Bud sponsored a seminar and the guest was Jack Hoban.  He took us from the morality of life to being an ethical warrior and demonstrated it with some distance drills explaining tactical space.  I have to say that these were extremely impressive theories.  Theories that everyone could agree with but never heard it put into words.  When I got home from the seminar I had to do my weekly essay for college.  Oddly enough it was over ethics so I tried to incorporate my understanding of what I learned with Hoban, on topic with the essay.

A problem everyone will face at some point in their life is a misplaced feeling towards another person. Be it at the workplace, school, church or a casual encounter at the supermarket, eventually we will feel prejudice towards someone for some reason. I believe equality will never be attained as long as we keep looking at it under the current terminology while at the same time, fostering resentment towards it.  I believe the core of the issue lies in morality and the same fundamental flaws I blame for all other controversial issues. As you read this, please keep in mind that this theory, I believe, will fit all controversial issues from abortion to prejudice. For the purpose of this essay, the question posed is, “In terms of racial equality in America, what, if any, role should government play to ensure equality of opportunity? What, if any, role should it play to ensure equality of outcome?” I feel before we can address such an important question we first have to understand the root of the problem we are dealing with. Second, before we can determine what the government can or should do, we have to understand what we can do as individuals to overcome the problem for ourselves. Finally, after we have solved our internal issues, what can we suggest to our elected officials to curb the problem large scale? To accomplish this, we must each make the decision on if we will be become an ethical hero or an ethical warrior.

There are many factors that cause people to compare another person’s perceived value to their own. When we do this, it isn’t always intended to degrade others. I think that this is how we internally justify our thoughts on others when it is not very comfortable. To put this in perspective I want to tell you about a personal experience and my shortcomings with human equality. I served in the United States Marine Corps participated in the liberation of Kosovo and the subsequent peace keeping operations. As a young marine patrolling the streets of Gnjilane Kosovo, I viewed the people as second class humans. They were absolutely filthy people, I’ve seen cleaner homeless people on the streets of Atlanta. These people survived in deplorable conditions that you just couldn’t understand unless you have see it for yourself. It wasn’t just the dirt, the cloud of death was everywhere. It was like an evil haze cast over the city that soaked the people with despair. It appeared to be so bad, that you really couldn’t believe that they had anything to live for. In my dehumanizing of them, I often thought of the people as roaches. When you would enter an area, people scattered everywhere, just like roaches when you flip on a light switch.  They scurried about in the refugee camps getting their rations then back to the elements to weather it out. It took me a long time to learn why I devalued the people of Kosovo. For me, looking at them as if they were bugs, made coping with what I was experiencing a lot easier. If you saw ten thousand dead roaches in a pile you could agree that this is a gross sight but one that you probably wouldn’t put much value on. If you saw a mass grave site, containing thousands of men, woman and children, words can only begin to express the emotion.  If you walked into a house full of children, with the eldest caretaker a 14 year old girl, you didn’t want to think about where the adults were.  I bring this up because not always, is the lack of equality, born from negative intentions. Sometimes we devalue others out of emotional necessity. This still doesn’t make it right but it is one root of this evil.

I want to give one more scenario to really put this in perspective. I’ve given you a personal example and now I offer a historical one to demonstrate natural instinct. I cautiously want to call this human nature but a lot of animals could be substituted in this example as well so perhaps natural instinct is better. Picture a tribe living in the late Bronze to early Iron Age. Civilization is starting to take root and we are going from just being hunter gatherers to adding farmers to the mix. Tribe Alpha establishes boarders to occupy enough land to sustain their people, no more and certainly no less. Tribe Beta lives on the other side of the mountain and they have decided they need to expand because of an ever growing population. These two tribes are essentially equal, the only difference being, what side of the mountain they live on. Tribe Alpha starts feeling a conflict of interests when tribe Beta comes over the mountain to hunt. They tell each other of these vile demons that are coming over the mountains, to hunt their animals which will starve them to death. They demonize tribe Beta to morally justify a violation of the universal virtue and provide us a stage of inequality.

The universal virtue, what is that? Before I come out and say it, I want to point out that it is one of our founding fathers’ virtues that this country was founded upon. We all remember reading “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Life is the only universal virtue. Life, similar to binary code, it is either on or off, 1 or 0, living or dead. Every conscious entity on this planet demonstrates an understanding of valuing life. Life is in no way shape or form relative. Either you are alive or you aren’t. Either you value it or you don’t. Valuing only certain peoples’ lives is the soul of Frederick Douglas’ paper, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July.[1] As we have studied before, morals are relative. Life is the virtue that all other morals can be judged good or bad, based on the question, does this protect life? Life is a dual value, meaning, you have to value your own life and also the life of others.[2] Before you think too hard about other virtues and how they are also universal, consider this. If the “pursuit of happiness” for me was the “liberty” to cut up small children, are these two virtues still moral? Of course not! Every virtue you can think of can be relative, except life. There is nothing morally wrong about preserving life. Case in point, the argument for and against the death penalty. Both sides of the argument have the same stance, to preserve life, just one side is will to make an exception. This theory on the virtue of life, is why we have equality issues. Tribe Alpha is in fear that if they lose too much land they will starve. If they held the same value of life for tribe Beta as they do their own, then they could not justify a war because life is too precious. It is the manifestation of human nature, to create an artifice, so they can then justify doing something morally wrong. This is why in war, the opposing side is demonized. It has been like this since the beginning of civilization. Now that we understand the root of the problem let’s get into racial equality.

What does it mean to be a person who believes in racial equality? What morals do you possess that provides you with the insight that some people lack? In understanding my belief on the virtue of life, do you understand why I feel it is impossible to be racially biased? There is only one race, the human race and any artifice we create to perpetuate biased thought, is how we justify immoral behavior. If we always value life, regardless of circumstance we would never experience discrimination. John Jay wrote about slavery, “To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves a consistency not to be excused.”[3] Some might be thinking, well there are more than one way to skin a cat, if not, than it isn’t a debate. So what are the different points of views that foster equality? To illustrate this I will use current events comparing the Marines to the Taliban. The Marines have the core values of honor, courage and commitment. The Taliban have these same virtues. They have a sense of honor, they have certainly demonstrated courage and it takes a lot of commitment to blow oneself up. So what is the difference, are we not equally resolve? You should already know the answer so I won’t explain it again, but in short, it is the preservation of life. One side wishes to preserve life while the other side uses their morals to take life. Sometimes we are confronted with the decision to take a life in order to preserve life, this is the ethics of combat an ethical warrior shares with civilian warriors such as a police officers. The Taliban in our example are unethical in that they kill based on a biased intent. This leads me to the center of my point. What is the difference between an ethical warrior and a hero? A warrior will take a life to preserve life, a hero will only save a life to preserve life.[4] For my analogy a fireman is a hero, he only saves where the policeman is the warrior and sometimes must kill to save. Fallow me so far? These two morally correct methods of preserving life are the same for racial equality.

Some people feel that they need to “take” to preserve equality. This can be seen in affirmative action. Jobs are taken from more qualified people to preserve equality. The other way is to “save” to preserve equality. This can be seen in the recovery efforts at the World Trade Center. Lives were saved not based on race, age or any other identifying factor other than it is a life. The workers didn’t say, “Oh, this is a foreign section of the building, there aren’t any Americans here.” They preserved equality by being heroes. It is this hero mentality that our government adopts. Recently, Haiti was struck with tragedy. Our government understands the importance on being the heroes and going down to save the day. We are also argumentatively flawed, in that it is also self serving. If the US government allocates ten billion dollars to rebuild Haiti, who do you think they will award the contracts to? Our own contractors, this is done to boost job growth and our own economy. Is it bad to save others and benefit from it? Frederick Douglas points out, the flaw is when we have cause for celebration, denying another person the same privilege is sacrilegious irony.[5] We are not denying the people of Haiti benefit of our labor and at the same time we aren’t fostering the mooching mentality our politicians love to create. So is it so bad to benefit and be self serving? If there was an answer for this question we wouldn’t have this topic to discuss.

There are a lot of theories expressed that foster resentment and inequality. Dinesh D’Souza wrote, “Slavery seems to be the wound that never healed.”[6] Why are activists so determined to foster resentment towards people long dead and gone. What do I, a young white adult, owe to black citizens for immoral actions committed long before I was born? I have shed sweat, blood and tears with people of all races. My marriage certificate was witnessed by a redneck from Alabama, an immigrant from Cuba and a guy from Trinidad who barely spoke English. Could I possibly have made that more diverse? Doesn’t this go against all this ill fostered resentment towards me? When I met people who hold this resentment, I like to talk to them about forgiveness. When you carry past injustices in your heart, you carry an emotional burden that isn’t yours to carry. Only the person who committed the act can carry the burden. Forgiveness is simply accepting your role in the situation, and relinquishing the burden which doesn’t belong to you.[7]

So what can we ask the government to do, wow what a question. I feel that it starts with educating our children about the value of life, all life. I also think we need to stop using the cliché, preservation of our way of life. This is simply a euphemism to justify being the warrior instead of the hero. We must stress kindness and talk about differences people have, be it ethnic or cultural. I have experienced this theory in action when I was in Tunisia. The Tunisian military wanted so much to be seen as our equal and train with us. Even though they are a second to third world country, they respected our power and wanted to show us a few tricks and share tactics. I was on the advanced party that landed to coordinate the event and I was the second American to greet their commanders. The Tunisian Captain was certainly a wise man. He asked about our field rations and invited us to bring our lunch into his field tent. We exchanged meals, sharing laughter on what we liked and disliked about what the other had to eat. Neither of us lost anything to gain this common ground of equality. This brief encounter fostered respect as equals that this commander did not share with other Marines that came ashore.

When the Marine officers came ashore they tried being gentleman and shared a cigar or a friendly greeting. Where they failed, I believe, is how they carried themselves. Any of our military here understands the difference in an enlisted and officer’s demeanor. I can spot the brass a mile away in a group of a hundred Marines. They have a confident swagger and an overly confident boom in their voice. The epitome of a highly educated and disciplined officer, not necessarily a bad thing but it wasn’t that good for making friends. They were overly professional. I don’t know what words they spoke but what I could see by their body language was telling the Tunisians that we are here to school you, so listen up third world soldiers. So where is the fix in this issue of equality? A better understanding of communication would have helped the Marine officers out immensely. So we have education and communication. I will leave the how to the experts but this would be my recommendation on ensuring equality.

Second part of our question, what role, if any, should the government play to ensure equality of outcome? I am a firm believer that in order to have a structurally sound building, the building must have a foundation void of flaws or any imperfections. I view the government as the foreman and ethics as our foundation. The government doesn’t really need to “do” anything. Our founding fathers outlined this for us when they wrote, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Unites States of America.” [8] This is our foundation, built without flaw. We need a government willing to be Constitutional heroes not ethical warriors. Only through respect for all life and application of the Constitution for all citizens, can we ever view each others as equals and foster human equality.

[1] Douglass: from “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” 480

[2] Robert Humphrey, Values for a new Millennium, ISBN-10: 0915761041

[3] Spalding: “How to Understand Slavery and the American Founding” 461

[4] Jack Hoban, orally transmitted from his Living Values seminar. http://www.livingvalues.com/

[5] Douglass: from “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” 480

[6] D’Souza: “We the Slave Owners” 465

[7] Taoist teachings as taught by Lao Tzu

[8] Constitution of the Unites States of America