scholarly journals James Baldwin and the “Lie of Whiteness”: Toward an Ethic of Culpability, Complicity, and Confession

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 447
Author(s):  
Michael Oliver

This article is an attempt to draw on James Baldwin’s depiction of white identity as the “the lie of whiteness” to tease out a nascent ethics that centers the role of genuine, honest confrontation with this so-called “lie.” In order to connect the dots between excavation of Baldwin’s lie of whiteness and the provinces of religious ethics, we will explore the role that truth-telling plays in the form of something like a religious notion of confession, limiting our engagement with confession to an honest and genuine encounter with culpability and responsibility through truth-telling. The analysis will be guided by several questions: how might a genuine reckoning with the reality and prevalence of what Baldwin intimately describes about whiteness and its connection to anti-black racism be understood morally? How might this confrontation with the truth be understood in relation to a religious concept like confession, as defined above? Finally, how might this process of confrontation further expose the machinations of Baldwin’s “lie of whiteness” and, in so doing, offer an ethical response that includes culpability and complicity? In so doing, this article seeks to begin sketching out an ethics of the role of confession in the struggle against the evils of anti-black racism, through direct engagement with Baldwin’s description of the “lie of whiteness.”

IFLA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 034003522098757
Author(s):  
Kirsten Thorpe

Libraries and archives are troubling spaces for Indigenous Australian people as they are sites of renewal and truth-telling as well as sites of deep tension. The topic of people’s cultural safety in libraries and archives is one that is being commonly discussed. However, limited research has been undertaken on the topic to reveal the issues and concerns of people who work on the front line in these institutions. This article discusses the dangers of libraries and archives for Indigenous Australian workers by introducing doctoral research on the topic of Indigenous archiving and cultural safety: Examining the role of decolonisation and self-determination in libraries and archives. The aim of the article is to bring greater visibility to the voice and experiences of Indigenous Australian people who are working to facilitate access to collections in libraries and archives.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1000-1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong-Lan Ling ◽  
Hong-Jing Yu ◽  
Hui-Ling Guo

Background: Truth-telling toward terminally ill patients is a challenging ethical issue in healthcare practice. However, there are no existing ethical guidelines or frameworks provided for Chinese nurses in relation to decision-making on truth-telling of terminal illness and the role of nurses thus is not explicit when encountering this issue. Objectives: The intention of this paper is to provide ethical guidelines or strategies with regards to decision-making on truth-telling of terminal illness for Chinese nurses. Methods: This paper initially present a case scenario and then critically discuss the ethical issue in association with ethical principles and philosophical theories. Instead of focusing on attitudes toward truth disclosure, it aims to provide strategies regarding this issue for nurses. It highlights and discusses some of the relevant ethical assumptions around the perceived role of nurses in healthcare settings by focusing on nursing ethical virtues, nursing codes of ethics, and philosophical perspectives. And Confucian culture is discussed to explicate that deontology does not consider family-oriented care in China. Conclusion: Treating each family individually to explore the family’s beliefs and values on this issue is essential in healthcare practice and nurses should tailor their own approach to individual needs regarding truth-telling in different situations. Moreover, the Chinese Code of Ethics should be modified to be more specific and applicable. Finally, a narrative ethics approach should be applied and teamwork between nurses, physicians and families should be established to support cancer patients and to ensure their autonomy and hope. Ethical considerations: This paper was approved by the Ethics Committee of The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University. The authors have obtained consent to use the case study and it has been anonymised to preserve the patient's confidentiality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-39
Author(s):  
Irene Rosalina

This study applies a sociocultural linguistic approach where it examined the representation of English as International language teachers' identity negotiation in their classroom interactions. The important role of the teachers involving their efforts, values ​​, and beliefs preceded this study. Furthermore, the findings in this study indicated that the English teachers negotiate their identity as they still bring out the teaching with the reference to cultural, social, political, and religious constructs. The different ways of the teachers showing their identity infused in their linguistic use in the classroom. Moreover, the religion bounding values and beliefs that the teachers motivated to explore were shown in the connection between the English teaching topic being discussed in class and the religious concept in teaching, which in this case related to the Islamic teachings. The teachers also perceive their identities which can be assembled into four broad areas showing their understanding and the important function of their identity representations in the way of teaching. Lastly, some pedagogical implications were also found from this study.


Lumen et Vita ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Robertson

“We’re moving from one plane of reality to another,” says Terry Tempest Williams in an interview with Yes! Magazine, “and what is required of us is spiritual.” Many people alive in the United States today have grown up bombarded by the seemingly futile refrain that if we don’t cut back on x (activity) in y (years), z (catastrophe) will ensue – with x becoming broader in scope, y becoming smaller in number, and z becoming more horrific with each passing year. Among the natural responses to such daunting and repetitive premonitions are anxiety and anguish: “Accept the anxiety, embrace the deeper anguish,” suggests Robert Jensen, “and then get apocalyptic.” Drawing upon Laudato si, liberation theology, and eco psychology, this paper argues for the importance of encounters (increasingly scarce) with the natural world, human and other-than-human, as a necessary spiritual practice grounding a commitment to ecojustice in times which are indeed end times of sorts. In a consideration of theological anthropology, I suggest, along with ecopsychologist Will Adams, that our subjectivity is indeed an intersubjectivity, arising out of our ethical response to not only the human other but also the other-than-human. We are by nature relational beings, and we must remember that this relation is not only relevant in human-human relationships. Liberation theologians have articulated the foundational nature of the encounter with poor – an experience which at once inspires awe, evokes mercy, and demands action – in grounding liberative praxis. Likewise, the encounter with nature, when its intersubjectivity is considered, grounds a praxis of ecojustice. Finally, understanding apocalypse in its etymological sense as “unveiling,” I argue for the role of the apocalyptic imagination, in making possible sustained exposure to such encounters, which entail both joy and despair. “Expect the end of the world,” writes Wendell Berry, “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts…Practice resurrection.”


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J Papadimos ◽  
Stuart J Murray

In his six 1983 lectures published under the title, Fearless Speech (2001), Michel Foucault developed the theme of free speech and its relation to frankness, truth-telling, criticism, and duty. Derived from the ancient Greek word parrhesia, Foucault's analysis of free speech is relevant to the mentoring of medical students. This is especially true given the educational and social need to transform future physicians into able citizens who practice a fearless freedom of expression on behalf of their patients, the public, the medical profession, and themselves in the public and political arena. In this paper, we argue that Foucault's understanding of free speech, or parrhesia, should be read as an ethical response to the American Medical Association's recent educational effort, Initiative to Transform Medical Education (ITME): Recommendations for change in the system of medical education (2007). In this document, the American Medical Association identifies gaps in medical education, emphasizing the need to enhance health system safety and quality, to improve education in training institutions, and to address the inadequacy of physician preparedness in new content areas. These gaps, and their relationship to the ITME goal of promoting excellence in patient care by implementing reform in the US system of medical education, call for a serious consideration and use of Foucault's parrhesia in the way that medical students are trained and mentored.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-72
Author(s):  
Khubni Maghfirotun ◽  
Eka Nur Mahzumah

The morality / character of the nation's students has collapsed. This is marked by the rise of bullying, child anarchism, mass contests, free sex and so on. Seeing the importance of the role of etiquette in human life, the education world should think more seriously about the concept of planting etiquette in its students, so that the introduction and cultivation of etiquette must begin at an early age. Rasulullah SAW has taught that the example is the main factor of success in educating children. Exemplary is also the best method in children's education, especially in the early childhood period. On this basis the research formulated the formulation of the problem namely (1) How is the concept of Adab in SDI Ar-Roudloh Miru? (2) How is the Implementation of Adab Based Education in SDI Ar-Roudloh Miru-Sekaran-Lamongan? This study uses qualitative research and case studies as its research design. Research subjects in this study were students at SDI Ar-Roudloh. Data collection techniques used were observation, semistructural interviews and documentation. Data were analyzed using the Miles and Huberman model, namely data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The data checking technique uses triangulation techniques. The results of this study include: (1) the formation of students' character at SDI Ar Roudloh is with the Applicative Religious concept. This is evidenced by the existence of Boarding School since students go up to fourth grade. This is expected to be more intensive in applying civilized values ​​that are prioritized by the institution. The etiquette values ​​emphasized and prioritized at SDI Ar Roudloh in this case are divided into three aspects namely; Judging from the pattern of attitudes and behavior to God, patterns of behavior to fellow human beings, patterns of behavior to nature. (2) in implementing civilized education for the formation of students' character by applying the religious concept with the details of the sub-chapters above, there are several stages in order to obtain maximum results, before implementing and informing the values ​​of civilized education to students. In this case the researcher classifies into three stages; first; Socialization, second; Implementation and third; Evaluation.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kfir Eliaz ◽  
Ran Spiegler

A statistician takes an action on behalf of an agent, based on the agent’s self-reported personal data and a sample involving other people. The action that he takes is an estimated function of the agent’s report. The estimation procedure involves model selection. We ask the following question: Is truth-telling optimal for the agent given the statistician’s procedure? We analyze this question in the context of a simple example that highlights the role of model selection. We suggest that our simple exercise may have implications for the broader issue of human interaction with machine learning algorithms. (JEL C52)


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-362
Author(s):  
Corey McCall

Abstract This essay examines various intellectual affinities between Dewey and Baldwin, including their pragmatic and tragic conceptions of history. I argue in the first section that Dewey’s attention to the precarious dimensions of experience and his critique of dominant modes of inquiry that prioritize the stable over the precarious pay insufficient attention to race, though this focus on the precarious over the stable aspects of experience is enough to show that pragmatism does acknowledge the tragic dimension. The subsequent section argues that this insufficiency might be rectified through a reading of Baldwin’s work. While Dewey and Baldwin both acknowledge that existence is finite and precarious (and hence the tragic), Baldwin shows that racism and the promotion of white identity is essentially an attempt to disavow the precariousness of existence. Baldwin’s writings should supplement Dewey’s theory of experience and his account of history because we find in them an acknowledgement of the deep institutional roots of racial oppression and various forms of resistance to this oppression as a key dimension of American history.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis A. Palacio ◽  
Alexandra Cortés-Aguilar ◽  
Manuel Muñoz-Herrera

This paper studies the conditions that improve bargaining power using threats and promises. We develop a model of strategic communication, based on theconflict game with perfect information, in which a noisycommitment messageis sent by a better-informed sender to a receiver who takes an action that determines the welfare of both. Our model captures different levels of aligned-preferences, for which classical games such asstag hunt,hawk-dove, andprisoner’s dilemmaare particular cases. We characterise the Bayesian perfect equilibrium with nonbinding messages undertruth-telling beliefsandsender’s bargaining powerassumptions. Through our equilibrium selection we show that the less conflict the game has, the more informative the equilibrium signal is and less credibility is necessary to implement it.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document