Code of Ethics for Antiracist White Allies

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Code of Ethics for Antiracist White Allies 

 

April 26th, 2013

Code of Ethics for Antiracist White Allies

By JLove Calderon and Tim Wise

Sponsored by SURJ-Showing Up For Racial Justice

Excerpted from Occupying Privilege; Conversations on Love, Race, and Liberation

                             

We are persons classified as white who oppose racism and the system of white supremacy. As such, we are committed to challenging the individual injustices and institutional inequities that exist as a result of racism, and to speaking out whenever and wherever it exists. We are also committed to challenging our own biases, inculcated by a society that has trained all white people, including us, to one degree or another, to internalize notions of our own superiority.

As antiracist allies, we seek to work with people of color to create real multiracial democracy. We do not aspire to lead the struggle for racial justice and equity, but rather, to follow the lead of persons and communities of color and to work in solidarity with them, as a way to obtain this goal. We do not engage in the antiracist struggle on behalf of people of color, so as to “save” them, or as an act of charity. We oppose and seek to eradicate white supremacy because it is an unjust system, and we believe in the moral obligation of all persons to resist injustice. Likewise, we believe not only that a system of white supremacy damages people of color but also that it compromises our humanity, weakens the democratic bonds of a healthy society, and ultimately poses great risks to us all. Because we believe white supremacy to be a contributing force to war, resource exploitation, and economic injustice, our desire to eradicate the mindset and system of white domination is fundamentally a matter of collective preservation. Though people of color are the direct targets of this system, we believe that white people are the collateral damage, and so for our own sake as well, we strive for a new way of living.

To do this with integrity, we believe it will be helpful to operate with a code of ethics in mind, so as to remain as accountable as possible to people of color and to each other, as we challenge white supremacy. We know from experience how easy it can be to act with the best of intentions and yet ultimately do harm to the antiracist struggle by choosing tactics or methods that reinforce privilege and inequity, rather than diminish them, or by acting within the confines of an echo chamber of other antiracist white allies, while failing to ground our efforts in structures of accountability led by people of color.

In recent years, the number of white folks engaged in one form or another of public antiracist work or work around the subject of white privilege (as scholars, writers, activists, organizers and educators) has proliferated. Likewise, schools, non-profit organizations, and even some corporations have begun to look at matters of racism and white privilege within their institutions. As this work expands at many different levels, it is perhaps more necessary than ever that white people who are working to be strong antiracist allies take a good look in the mirror, analyze and critique what we do as well as how we do it, and ask: How can we, as antiracist white allies, operate ethically and responsibly as we work toward helping to dismantle white supremacy?

To this end, we propose the following code of ethics for antiracist white allies. Though it is hardly an exclusive or exhaustive list, we believe it is a start toward a more responsible and responsive antiracist practice for white persons who wish to act in solidarity with people of color in the battle against racism. The code should not be viewed as a fixed or final document, let alone as a checklist or “rulebook” for responsible antiracists. It is merely a guidepost. We hope that it will lead to productive reflection, discussion, and even healthy debate among those who are engaged in antiracist struggle.

Code of Ethics for AntiRacist White Allies

1. Acknowledge our racial privilege.

Self-reflection matters. So does public acknowledgement. Although there are many ways in which white people can be marginalized in this society (on the basis of gender, sex, sexuality, class, religion, disability, etc.), this truth does not eradicate our racial advantage relative to people of color. As white people, we can be oppressed in these other categories and still benefit from privileges extended to white people. Acknowledging racial privilege doesn’t mean that we haven’t worked hard or that there weren’t barriers we had to overcome; it simply means that our racial identity helped us along the way. Indeed, racial privilege will even work in our favor as we speak out against racism. We will often be taken more seriously in this work precisely because we are white, and we should be clear on that point.

2. Develop interpersonal connections and structures to help maintain antiracist accountability.

Accountability matters. When we engage in antiracist efforts, be they public or private, we should remember that it is people of color most affected by racism, and thus, they have the most to gain or lose as a result of how such work is done. With this in mind, we believe it is important to seek and obtain regular and ongoing feedback from people of color in our lives (friends and/or colleagues), as a way to better ground our efforts in structures of accountability. Although this kind of accountability may play out differently, depending on our specific job or profession, one general principle is that we should be in regular and ongoing contact with persons in the communities that are most impacted by racism and white supremacy—namely, people of color.

3. Be prepared to alter our methods and practices when and if people of color give feedback or offer criticism about our current methods and practices.

Responsive listening matters. It’s not enough to be in contact with people of color as we go about our work. We also need to be prepared to change what we’re doing if and when people of color suggest there may be problems, practically or ethically, with our existing methods of challenging racism. Although accountability does not require that we agree with and respond affirmatively to every critique offered, if people of color are telling us over and over again that something is wrong with our current practices, accountability requires that we take it seriously and correct the practice. And, all such critiques should be seen as opportunities for personal reflection and growth.

4. Listening to constructive feedback from other white people, too.

Community matters. Particularly as we work to reach a broad base of white people, we need to listen to feedback from the people we are working with. White privilege tends to breed individualism, and this plays out in the form of white antiracists distancing ourselves from other white people and competition between antiracist whites to be the “most down.” Listening to feedback from each other as white people helps to counter that tendency, and encourages us to collectivity.

5. If we speak out about white privilege, racism, and/or white supremacy, whether in a public forum or in private discussions with friends, family, or colleagues, we should acknowledge that people of color have been talking about these subjects for a long time and yet have been routinely ignored in the process.

Giving credit matters. Because many white people have tuned out or written off the observations of people of color, when another white person speaks about social and racial injustice it can be a huge “aha!” moment for the previously inattentive white listener. The speaker may be put on a pedestal. We should make sure people know that whatever wisdom we possess on the matter is only partially our own: it is also the collective wisdom of people of color, shared with us directly or indirectly. Likewise, beyond merely noting the general contribution of people of color to our own wisdom around matters of race, we should make the effort to specify those people of color and communities of color from whom we’ve learned. Encourage others to dig deeper into the subject matter by seeking out and reading/listening to the words/work of those people of color, so as to further their own knowledge base.

6. Share access and resources with people of color whenever possible.

Networking matters. As whites, we often enjoy access to various professional connections, resources, or networks from which people of color are typically excluded. The ability to act as a gatekeeper comes with the territory of privilege. The only question is, will we help open the gates wider or keep them closed? As allies, we should strive to share connections and resources with people of color whenever possible. So, for instance, we may have inroads for institutional funding or grant monies that could be obtained for people of color-led community organizations. We may have connections in media, educational institutions, or even the corporate world, which if shared with people of color could provide opportunities for those people of color to gain a platform for their own racial justice efforts.

7. If you get paid to speak out about white privilege, racism, and/or white supremacy or in some capacity make your living from challenging racism, donate a portion of your income to organizations led principally by people of color.

Giving back matters. Although it is important to speak out about racism and to do other types of antiracism work (organizing, legal work, teaching, etc.) and necessary for people to be paid for the hard work they do, whites who do so still have to admit that we are able to reap at least some of the financial rewards we receive because of racism and white privilege. Because so much of our own understanding of race and racism comes from the collective wisdom of people of color, it is only proper that we should give back to those who have made our own “success” possible. Although there is no way to ascertain the real value of the shared and collective wisdom of people of color on the understanding that white allies have about racism, it seems fair to suggest that at least 10 percent of our honorariums, royalties, salaries, or other forms of income should be shared with people-of- color-led organizations with a commitment to racial and social justice. It would be especially helpful if at least some of that money goes to locally-based, grassroots organizations that oftenhave a hard time getting funding from traditional sources.

8.Get involved in a specific, people of color-led struggle for racial justice. 

Organizing matters. If we are not fighting against police brutality, against environmental dumping in communities of color, or for affirmative action, for immigrant rights, for access to health care, or for antiracist policies and practices within our own institutions and communities, what are we modeling? How are we learning? What informs our work? Can we be accountable to communities of color if we are not politically involved ourselves in some aspect of antiracist struggle? 

9. Stay Connected to White Folks, Too

Base-building matters. In addition to our roles in active solidarity with people of color, white people involved racial justice work also need to reach out to other white people to broaden the base of antiracist white people. Unless we do the latter, we fall short in our accountability. Accountability means showing up, not just with ourselves, but with more white people each time.

10. Connect antiracism understanding to current political struggles, and provide suggestions or avenues for white people to get involved

Accessibility matters. We can connect the participants in our networks, classes, and trainings to opportunities for ongoing political work. We can bring current grassroots political struggles into our activism, education, and organizing by addressing the issues that people of color tell us most directly affect their lives. We can give tools and resources for getting involved in the issues the participants identify as most immediate for them, whether those be public policy issues such as immigration, affirmative action, welfare, or health care; or workplace, neighborhood, and community issues, such as jobs, education, violence, and toxic waste. After contact with us, people who we come into contact with should be able to connect directly and get involved with specific current struggles led by individuals and groups with a clear antiracist analysis. 

The premise of this code is simple: White people have a moral and practical obligation to challenge racism in a responsible and responsive manner. To this end, we believe that the principles of self-reflection, accountability, responsive listening, building community, giving credit, resource sharing, giving back, organizing, base building, and accessibility are important starting points for whites who are engaged in any kind of efforts to eradicate racism and white supremacy. We hope that this code, devised as a set of suggestions and guideposts for white allies, will prompt constructive dialogue and discussion regarding how white allyship can best be developed and deployed for the purpose of building true multiracial democracy.

A note about how this code was created:

The initial code concept was created by JLove, who then joined with Tim. Together they wrote the first draft of the code. That draft was sent out to a multi-racial, intergenerational group of activists, organizers, educators, artists, and everyday people who care deeply about social and racial justice. Input was given, and the authors took key insights and common themes and incorporated them into the editing process. Another round of feedback was led by Paul Kivel. We thank everyone who took the time to bring their wisdom and expertise to the table for this accountability work.

Have We Lost Our Humanity

Have We Lost Our Humanity?

 

 

By Robert Wolff (about the author)

 

OpEdNews Op Eds 2/1/2013 at 22:57:38

 

The Spirit of Compassionate Love by Meryl Ann Butler
 

 

Our scientists are renowned. We know so much. But more about the universe and about bacteria and viruses than we know about ourselves. Certainly, we know more than ever about the functioning of our physical selves. We have multiple imaginations about who we are and where we fit into the biosphere, for instance. But somewhere we have lost ourselves as humans. We, meaning the western "we," assume and accept that we are totally apart from the earth and all other creators. We believe we own the planet.

Most of humankind still knows that we are Mother Earth's children, as the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, said. We are not the boss; we do not own the world. If anything, the planet owns us.

Humans everywhere have rituals and beliefs that strengthen their cohesion as a cooperative community. We westerners, modern humans, have grandiose and unreal beliefs about our unlimited power to do what we want. What we do with all our power endangers our own survival and that of many other species. I think that is because we know so much about matter, and so little about the spirit that is the essence of life.

We have come to think that "spirit" is unmeasurable and therefore not scientific, not worth thinking about. Perhaps because we think spirit is religion, and so outside the realm of science that deals only with matter - another form of energy as Einstein formulated. The only rational something to pay attention to.

But to me the word "spirit" does not mean religion. Religion is the package, what we create around spirit. Religion is a form we give spirit and we can make hundreds, thousands of forms.

It is hard to talk about - or define - "spirit" in a culture that accepts only matter as real. To me spirit is more real than matter. It is the awe that is at the core of life. Spirit is in what we call love, compassion. Spirit is the indomitable something of the people who struggled to reach the poles despite inhuman odds, climbed the highest mountains of the Himalayas. Spirit is what makes children surviving a cyclone in Burma take care of each other, when in the confusion no adults are around. Spirit is what makes people all over the world make sometimes great efforts to raise baby animals orphaned by hunters or poachers who killed the nursing mother tiger, or elephant. Spirit is the mysterious something we feel on a lonely beach when happening upon an unusual, almost unreal, sunrise on a far horizon. Spirit, I imagine, is what the first space traveler felt when he saw the earth, the whole earth and understood the miracle of this ball of matter that is alive, held in a trajectory around the sun by invisible forces.

I'm not sure that only humans have spirit. I wonder what animals feel at sunset: usually no wind, fading light, birds who chatter loudly in a tree suddenly silent. Even the roosters here stop crowing. I remember a time when a friend and I were at a rocky beach. Her dog could not stop bounding from one rock to another sniffing and playing with the waves. Until it began to get dark. When a blood-red sun lit up the sky at the far horizon the dog sat frozen at our feet, as enraptured as we were.

Hiding, ignoring, or denying spirit makes a cruel culture. It leaves us searching for ideals. Something greater, more important, than the fear which drives us today. A majority of "We the People" chose the ideals so eloquently spoken, but some politicians did not hear and perhaps had more power through worshipping money.

The irony, of course, is that money is an illusion. A piece of paper printed with the words "ten dollars" is not worth anything but the price of a printed piece of paper. But seller and buyer accept the belief that it can buy ten dollars worth of stuff. History is full of occasions when suddenly people woke up and no longer believed the worth of a piece of paper. The wealth of the super rich is as illusional, it consists of numbers in a computer that we let it intimidate us.

Maybe you think spirit is as illusionary as money because it does not buy anything. Oh, but it does! It does not buy material things, but spirit makes us human. Spirit is what gives compassion. Com-passion: with-feeling. Not doing to others what we do not want others to do to us.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what our current culture does? We do to others what we don't want them to do to us. It is a law of nature, a law of the universe perhaps, that the more we kill others the more the others will kill us.

But what do I know? I'm a 20th Century man, I don't understand this century.

But I do know that a culture based on fear is not healthy. If everyone and anyone is suspected of being a possible danger, we make ourselves the danger. A healthy culture is based on trust. It seems to me that is what this Republic was meant to be by the Fathers. Trusting that "We the People" were honorable human beings, trusted to want the best for all of us. Yes, flawed because at the time slaves were not considered quite human (although human enough to bear half white children). But we corrected that.

Now we are plagued with the disease of mistrusting people of another religion, another color, other thoughts.  Distrust does not a healthy society make. We have lost the human. Humans are not all alike, humans have unique qualities and talents; that make ours a unique and talented society. We cannot forget or ignore that humans have spirit even when it is hidden behind one or more masks.

Anyone remember Dune, by Frank Herbert? Famous science fiction of the second half of the last century. This is from that book (the first, the original):

 

 

Progressive Morality and why the Democrats Ignore it at their own Peril

Published on Thursday, June 14, 2012 by Common Dreams

Progressive Morality

by Robert C. Koehler

 

To what extent will progressive morality be a factor in the looming presidential election? Is it simply a nuisance? Will mainstream Democrats (yet again) cringe in its presence, disavow it, spout mostly Republican-lite platitudes about tough-guy patriotism -- and, positioning themselves, as ever, as the Lesser of Two Evils, count the progressive vote as theirs?

The election season, which ought to be more about promoting values than candidates, is barely about values at all, except as weaknesses to manipulate.
Ah, democracy! In post-modern America, the political establishment has quietly uncoupled the word from its definition even as it affects to promote democracy around the world. Campaigns celebrate and dismantle candidates’ personalities and stand for no more than variations of the status quo.

And this is why progressive morality is, indeed, a nuisance. It’s about the future: the world we haven’t built yet, a world beyond poverty, war and environmental exploitation. In a real democracy, such issues would be passionately addressed — if not all the time, then at least during election season — with the limited interests of the present moment temporarily suspended as we tried to figure out how to get beyond them.

George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling, writing about the Democrats’ unsuccessful bid to recall Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, make some excellent points, beginning with the idea that the Dems “argued policy” while the Republicans argued their version of morality — which is pretty much what always happens. And a strong moral stand inevitably trumps a reasoned explication of policy because “morality is central to identity.”

When Republicans run for office, they effortlessly take a foursquare stand for God and country, no matter that such a stand may have the depth of a campaign poster, while Democrats usually manage to sound like nattering nabobs even when they’re speaking about substantive issues. And when they do reach for the big moral sound bite, what they extol is the same God-and-country, kill-thy-enemy morality as the Republicans, but with a desperate “me too” edge. Why is that?

Lakoff has been writing for years that the Democrats should speak unapologetically from a progressive moral position, framing the major campaign issues in this morality, which models itself on the nurturing family; emphasizes such values as equality, empathy and cooperation; and grounds itself in an empowered public sphere, which is dutifully maintained and protected by the government.

In contrast, “Conservative morality fits the family of the strict father, who is the ultimate authority, defines right and wrong, and rules through punishment,” Lakoff and Wehling write. “Self-discipline to follow rules and avoid punishment makes one moral, which makes it a matter of individual responsibility alone. You are responsible for yourself and not anyone else. . . .

“In conservative politics, democracy is seen as providing the maximal liberty to seek one’s self-interest without being responsible for the interests of others. The best people are those who are disciplined enough to be successful. Lack of success implies lack of discipline and character, which means you deserve your poverty.”

And politically, of course, the public sphere — a.k.a., government — is as much the enemy to conservatives as terrorists are, even though private success is impossible without it. There’s no insult more severe than calling someone a “socialist.” The insult is without rationality but is deeply moral in its (flawed) meaning.

So, once again, I ask, why is this? Why have the Democrats remained stalled between solid moral positions since their last major moral stand, which was to support the civil rights movement and dismantle the political infrastructure of Jim Crow? Wouldn’t it be easier to mobilize their base if they positioned themselves at its center rather than hemmed and hawed at the periphery, arguing policy instead of standing up for what’s right? Wouldn’t this reinvigorate not just the candidates and the party but our entire democracy?

The answer, I fear, is that we remain in a state of moral transition — and confusion. The Dems, after all, stood up not just for civil rights and a war on poverty but the geopolitical and moral disaster known as the Vietnam War. Subsequently unnerved by the political cost of their real moral stands (loss of the Old South and racists everywhere), they hedged their bets and tried to get along with the increasingly militant conservatives, bringing on what Robert Parry, in an excellent 2009 essay, called “battered wife syndrome.” As the Dems strove for an increasingly pointless bipartisan unity, their counterparts stole elections and fomented inane scandals to bring them down.

But the Democrats, for all their battered-spouse “cooperativeness,” are also co-conspirators in the corporate agenda of endless war. President Obama has not only extended the reach of drone warfare but managed to craft, with the help of official leaks, a tough-cookie, “assassin-in-chief” image that makes the world far less safe but enhances his authoritarian-father credibility among the other party’s base. His own base is relegated to the status of political orphans.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Adam Lee

Believers Think We Need Religion to Behave Like Good, Moral People -- Here's Why They're Wrong

Morality is real, objective, and perfectly compatible with a worldview that includes nothing spooky, mystical or supernatural. 

 

August 24, 2011  |  

 

 

The most common stereotype about atheists, the most common reason why religious people fear and distrust us, is the belief that people who don't believe in God have no reason to behave morally. In the view of the planet's major religions, the way we know what's right and what's wrong is that God tells us so, and the reason we follow the rules is because we fear divine retribution if we break them. This worldview is simple and emotionally satisfying and to those who believe it, it's a natural implication that a person who no longer believes in God has no reason not to indulge their every selfish desire.

Now, I've never claimed to speak for every atheist. Because nonbelievers are a diverse and quarrelsome lot, there may in fact be a few who think this way. But if there are, they're staying well hidden. The vast majority of atheists, like the majority of human beings in general, are perfectly good and decent people. This should be no surprise, as the evidence shows that human beings all tend to have similar moral intuitions, regardless of whether we profess a religion. But that doesn't address how an atheist justifies acting morally. When we're wrestling with an ethical dilemma, how do we make up our minds? What can nonbelievers appeal to as a reason for their action?

Again, atheists are a diverse bunch. There are some who would argue that morality is just an opinion, a mere matter of taste, like preferring vanilla ice cream to chocolate. But I reject this view, just as I reject the view that morality can only come from obeying what people believe to be God's will. I believe that morality is real, that it's objective, and that it's a thoroughly natural phenomenon that's perfectly compatible with a worldview that includes nothing spooky, mystical, or supernatural.

To see how this can be, consider the question from another angle: What's the point of morality? What quality are we trying to bring more of into the world?

The problem with most common answers to this question is that they're arbitrary. If your answer is something like freedom or justice or familial duty or piety, you can always ask why we should care about that quality and not a different one. Why should we care about freedom more than stability? Why should we care about free speech more than harmony? There obviously can't be an infinite regress of justifications, but we should keep asking the question as long as it can be meaningfully answered. And if you do keep asking, there's only one answer you'll find at the bottom.

The only quality that's immune to this question is happiness. You can ask someone, "Why do you want (good friends/a loving family/a fulfilling job/etc.)?" and the answer is, "Because it will make me happy," but it's meaningless to ask, "Why do you want to be happy?" Happiness is its own justification, the only quality in human experience that we value purely for its own sake. Even theists who say that morality is based on following God's commands, whether they realize it or not, are really basing their morality on happiness. After all, if you should do what God says because you'll go to heaven if you do and to hell if you don't, what is this if not a claim about which actions will or won't lead to happiness?

This is my answer to moral anti-realists who say that facts are out there in the world, waiting to be discovered, but morality isn't. They rightly point out that there's no elementary particle of good or evil, that it would be bizarre to have a moral commandment -- an "ought" -- just hovering there, hanging over us with no prior explanation for its existence. This is a spooky, mystical, weird notion, and they're right to reject it. But as I've said, this only applies to arbitrary qualities chosen as the basis of morality with no real justification. Happiness is not an arbitrary choice; by definition, it's what we all wish for. This, then, is where that "ought" comes from. It comes from us: from our essential nature as human beings and from the fact that we all have this basic desire in common.

My definition of happiness isn't just physical well-being or pleasure of the senses. Nor is it limited to economic stability, or meaningful human relationships, or productive achievement. Rather, it's a balanced approach that includes all of these and more besides. Some might charge that this is too vague, but I'd answer that any moral theory which reflects the almost limitless variety of human experience is bound to be multivariate, sprawling and diverse, and not reducible to a single number on a measuring stick. As the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris notes, "health" is a similarly broad concept -- the inability to leap three feet straight up could be perfectly normal for me, while for an NBA player, it could be a sign of crippling injury -- but no one would argue that therefore the concept of health is too poorly defined to base the entire field of medicine on.

The next question is I should care about other people's happiness, rather than just my own. In theory, you could use happiness as the basis of morality and construct an Ayn Rand-type moral system where everyone is perfectly selfish and cares only about themselves. But the problem with this is that human beings are intrinsically social creatures, designed by evolution to live in groups, which is why people who are deprived of contact with others, like prisoners in solitary confinement, tend to go insane in short order. Our social nature gives rise to the phenomenon of emotional contagion: for better or for worse, we're affected by the moods of those around us.

This means that, if you value your own happiness, it's not in your interest to live in a society where it can only be achieved by the downfall of others. Friendly competition has its place, but there's greater potential for happiness in a society structured to encourage cooperation and reciprocal altruism, one where we can achieve more by working together rather than fighting against each other. If your success is others' success as well, they'll have every reason to work with you and assist you, rather than opposing you and impeding you from achieving your goals. Regardless of what you personally desire, the best thing for you is to live in a society that values honesty, generosity, fairness and the like. A rational being will always come to this conclusion, regardless of their own desires.

One more key piece of this moral synthesis is that we should choose our actions so as to create not just the least actual suffering and the most actual happiness for those immediately involved, but the least potential suffering and greatest potential happiness. In short, this moral system asks us to care not just about the immediate impact of our actions, but the precedent they set down the line, which establishes a basis for principles like human rights. Even if you can come up with contrived and unlikely scenarios where a temporary gain in happiness could be realized by violating a fundamental right like free speech, in the long run, it's far better for all of us to live in a society that respects those principles.

Now, I acknowledge that this argument won't win everyone over. If there's someone who believes that happiness can't be proven to be the highest good, there's little I can say to them. But then again, no rational system can derive its starting principles out of thin air. Every field of human inquiry, from science to history to mathematics, is based on assumptions that a stubborn person could reject. Just as a morality denier could say, "Why should I care about happiness?", a science denier could say, "Why should I care about the scientific method?" The only answer you could give that person is that science works -- it discovers truths about the world, and thereby makes it possible for us to achieve our desires.

And the same is true of morality. The only real, practical reason for believing in it and adopting it is because it works -- because it makes the world more free, more fair, more peaceful, and makes it possible for more people to lead happy and fulfilling lives. In this respect, morality could even be seen as another field of science, like a subdomain of anthropology or sociology: the study of how best to promote human flourishing.
With these basic ingredients, we can build a moral system that's completely secular and religion-neutral, one that's in no way dependent on following the decrees of a holy book or a religious authority. By always seeking to bring about the greatest happiness, we have a guide for what we should do in any situation, one that's rooted in human nature and based on something real and measurable.

That said, I want to emphasize that I don't claim to possess the definitive answer to every ethical problem. The theory of morality I've sketched here is more like the scientific method: not a list of claims to be taken as dogma, but a way of thinking about certain kinds of problems. It still requires people to evaluate evidence, offer reasoned arguments and use their own judgment, and I consider this a point in its favor.

But even in its broadest strokes, a world where everyone agreed on the goal of advancing human happiness would be dramatically different from the world we live in now. In this society, other, more selfish goals -- increasing the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful, maintaining the privilege of the few at the expense of the many -- often interfere and cause suffering and inequality to persist. But a world where happiness was the primary goal, and where every human being's happiness was judged to be of equal value, would necessarily entail some major changes.

It would be a world of democracy, where all people have a say in how their society is governed, and where human rights are fixed and inviolable. It would be a world of free enterprise, where people succeed on the basis of effort and merit; but it would also be a progressive world with a strong safety net and a more equal distribution of wealth and resources, rather than the law-of-the-jungle capitalism championed by libertarians or the Dickensian dystopia sought by Tea Party conservatives. It would be a world that valued sustainability and environmental conservation for the sake of future generations that have yet to come into existence, but whose happiness matters no less than our own despite that.

It would be a world in which all people have access to education and the other public goods needed to develop their talents to their fullest extent; since, after all, a society where everyone is educated, productive and prosperous offers far more potential for happiness than a world with a vast gap between rich and poor, where people succeed or fail based on accidents of birth. For the same reason, it would be a world of free choice, where no woman would ever become pregnant against her will, where population is sustainable and every child is wanted and cared for.

And, most of all, this would be a secular world. Whether religion still existed or not, it would be a private and individual matter, not the loud, overbearing presence in public affairs that it currently has, and moral rules based purely on religious belief would fade away. As I said earlier, most religious moralities are also based on happiness; but their error is that they arrive at moral decisions through unverifiable private faith, rather than facts and evidence that can be demonstrated to anyone's satisfaction. The fact that the world's longest-running, most destructive and most intractable conflicts all stem from religion only highlights this problem... and in a world built on secular reason and compassion rather than faith, it's entirely possible that these would finally cease.

Imagine a world where the sun rises on olive trees and vineyards growing where once there was barbed wire and checkpoints; a world where religious terrorism is unknown and the holy books that preach war and vengeance on the infidels peacefully gather dust on shelves. In this world, the churches, mosques and temples, institutions which teach doctrines that divide people from each other, will have become libraries and museums, institutions that teach wisdom and advance the common good; and human beings care about each other's happiness in the present, rather than looking wistfully to an afterlife where evil will be eradicated.

I freely admit this is a utopian vision. But even if it's unattainable, it still has value as a guide, a best-possible outcome that we should try to approach as closely as we can. If every person was willing to work together, it wouldn't take much effort at all to create a better world. All I'm suggesting is that we each do the small part that would be required of us in that ideal scenario. As the great orator and freethinker Robert Ingersoll said, we can all help "toward covering this world with the mantle of joy." What higher purpose, what deeper meaning, could you ask for in a human lifetime, regardless of what you do or don't believe?

The Daily Beast

Are Ethics for Suckers?

When even Warren Buffett looks bad, the financial world is begging for a backlash. In this week's Newsweek, Joanne Lipman looks at the increasing moral bankruptcy of Wall Street.

Apr 10, 2011 8:01 PM EDT

If there's anything that Warren Buffett has prized more than his billions, it's his company's reputation. Which is why there was a collective gasp of betrayal when Buffett's onetime heir apparent, David Sokol, resigned in the aftermath of pocketing $3 million from trading in the stock of a chemical company Berkshire was acquiring. Buffett furiously spun the departure, insisting nothing "unlawful" transpired. In a Reuters survey of 23 top bankers, 21 said Sokol's trades looked ethically wrong to them, yet only one in five expected any insider-trading charges to be brought. The incident has raised the question, yet again, about what it takes to succeed in finance. Do bankers think of the law as something to be scoffed at and ethics as only for suckers? Increasingly, even veteran investors say the answer is an outraged "yes."

A trader scurries across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell, Friday, March 18, 2011. (AP Photo)

"What you're seeing on Wall Street is disgusting," says Vanguard Group founder John Bogle. "Not so many years ago there were some things one simply didn't do. Period. And that's evolved into moral relativism, into 'When everybody else is doing it, I can do it too.' I've only been in this business 60 years," adds Bogle, and it is "absolutely" worse now than before. He believes that "we have a societal problem, not just a Wall Street problem. But like other problems it gets magnified beyond belief on Wall Street, where the money is." Former Goldman Sachs chief John Whitehead also told Newsweek that ethical standards have slipped, as did former PaineWebber CEO Donald Marron. "We're dealing with more difficult problems than ever before, and it's simply harder to maintain standards of ethics and doing business," says Whitehead, who ran Goldman until 1984. Both Whitehead and Marron say most players are honest. "The vast majority of business," says Marron, "is done at very high ethical standards."

And yet, if you wanted to design a psychology experiment to tempt otherwise honest people to cross an ethical line, it would be hard to beat Wall Street. "It's the culture of success," says Jeffrey Leeds, president of Leeds Equity Partners, a private-equity fund. "Where people are playing for super-high stakes and where you're attracting alpha men and women, you're going to see more people tend to bend the rules, because what you get for success is out of proportion." Perhaps in no other business is there more tension between the rules and the incentives. For starters, investors are both banned from trading on nonpublic information—and rewarded for getting that information first. "The idea that no one can do anything until it's disclosed to the market—that's really not possible. It's an impossible ethical rule," says Eric Orts, a legal-studies and business-ethics professor at Wharton. At the least, there must be hard-and-fast laws about insider trading, right? Nope. "There are a number of gray areas," says Orts. "One of the problems is that insider trading has never really been defined by Congress."

If you wanted to design a psychology experiment to tempt otherwise honest people to cross an ethical line, it would be hard to beat Wall Street.

Complicating matters is the growth of the financial markets. "The scale of Wall Street is bigger by several orders of magnitude," says Marron. "Many more entities are touched by it: pension funds, endowments, 401(k)s. There's no question that the geometric growth of the money and scope of Wall Street has put a strain on ethics and business." Whitehead says that when he was at Goldman, the firm shunned dubious business practices like financing hostile takeovers. "Goldman Sachs became known for its integrity and not doing the thing that made the most money." And how does he feel about the firm now that it's been cast as an empire of greed? "The damage to their reputation saddens me," he says.

Will anything chasten Wall Street? Oliver Budde, a former Lehman Brothers lawyer, says many bankers "really feel awful about what they do," but "there's this other dynamic of 'Look, if we don't do it, then someone else will do it.' " As he puts it: "Morals, ethics—that's not their job. The view on the Street is that that's Congress's job." Washington, are you listening?

Joanne Lipman founded and was editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and website. Previously, Lipman was a deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she created and was editor in chief of Weekend Journal and created Personal Journal. She is a frequent television commentator on business issues.

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Slashing Programs for the Poor while Exempting the Rich

HUFFPOST

Jim Wallis

The Moral Default

The debate we have just witnessed has shown Washington, D.C. not just to be broken, but corrupt. The American people are disgusted watching politicians play political chicken with the nation's economy and future. In such a bitter and unprincipled atmosphere, whoever has the political clout to enforce their self-interest and retain their privileges wins the battles. But there are two casualties in such political warfare: the common good and the most vulnerable.

So how will vulnerable people fair under this deal? "The Circle of Protection," a diverse nonpartisan movement of Christian leaders, has been deeply engaged in the budget debate to uphold the principle that low-income people should be protected. But it is hard to evaluate a deal that averts a crisis when the crisis wasn't necessary in the first place. Over the past few weeks, our economy has indeed been held hostage as politicians negotiated the price of the release. Ultimately, I think most of us wish that no hostages had been taken in the first place, and this was no way to run a government or make important budget decisions.

The deal just passed by the House and Senate raises the debt ceiling with enough room that the issue won't have to be revisited until 2013. The first phase is a set of agreed upon cuts of nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years. The second phase sets up a committee of legislators that is tasked with finding another $1.5 trillion in cuts over the same time period. If the committee fails to come up with a deal then a "trigger" is pulled and automatic cuts are enacted. These triggered cuts are designed to be distasteful enough that, in theory, both sides will stay at the table until they have an agreement.

It appears that the voice of the faith community was at least heard and made some difference in the outcome of the default debate. We met with the President and Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and all of them fought to defend low-income people as we asked them to do. The White House protected low-income entitlement programs from automatic cuts in the "trigger" and successfully defended Medicaid. We also pleaded for low-income people in meetings with Republican Paul Ryan and with the staffs of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They told us they agreed with the principle but did not uphold it in their final proposals. We hope and pray that the protestations of the faith community will work on the hearts of both Republicans and Democrats as the details of this plan are worked out.

Genuinely reforming federal programs, including entitlements, with a special eye to protect the most vulnerable, is something the faith community has supported; but slashing programs for the poor while exempting the rich from sacrifice is repugnant to our spiritual values and contrary to scripture. This plan could still go either way.

The most glaring problem with the deal is that it doesn't, at this point, include revenues. There is no balancing between spending cuts and tax increases, and this deal, so far, falls completely on the side of spending cuts. It is possible that revenues will be revisited in the new super committee, but given the insistence of a cuts-only approach by the Republican leaders, it is not clear how likely a more balanced approach will be.

Corporate tax loop holes for the very rich were protected, while the core safety net for the most vulnerable is still in great jeopardy. The private jet industry mobilized to protect its tax deductions, the most profitable oil companies in the country will continue to get their public money for offshore drilling subsidies. But programs like WIC and SNAP, which provide critical nutrition help for low-income mothers and their kids, or malaria bed nets and vaccinations for children in Africa, are threatened. If the wealthy are not asked to share in the sacrifice, then cuts will undoubtedly come from those who can least afford it. But if sacrifice is shared, we can both reduce the deficit and reduce poverty as our country has done before.

We heard from those inside the negotiations that the voice of the faith community was heard: Your voice mattered. People across the country who joined the "Circle of Protection" have shown that poor people do have a constituency looking out for them -- and that's what matters in these debates according to the people involved in them.

This national debate about our priorities and, indeed, our character, is far from over. When all is said and done in any final deal, the faith community will be watching to see if the most vulnerable are being protected or savaged for the financial sins of the rest of us. If low-income people are not exempted from deficit reduction, the result will be a fundamental moral default. And, with your help, we will continue to remind our legislators to remember that God is watching them too.

Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.

Time to Reset Our Progressive Moral Compass

Published on Saturday, July 30, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Time to Reset Our Moral Compass

by Norman Mathews

Progressives are suffering from debilitating cognitive dissonance. Incapable of reconciling President Obama’s rhetoric with his actions, they have created an elaborate, but flimsy, structure of rationales to harmonize this dissonance. These rationales began shortly after Obama took office, with progressives blaming all those nasty triangulating, progress-by-tiny-increment advisers from the Clinton Administration, who were leading him astray from his principles. From the outset, the Administration supplied it’s own excuses for its failure to achieve audacious goals: “Change comes slowly” and “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Then, despite control of the House and a sizable Democratic majority in the Senate, the party was deemed the problem, because it couldn’t keep its troops in line to get the 60 votes required to pass his agenda. This morphed into a much larger obstacle—the Republicans, following the 2010 landslide. In the recent debt-ceiling debate (and particularly with progressives’ denial that he would actually cut Social Security and Medicare) we’ve seen a rebirth of the meme: “He's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.” Numerous current articles indicate that we now face an epidemic of “he’s just not a competent negotiator” rationale.

In the 1930s, Dorothy Parker said, “Which is worse—the perpetrators of injustice or those who are blind to it?”Glenn Greenwald adroitly addressed this in his April 14, Salon.com article, “Why Do We Assume Obama’s Actually Trying to Enact a Progressive Agenda.” The crisis is now so threatening that a rational mind can no longer make such excuses credible. His supporters correctly maintain that he’s a man of extraordinary intelligence. They seem blissfully unaware that it is impossible to hold this belief concurrently with the notion that he is just not capable of learning the most basic negotiation skills, or that his advisers, who have been both hardened politicians and businessmen and who, after all, include a vice president who was a senator since 1972, are incapable of instructing him in these arts.

Let’s look at the argument that his advisers are preventing him from delivering on campaign promises. Name a manager any field who is not held ultimately responsible for hiring choices. Again, if we assume that the fault is with the advisers, we must concede that Obama was so politically ill informed or did such a poor job interviewing these people that he had no idea what they stood for—not to mention that he refused to fire them upon learning they were reading from a different play script. Further, we would have to entertain the absurd idea that he is powerless to override his appointees’ suggestions. Beyond that, we would have to acknowledge that not only did he make poor choices with his first appointments, but also that he chose badly the second time around, i.e. William Daley and Jeffrey Immelt.

We are long past the expiration date for denying that the Obama we now know— through his actions rather than his words —is anything other than the real Obama. We must come to grips with the fact that much of the rhetoric we heard during the campaign was fraudulent—or more charitably, that we heard only what we wanted to hear. How many ominous signals did we ignore during the campaign?

• The choice of Joe Lieberman as his mentor in the Senate. And his campaign on behalf of Lieberman over the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont.

• NAFTA. Obama professed to seeking changes in this trade law, but when he was about to give a speech in Ohio (a state devastated by NAFTA), Austin Goolsbee delivered a message to Michael Wilson, Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S., that his criticisms of the agreement should be considered campaign rhetoric, not to be taken too seriously.

• Reagan as hero: "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.”

• FISA. Though an Obama campaign statement declared, “Senator Obama is unequivocally opposed to retroactive immunity,” for telecom companies participating in Bush’s warrantless wiretappging, he still voted in the telecoms’ favor.

• Safety net. Politico pointed out before inauguration that Obama echoed “Bush’s claim of an entitlement ‘crisis’, warning of ‘red ink as far as the eye can see’ in Social Security and Medicare. Obama promised that those programs would be a ‘central part’ of his plan to reduce the federal deficit.”

Should liberals blame themselves, as so many are suggesting, for missing these red flags? How can we when so many were convinced of his sincerity? He is the most gifted orator in generations. He made us hear what he wanted us to hear. We so needed to find hope after eight dispiriting years under Bush that we had to believe—the alternative, that he was just another slick-talking politician, would have been nihilistic.

We must stop making excuses for him and stop blaming ourselves for blindly supporting him. Rather, our fault lies in not holding him accountable and pushing back firmly when early in his presidency it was clear that he was not putting up even an appearance of fighting for the changes he promised.

If memory serves, it was during a press conference in which he was defending himself against socialism charges that he astoundingly said: “In many places in the world, I would be considered a conservative.” This may be the most revealingly honest statement he has made, but it’s certainly not what his campaign was about.

By continuing to absolve him, we are unable to move forward with any progressive policies or to demonstrate to Congressional Democrats that we still hold firm beliefs in justice and fairness. The madness of the Republicans has lowered the bar to such an extent that Obama’s capitulations seem sensible by comparison. In the 1930s, Dorothy Parker said, “Which is worse—the perpetrators of injustice or those who are blind to it?” Friends complained about Bush’s war mongering and civil rights abuses, declaring, “Not in my name, do you do this.” Now Obama is expanding these wars (note the Administration’s drive to convince Iraqis to let our troops remain beyond the signed deadline—and remember, ending the Iraq war was central to his campaign). He also is accelerating civil rights abuses, yet I hear not a word of criticism from these same friends. Our silence is surely leading to the death of liberalism—and of hope. What sort of moral compass allows us to condemn actions by one administration only to be silent (complicit?) when our own candidate commits them?

We sit passively as Obama appears intent on proving that his hero, Ronald Reagan, was right: “Government IS the problem.” Progressives must not allow this to happen.

Norman Mathews is an award-winning composer and playwright. He has written for the concert stage and the musical theatre. He has been news editor for Dance Magazine and managing editor of Sylvia Porter's Personal Finance Magazine.