Samantha Vice is decent and therefore wrong
Samantha Vice ("Why my opinions on whiteness touched a nerve", Mail & Guardian, 2 September 2011) seems to think that on account of her being "white" she is not a "basically decent" person (see here). I disagree. First, I don't think that somebody's being "white" tells us anything about whether she is basically decent. We should judge people by the "content of their character" rather than by the colour of their skin. Second, I know Dr Vice and I think that she, as an individual, is a decent person.
I think that her views on this matter are significantly and dangerously mistaken, but she does not deserve the abuse that has been heaped on her by some of her critics. Vitriol is cheap and in abundance. It is careful argument that is in short supply but that is much needed. We should coolly engage her arguments and show their faults.
It is not possible to do full justice here to the arguments she advanced in her academic article. (I shall do that elsewhere.) Here I confine myself to responding to her attenuated newspaper argument and I shall be similarly brief.
Dr Vice suggests that "whites" should "refrain from trying to manage and shape a political landscape still scarred" by their "destructive presence". She says that they stand "on no moral high ground ... from which to issue public criticism of the government of black politicians".
There are a number of problems with this view. First, it seems to overstate the political influence of "whites". While this minority of the population can clearly have some affect on the political landscape, they are hardly capable of managing and shaping it. For "whites" to overstate their influence is to lack the humility Dr Vice recommends.
Second, the political freedoms guaranteed by, and crucial to, the survival of liberal democracies are not the prerogative solely of those who occupy the moral high ground. Everybody is free to participate, however morally tainted they may be.
Third, in determining who occupies the moral high ground, Dr Vice focuses only on apartheid and ignores the myriad other moral violations. She ignores, among others, the murderers, burglars, thieves and rapists, the litterers and polluters, the adulterers and the child abusers, the fraudsters, corrupt politicians and civil servants, the avaricious, and those who are complicit in the appalling ways in which animals are treated in the production of meat and other animal products.
There is no reason to focus on only one kind of injustice in assessing who has scarred the moral and political landscape. A more nuanced and sophisticated moral view requires us to see all these and other evils. When we do, we find that the picture is much more complicated than Dr Vice would have us believe. Instead of good and evil being distributed roughly along racial lines, we find that almost nobody is untainted. Of course people are not equally tainted, but the inequalities do not follow the purported contours of racial groups. Some "whites" are worse than some "blacks", but some "blacks" are worse than some "whites".
The failure to see that sort of nuance is exactly what is wrong with stereotyping. Dr Vice is alert, at least implicitly, to the criticism that she is stereotyping. Thus she seeks to justify her views by referring to the ways in which (almost all) "whites" benefited - and still benefit - from apartheid, and to the "white" privilege of moving "easily about a world made in our own image".
However, this move is also problematic. First, it assumes that harm is a zero-sum game - that if somebody is being harmed others are thereby benefited. However, while it is clearly true that some "whites" were benefited by discrimination against "blacks", other "whites" are no better off than they would have been if "blacks" had never been the victims of discrimination. Indeed, I think that in general "whites" are better off now that apartheid has ended and I think that many of them would have been still better off if it had never been implemented.
Second, it is another gross distortion to suggest that "whites" move easily about a world created in their own image. Life can be complicated for people in many ways. Poverty is one important way, but although most of the poor in South Africa are "black", there is a significant minority of "blacks" that is not poor and for whom life is not difficult in this way. It may be difficult for them in other ways, but life is also difficult for the disabled and the diseased, and for those with unusual views, sensitivities and preferences. There are "whites" is all of these categories. Thus there clearly are some "whites" for whom the world, and especially the South African world, is a more difficult place than it is for some "blacks". Dr Vice's position takes no account of such complexities and it taints an entire group of people on the basis of their purported racial identity.
I said earlier that Dr Vice's view is a dangerous one. This is not because she recommends humility - a virtue for all, whether "black" or "white". Instead it is because she urges "whites" to remain politically silent, at least if they would otherwise express criticism. If "whites" in South Africa were to heed that advice, the voice of opposition, although distinctively multiracial, would nonetheless be weakened. That would not be good for South Africa. There is not a society in the world in which strong opposition voices are not essential to good political health. South Africa is no exception. It is thus fortunate that Dr Vice's advice is unlikely to be heeded by those "whites" who do express criticism.
Dr Vice psychologizes about why her paper elicited the responses it did. She suggests that it touched two nerves. This speculation is no more helpful than that of her critics who deign to know the psychological basis of her views. Perhaps Dr Vice is correct that her views threaten "white" people's sense of their own basic decency. Then again, perhaps people are just outraged at what they take to be her crass stereotypes. Instead of speculating about the motives and other psychological features of those with whom we disagree, we should focus on evaluating one another's arguments. When we do that, I have argued, we find that Dr Vice would be well advised to abandon her position.
David Benatar is Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town.
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