As America is reeling from the horrifying effects of Coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic that has ravaged our most vulnerable communities, from the elderly to the immunocompromised, to those who struggle to afford education and healthcare, today, the country feels as if it is burning. 100,000 people died of COVID-19 in about 3 short months: this pandemic made us more acutely aware of the issues of climate change, the obesity epidemic, and the role of healthcare as a human right. And now, when life seemed to be coming back to some semblance of normal, the country saw multiple black individuals die at the hands of racists. Ahmaud Arbery died while out for a jog; Breanna Taylor dies in her own home, and of course, George Floyd dies with a knee on his neck, murdered by a police officer.
Usually, when events like this that make me so incredibly angry occur, I take to social media. I find solace in sharing my anger and my hurt with my friends and my network. I post stories and repost the voices of the affected communities. I remember being on vacation in Hawaii when heartbeat bills came up from states like Ohio that (for all intents and purposes) outlawed abortions. I was livid. I sat in my hotel room, posting about protests I could not attend and the evils of government that limited womens healthcare rights. Then, social media helped. When I came home, protests had fizzled out and my small donation to Planned Parenthood felt meager. But posting on social media helped me find a voice and while it aggravated my negative feelings, it gave me an echo chamber. However, now, as I've taken a month-long break from social media, I sit in my room, angry but unable to scroll through Instagram to use my account and 24-hour story as a sounding board for my anger. I am forced to sit in my room and think about how I feel, where these feelings come from, and what small steps I can take to stand up to the racism embedded in our system.
The peaceful protests against the murder of George Floyd unfortunately turned into riots, as tensions ran higher until they overflowed into the streets as rocks thrown at windows, small businesses burning to the ground, and graffitied police cars. It is how I feel about these riots and looters that I am struggling to come to terms with. I am well aware that my feeling towards the lack of education of our police, the murder of black lives, and the racism in our system is anger and sadness. These feelings are palpable; they make sense to me. I know why I feel angry and I know why I feel sad. However, as I watch videos of store owners being beaten, of Targets on fire, of more and more violence, I am confused as to how to feel. I know that every rebellion, every uprising, every major change in the world oftentimes has had violence as a significant part. Yet, as a philosophy student, the people who I read, the writings that have changed my life, come from Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. It is the suffragette movement, the Gloria Steinems of the world, the Malala Yousifzes, the Greta Thornbergs, the wonderful, strong, empowered women that have made changes in their spheres through nonviolence that I look up to every day. And yet... in history books, I read about bloody revolutions, about wars fought to create new worlds, about lives lost and about casualties that were unavoidable. This tension between peaceful protests and violence in results is what I struggle with. Where do I stand? What is right? Who am I to even be the arbiter of right and wrong in this situation, even in my own head, as a non-black person of color?
It is in these times where I do not know what to feel and how to react that I turn to read from an old ethics textbook from a college class. To understand what is right and wrong, I have always felt, is the noblest of studies. As an armchair ethicist myself, I look at where my life has taken me, at the decisions I've made for my future or the decisions I made to late (which seems to be the trend in my life recently), and try to unravel these threads of regret, of anger, of uncertainty, and of right and wrong. In light of the riots and looting that has affected so many cities, I again lean on ethics to help me understand what I myself do not. Before I write a few sentences about the passages that have helped me formulate my own opinions, I'll add here that I am of course aware that in this scenario, the worst of all groups have come out. Opportunists and anarchists have risen from the cracks of our society: few protestors are violent, few cops are murderers or racists, and few people are enjoying seeing their cities on fire. But for this few, I must still think about my opinions towards them, if not for anyone but myself.
R.M. Hare, a well known Utilitarian, in his article "What is Wrong with Slavery" (1979) argues that while critics of utilitarianism can make slavery seem like a net positive for society, there is no way possible to show that slavery was ever okay because this rests on the premise that slaves are less than their masters. R.M. Hare, when concluding his argument, writes:
"The wrongness of slavery, like the wrongness of anything else, has to be shown in the world as it actually is. [...] One of the most important of these rules is a formal requirement reflected in the Golden rule: the requirement that what we say we out to do to others we have to be able to say ought to be done to ourselves were we in precisely their situation with their interests. And this leads to a way of moral reasoning (utilitarianism) which treats the equal interests of all as having equal weight. Then we have to apply this reasoning to the world as it actually is, which will mean ascertaining what will actually be the result of adopting certain principles and policies, and how this will actually impinge upon the interests of ourselves and others."
Hare's argument reminds me of something Utilitarians don't remind me of often: regardless of what creates larger or smaller outcomes, there are basic rules about the way we treat each other that underline all ethics. There is no study of ethics, there are no competing beliefs of moral reasoning, there are no conclusions to be made without realizing this Golden Rule. Even utilitarianism, which argues that what is right is what helps the most people and that situational morality is as legitimate as principled morality, abides by this Golden Rule. And to me, when I think about being a black protester who has seen deaths recoreded on shaky phone-cameras... I know that rioting may feel like the only palpable way to express those emotions. However, when I put myself into the shoes of the store owners, of even franchise owners of large corporations, I realize that there is no world in which it would be in my interests to see my property burned down. Hare reminds me that even through lenses of situational justice, the Golden Rule outweighs arguments of immorality. We must show wrongness in the world as it actually is, Hare says. Riots that destroy people's livelihoods are valid shows of anger and frustration, but that does not make them right.
Another philosopher, not out of a textbook (my ethics textbook from college has few POC and even fewer women writers) but from a set of essays I've begun to read: W.E. B. Du Bois. The author of The Souls of Black Folk, a short set I started getting into recently as I've decided to learn more about the historical plight of black POC in America, has a quote that stopped me in my tracks.
“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”
Maybe Du Bois is right. Maybe the issue isn't right and wrong... maybe it isn't ignorance or poverty at all. Maybe it's that we just don't put ourselves in the shoes of others enough. We don't consider other people. We don't know about the plight of those different from us. I, as an Indian American women, know little about the fears black men face when dealing with police. A white woman would know little about how I feel when I see her sweating and stepping on the picture of Ganesh on her yoga mat. A white man would know little about the small daily microaggressions that same white woman faces in her office every day. We all just don't know about eachother; even the best of us do not know enough about other people. Maybe if we did, George Floyd wouldn't be dead today. Maybe if we did, Amy Cooper wouldn't have called the police on a bird watcher. Maybe if we did, rioters wouldn't be damaging small businesses.
I'll end with something Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet: "And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain. And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."
The entire country is in pain, a pain that black Americans have been feeling even when stories of police brutality aren't showcased on a 24-hour news cycle. For me, this pain is most definitely a breaking of a shell. All I can hope is that from this pain, progress follows. Today, I saw that volunteers showed up to clean up Rochester, NY after a night of riots and looting. Today, I saw the head of police in Flint, MI join his community in marching for George Floyd. Today, peeking at Instagram, I saw that all of my friends have this issue at the top of their minds.
Thank you to everyone who has given their life, their time, and their resources towards civil rights in this country. I would not have grown up here in America if it wasn't for Black and Asian activists that came before me. Although protesting in the time of COVID-19 feels, to me, largely dangerous to those around me, finding solace in ways to help from home has been helpful. As I disconnect from social media, I've enjoyed being more directly involved with the things it gave me: more directly involved with my friends' lives, more directly involved with activism, and more directly involved with finding things to be optimistic about.