gray areas, we all know there are some unquestionable Moral Truths, such as the Golden Rule.
If that is so, then there must be Someone Supernatural who created and enforces what you know to be real about morality, and Dr. King’s argument falls apart unless you accept this logical conclusion.”
Or…
b) “Yes, we should ALL admire Dr. King’s great moral example – we should all aspire to make our lives as selfless, engaged, aware, courageous, and meaningful.

But we must admit he wrongly assumesor implies ethics must originate from religion.
The best approach is to defend ethics based upon a non-supernatural basis. We all have different ethical views TO AN EXTENT, but almost all people in all cultures agree that murder is wrong, lying is wrong, etc.
Those are not grounded in religion at all – they are grounded in rationality. We cannot function in a society where murder and lying were openly allowed. So it is rational to respect life and be honest (barring rare exceptions).
This whole idea that “Killing someone innocent, for no good reason, is immoral” is objectively true ONLY IF a Supernatural Being commanded it to be true is not convincing.
We KNOW this is true, and if we don’t know it, we can REASON with ourselves to show it is true.
We feel guilt for not doing the right thing because we are social animals who are hardwired to have empathy; when we fail at this, our evolutionary equipment(burned into our consciousness over millennia) screams at us ‘YOU ARE THREATENING YOUR STATUS IN THE GROUP – YOU MAY NOT LIVE TO PASS ON YOUR GENES!,” and that is usually sufficient to get us on the right path again.
No need to invoke the Supernatural for this.
The proof that this is true is that if ANY authority – human or Divine – were to command something that YOU KNEW IN YOUR GUT to be 100% IMMORAL, you KNOW YOU COULD NOT CONVINCE YOURSELF IT WAS MORAL.
You may do it out of fear, or you may try to lie to yourself, or you may be brainwashed, but if you are CLEAR IN YOUR OWN MIND, you cannot be convinced something is moral when YOU KNOW it is immoral.
So, just because a human leader or even a Divine Creator commands something, it still must be processed by our own internal moral conscience, a conscience that can be explained by science and is a NATURAL fact about the world.
As a result, an atheist could have just as easily made all the arguments Dr. King made in his essay. Dr. King was religious and his audience was religious, so it was appropriate for him to use that language to talk about ethics.
But in most secular contexts today it is unnecessary to assume moral laws have a supernatural basis.”
Page 6 – please summarize (offering many examples, showing you watched carefully) this documentary, “Witness: Voices from the Holocaust” (found online) – please be very specific.

Page 7 – for the first half of the page, please summarize what is covered in this short documentary about those who rescued people during the Holocaust – please be very specific.

For the second half of page 7, please respond to this objection:
“Look, these two videos have contradictory messages, which I cannot reconcile.
The first one ends with the somewhat pessimistic, unanswered question, “Has humanity learned anything from all this senseless misery, racism, and mass killing?” But the other one makes you feel uplifted and positive about what human beings are capable of.
So, which thesis is true?
a) “Human beings are capable of almost limitless cruelty and evil, as if we needed to even state the obvious.
When this does happen throughout history, few of us – if any – really internalize the lessons we can learn. As a result, we are doomed to continue repeating such horrors because, time and again, we succumb to our selfishness, fear, laziness, apathy, prejudices, etc…
So, I wish I could be more optimistic, but if we imagine humanity as a whole to be like a single person, then we should ask if it would be wise to give such a personanother chance to prove himself, after such a horrid track record of abysmal moral failures – if anything, that person should be PERMANENTLY locked up as a danger to self and others. Just because there are fleeting moments when that person imagines and MAYBE even acts to be moral, in no way justifies giving that person the benefit of the doubt, GIVEN HIS SOLID RECORD OF CRUELTY AND APATHY IN THE FACE OF CRUELTY.
Humanity does not deserve another chance at proving it cares about other people or will act on its highest moral and religious values. When you learn about the Holocaust deeply and fully, you must accept that there is nothing and no one you can trust in this world, since each of us would surely act THE EXACT SAME as all of those supposedly “Good, decent Germans” who did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING – even when the evidence was irrefutable that their apathy results in the murder of innocent men, women, and children.
Just like them, we, too, will find a way to live with ourselves and think of ourselves as decent people when we are complicit with immorality and injustice (think about how easy you rationalize, even now, your own behavior you know is immoral– YOU KNOW IT IS WRONG BUT DO IT ANYWAY, AND THEN LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR WITH NOT A SHRED OF SHAME; BE HONEST, YOU DO THIS ALL THE TIME!).
Or…
b) Yes, humans have done and still do unspeakable things to each other. But, if you look carefully in history and today, you will find that there have ALWAYS been those who prioritize being an ethical person at all costs.
Calling these people “heroes” puts a distance between them and us, but the REALITY is that EACH OF US can choose to take the moral path, to do to others what you would want done to you, etc.
It is COP-OUT to say “I could never do what the rescuers did” or “I’m no hero” – that’s self-serving nonsense. It is DIFFICULT to be moral! It is RISKY! It is, at times, TERRIFYING! It WILL CERTAINLY COST YOU to be good! But you can still choose to do the right thing anyway.
You and I COULD do what all the great, everyday moral “upstanders” of history have done, who have all rejected being a passive bystander in the face of injustice and cruelty.
Each time you hear the cry of someone who needs you, and every time your conscience is disturbed, you are being TESTED. Will you choose to prove the pessimists right? Or choose, in that very moment, to actualize your highest moral potential?
Will you prove the pessimists wrong by SHOWING THE WORLD the IMMENSE GOODNESS LYING DORMANT WITHIN EACH OF US, only waiting to be actualized?
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
After doing all of these readings and watching the movies, please write your paper in this format:
1) In terms of citations, please use this style: (Author, Page Number); if there are no pages, please use the (paragraph number) method, referring to the number of the paragraph, in the essay, you are referencing, such as: “Morality is perplexing,” he said (paragraph 4). As long as I know where it is coming from, then you will be fine. Always give credit to your sources, and please do not do anything remotely resembling plagiarism (including having others write your paper for you), since it cheats you out of an honest education and can risk your academic career with serious repercussions (all professors are encouraged to report all instances of suspected plagiarism). Remember that your professors know your writing level and style by now, and we are told to report all instances of suspected plagiarism.
2) Please use the following specifications for your paper: font size 12, one inch margins all around, double spaced, times new roman font, avoid using all bold or all capitalization, and double check for spelling and grammar problems. No cover page is necessary. You do not need a title; please just put your name on the very top line of the first page. You can treat each page as separate from the others, so no transitions or introductions are necessary. To get full credit, please be sure to follow all of these conditions.
3) Again, please list your name only on the very top of the first page (please do not list date, course name, title, etc.).
4) Again, no late papers accepted, so please plan to turn the paper in early in CANVAS, under “Assignments.”
5) I encourage you to start on your paper immediately, so you do not rush your paper. Please try to hand in something you are proud of. A quality paper, as well as a hurried paper, are easy to spot!
6) Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions along the way. Writing a paper is work, of course, but you should also enjoy getting the opportunity to analyze a point of view and get clear about your own philosophical positions. (Always being open to another point of view, remaining critical of all views especially one’s own, and avoiding dogmatism are the hallmarks of a true philosopher, and a thinking person in general.) So try to enjoy the process of philosophizing and thinking deeply on these topics.
7) It will be impossible to pass this paper without showing a significant understanding of EVERY article and movie covered, so please do not skip any of the material.