Singer on Moral Shifts

As our moral standards shift, however, different characteristics of the historical person become more relevant, and the symbol can develop a different meaning. When Wilson’s name was added to Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs in 1948, Rosa Parks’ famous bus ride was still seven years away, and segregation in the American South was not under serious challenge. Now it is unthinkable. Wilson’s racism therefore becomes more salient.--Peter Singer. [HT Brian Leiter]

In my blogging I tend to be rather critical of Peter Singer (despite my admiration for his contribution to animal rights) because he has a tendency to align the purportedly right thing to do with technocracy (in which the downside risks of elite-policy-making tends to be placed on vulnerable others). But I really like the concluding two paragraphs of his post:

Wilson’s contributions to the university, the US, and the world cannot and should not be erased from history. They should, instead, be recognized in a manner that creates a nuanced conversation about changing values, and includes both his positive achievements and his contributions to America’s racist policies and practices.

At Princeton, one outcome of that conversation should be the education of students and faculty who would otherwise be unaware of the complexity of an important figure in the university’s history. (I certainly have benefited: I have taught at Princeton for 16 years, and I have admired some of Wilson’s foreign-policy positions for much longer; but I owe my knowledge of Wilson’s racism to the BJL.) The end result of the conversation we should be having may well be the recognition that to attach Wilson’s name to a college or school sends a message that misrepresents the values for which the institution stands.

As I said, I really like the drift of these comments. But it is alarming that even Singler, who has spent quite some time reflecting and writing on Sidgwick, only learned of Wilson's racism recently (through student protests); it says something about the way the Utilitarians, the Progressive era, and the great internationalist era that led to the foundation of the League of Nations are remembered. The entanglement with eugenics (even Sidgwick was rather tolerant of it), racism, colonial imperialism, and Apartheid (Smuts was one of the great statesman of the League of Nations) is often effaced from the narrative and self-awareness. Perhaps, because of my growing awareness of these effacements (which I encounter regularly in the shared history of philosophy and economics), I found the paragraph at the top of the post out of sync with the rest of the argument.

 

For, Singer's paragraph comes very close to a false version of moral historicism; it's not quite clear what he takes to be 'unthinkable.' But the idea that challenging segregation was unthinkable in the 30s/40s is very partial history.+ As Singer's own narrative makes clear, President Wilson helped undo much of the progress after Reconstruction (at the Federal level). Moreover, the 1930s and 40s saw the rise of the second Klu Klux Klan and a more general revival of a pro-slavery/pro-racial narratives (this is why the naming of Calhoun College in the 1930s, who was especially known for his defense of slavery, at Yale is not idiosyncratic). To put it in Singer's terms, if there had been a "moral shift," then it was (in many respects) regressive when it comes to race relations in the generation(s) before Rosa Parks.

 

In fact, in nearly every generation there are courageous and humane voices that opposed the worst versions of racism and eugenics (this is also true when we go back further in time). The NAACP (with a very significant role for the philosopher, W.E.B. Du Bois, the fascinating Oswald Villard , Mary Ovington, etc.) has its roots in the Niagara Movement itself a response to the disenfranchisement and racism promoted by Wilson's Democratic party. In fact, the founders and the first generation(s) of the NAACP represent such an interesting cross-section of ideologies and life-stories that the very idea that there was no "serious challenge" to segregation is just itself a version of such narrative effacement.*

 

Perhaps, Singer can find the time to read a biography of Thurgood Marshall or simply learn about the significance of Smith vs Allwright (1944)?  The history of philosophy is intertwined with the history of political and legal theory (President Wilson was a political scientist with a Hopkins PhD, after all); we owe it to our students to do homework on and understand the institutions and privileges we have inherited and develop.

 

 

+It's possible Singer means that segregation is unthinkable now. Not quite sure why he would think that.

* A further worry in the vicinity is that accepting a false version of moral historicism is likely to let our well-intentioned selves off the hook.

Comments

[Alan Nelson]

I stumbled upon details of Wilson's racism years ago while making a (cursory) investigation of the filmmaker D.W. Griffiths racism.