ETHICS, TERM PAPER

INSTRUCTIONS

Please follow all the instructions for this paper, as found in the syllabus,

including the due date (AS FOUND IN THE ANNOUNCEMENTS – NO

LATE PAPERS ACCEPTED AND NO PAPERS ACCEPTED THROUGH

EMAIL — ALL PAPERS MUST BE SUBMITTED THROUGH CANVAS).

This is how you should plan your paper:

Page 1

– please summarize with great detail (showing you watched

carefully) the “White Like Me” Documentary (found online:

(**CREDIT CANNOT BE GIVEN IF YOU WATCH THE TRAILER ONLY,

SINCE THE TRAILER DOES NOT SHOW CRUCIAL PARTS**)

Page 2

– please answer these questions:

a) What was the weakest argument or point made in the film?  

b) Please explain if you find X.) or Y.) more compelling (stated below), and

then explain why the OTHER side (i.e. the one you disagreed with most)

was not convincing – please be specific.

X.)

“Mr. Wise,  I have three objections

to your film.  

A.) Your movie is COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE

to racial equality.  You are not helping to heal

wounds but are only making things worse by

bringing up that which divides us as a nation.  

We need to MOVE BEYOND RACIALIZED

THINKING, not see it ALL THE TIME.  If we

want a color-blind society, then we must

actually practice being color-blind.  Talking

about white people’s privileges keeps us in the

racist past, not moving forward toward a future

where we ‘are judged not by the color of our

skin by the content of our character’ (King).  

B.) It is time to stop the ‘blame game’ and the

‘guilt game’ and accept that we ALL have

problems, not just racial minorities – very poor

whites, for example, are, on average, suffering

much more than middle class Hispanics and

middle class African Americans; why not talk

about their plight, too?  You are clearly

FIXATED on race, yet economic CLASS

matters a great deal, as well; why FORCE

EVERYTHING into a racial framework, when

reality is more complicated than that?  Of

course, racism still exists, and we should fight

it.  But there are A LOT of other issues that are

equally – or in some cases, more – deserving of

our attention, if we were really objective about

it.  

C.) You act as if racial minorities today are just

HELPLESS VICTIMS of white supremacy

(how empowering is this characterization?), as

they truly were during the horrors of legalized

chattel slavery.  BUT IT IS NOW THE 2000s,

and people have CHOICES now how they live

their lives, which means we ALL have

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. EVERYONE

has a responsibility to bring themselves up, no

matter where they are at in life.  We ALL have a

reason to complain and blame our bad

circumstance on someone else – but promoting

a “Black and Brown skinned people are

victims” mentality is doing them no favors.  

Racial minorities today need the OPPOSITE

message of “DREAM BIG” and “ACHIEVE

SUCCESS through YOUR OWN HARD

WORK AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE.”  

White people alive today do not force racial

minorities to live in high crime areas, or refuse

to go to college, or have shorter life spans

because of personal choices to have bad diets.  

White supremacy is NOT the ONE and ONLY

cause of every single problem in African

American and Hispanic communities.  Yet your

documentary assumes it is all the ‘white man’s’

fault.  This is hardly fair or accurate, and, I’m

sorry to say, shows you have an agenda and are

NOT an objective researcher.”  

Or…

Y.)

Mr. Wise, or his supporter,

might reply this way:

“A.) Being

color-blind is itself a form of white

privilege.  If you are facing horrible

stereotypes, internalized racism,

unfair treatment from the criminal

justice system, etc. everyday, this

society will REMIND you ALL THE TIME

that we have not achieved a color-

blind society.  The only way to heal

our society is to ADMIT we have a

serious problem with white supremacy,

that we white folks still get unearned

advantages because of our skin color,

and resolve to do what we have to do

to FIX THIS PROBLEM, NOT BRUSH IT OFF,

ONCE AGAIN.  We should only stop

talking about and seeing race when

race will no longer affect how you

fare in life, as it unfortunately does

now.  

B.) Of course, other groups besides

racial minorities suffer terribly, and

these other injustices should end.  

But you committed a Red Herring

fallacy.  Why are you focusing on all

these other issues – please make your

own documentary about poverty and poor

white people, and I would eagerly

watch it; but please don’t change the

subject – I made a film on the

uncomfortable contemporary reality of

white privilege.  As has been said

before,

“It begins with the Jews, but

it does not end with the Jews.”

 As

the saying goes, if you hate Jewish

people, you will probably hate many

other groups, as well.  In a similar

way, some of us BEGIN fighting white

supremacy, but soon learn that we need

to fight poverty, sexism, anti-LGBT,

religious discrimination, and so

forth.  Racial minorities, like white

folks, have all kinds of economic

classes, genders, sexual orientations,

and religions, so, yes, we definitely

have to fight for the rights of

EVERYONE.  “An injustice

anywhere

is

a threat to justice everywhere”

(King).  

C.) Most of the problems you mentioned

ARE indeed clear LEGACIES of the

slave/Jim Crow experience, which have

been passed down to each generation,

even until today.  Remember that

‘emancipated’ slaves were NOT given

reparations – they were given the

LEGALIZED TERRORISM of the KKK and

hostile/apathetic white folks.  That

huge amount of RELENTLESS INTER-

GENERATIONAL TRAUMA and FINANCIAL LOSS

you do not simply overcome with a

positive, ‘can do,’’pull yourself

up’ attitude.  That is WAY too

simplistic.  However, even if you are

correct and racial minorities do have

SOME share in responsibility for their

plight, SOME RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT

TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY.  We white folks

can do a lot to recognize our white

privilege and do whatever we can to

oppose white supremacy, fight bigotry,

and become anti-racists – that’s

what we SHOULD do, so why don’t we?”

Pages 3 & 4

–  please summarize (showing you watched EACH ONE

carefully, with many examples), and explain what the moral/spiritual costs

are for those who see grossly unethical practices and yet say nothing (we all

know the financial and other costs of speaking up, but what about the

HIDDEN costs of staying silent in such situations?).

a)   “The Whistleblower”:

https://www.pbs.org/video/playing-rules-ethics-work-

whistleblower/

     b) “The Corporation” (excerpt):

Page 5

– please read Martin Luther King’s famous essay, “Letter from a

Birmingham Jail” (Available many places online).

For the first half of the page, please summarize carefully what he was

arguing, with many details.

For the second half of the page, please explain why you choose a) or b) to be

more compelling:

a)

Dr. King’s personal example in his own

life and the inspiring argument he offers here

are both amazing.  However, if you are not

religious, you are likely to be puzzled to some

extent by his constant and unnecessary

references to religious language and ideas.  

But is his argument even conceivable

OUTSIDE of a religious worldview?:

“If there is even one moral absolute, it invites the

question, “What kind of world view explains the

existence of this moral rule?”

Atheism can’t make any sense of it. Neither can

most Eastern religions. If reality is an illusion, as

they hold, then the distinction between good and

evil is ultimately rendered meaningless.

Something like the Judeo-Christian or Muslim

idea of [G-d] must be true to adequately account

for moral laws.

Morality grounded in [G-d] explains our hunger

for justice—our desire for a day of final

reckoning when all wrongs are made right, when

innocent suffering is finally redeemed, when all

the guilty are punished and the righteous are

rewarded.

This also explains our own personal sense of

dread. We feel guilty because we are guilty. We

know deep down inside that we have offended a

morally perfect being who has the legitimate

authority to punish us. We also know we will

have to answer for our own crimes against [G-d].

In the end, we’re forced to accept one of two

alternatives. Either relativism is true or morality

is true. Either we live in a universe in which

morality is a meaningless concept and are forever

condemned to silence regarding the problem of

evil, or moral rules exist and we’re beholden to a

moral [G-d] who holds us accountable to His

law.”  

(

https://www.str.org/articles/evil-as-evidence-for-god#.W8joyS6-MzQ)

As a result, even if (G-d forbid) 100% of humanity

was so foolish to believe some obvious evil – blatant

cruelty to the innocent, blatant racism, blatant child

abuse, etc. – are good, IT WOULD NOT MAKE

THESE EVIL THINGS GOOD.  

THEY WOULD STILL BE OBJECTIVELY

WRONG, and you KNOW this is true!

Why?

It is NOT my or your opinion that they are wrong –

they are OBJECTIVE FACTS ABOUT THE

WORLD, since ethics is GROUNDED in Absolute

Moral Laws, created by the Almighty.  

And you know these are objective, spiritual facts

about the world when you ask yourself, “Where does

my sense of right and wrong come from?”  

Parenting, biology, evolution, etc. cannot adequately

explain our profound ‘moral sense’ that, just like Dr.

King showed so clearly in his powerful article,

something can be moral yet illegal, and legal yet

immoral.  The human law is NOT the DIVINE LAW.

MORALITY IS NOT JUST ONE’S OPINION – there

is a RIGHT AND WRONG.  

Even if we debate the gray areas, we all know there

are some unquestionable Moral Truths, such as the

Golden Rule.

If that is so, then there must be Someone Supernatural

who created and enforces what you know to be real

about morality, and Dr. King’s argument falls apart

unless you accept this logical conclusion.”

Or…

b)

“Yes, we should ALL admire Dr.

King’s great moral example – we should

all aspire to make our lives as selfless,

engaged, aware, courageous, and

meaningful.  

But we must admit he wrongly assumes

or implies ethics must originate from

religion.

The best approach is to defend ethics

based upon a non-supernatural basis.  We

all have different ethical views TO AN

EXTENT, but almost all people in all

cultures agree that murder is wrong,

lying is wrong, etc.  

Those are not grounded in religion at all –

they are grounded in rationality.  We

cannot function in a society where

murder and lying were openly allowed.  

So it is rational to respect life and be

honest (barring rare exceptions).

This whole idea that “Killing someone

innocent, for no good reason, is immoral”

is objectively true ONLY IF a

Supernatural Being commanded it to be

true is not convincing.  

We KNOW this is true, and if we don’t

know it, we can REASON with ourselves

to show it is true.  

We feel guilt for not doing the right thing

because we are social animals who are

hardwired to have empathy; when we fail

at this, our evolutionary equipment

(burned into our consciousness over

millennia) screams at us ‘YOU ARE

THREATENING YOUR STATUS IN THE

GROUP – YOU MAY NOT LIVE TO PASS

ON YOUR GENES!,” and that is usually

sufficient to get us on the right path

again.

No need to invoke the Supernatural for

this.  

The proof that this is true is that if ANY

authority – human or Divine – were to

command something that YOU KNEW IN

YOUR GUT to be 100% IMMORAL, you

KNOW YOU COULD NOT CONVINCE

YOURSELF IT WAS MORAL.  

You may do it out of fear, or you may try

to lie to yourself, or you may be

brainwashed, but if you are CLEAR IN

YOUR OWN MIND, you cannot be

convinced something is moral when YOU

KNOW it is immoral.  

So, just because a human leader or even a

Divine Creator commands something, it

still must be processed by our own

internal moral conscience, a conscience

that can be explained by science and is a

NATURAL fact about the world.

As a result, an atheist could have just as

easily made all the arguments Dr. King

made in his essay.  Dr. King was religious

and his audience was religious, so it was

appropriate for him to use that language

to talk about ethics.

But in most secular contexts today it is

unnecessary to assume moral laws have a

supernatural basis.”

Page 6

– please summarize (offering many examples, showing you watched

carefully) this documentary, “Witness: Voices from the Holocaust” (found

online) –

please be very specific.

Page 7

– for the first half of the page, please summarize what is covered in

this short documentary about those who rescued people during the

Holocaust –

please be very specific.

For the second half of page 7, please respond to this objection:

“Look, these two videos have contradictory messages,

which I cannot reconcile.  

The first one ends with the somewhat pessimistic,

unanswered question, “Has humanity learned anything

from all this senseless misery, racism, and mass killing?”  

But the other one makes you feel uplifted and positive

about what human beings are capable of.  

So, which thesis is true?

a)

“Human beings are capable of almost

limitless cruelty and evil, as if we needed

to even state the obvious.  

When this does happen throughout

history, few of us – if any – really

internalize the lessons we can learn.  As a

result, we are doomed to continue

repeating such horrors because, time and

again, we succumb to our selfishness,

fear, laziness, apathy, prejudices, etc…  

So, I wish I could be more optimistic, but

if we imagine humanity as a whole to be

like a single person, then we should ask if

it would be wise to give such a person

another chance to prove himself, after

such a horrid track record of abysmal

moral failures – if anything, that person

should be PERMANENTLY locked up as a

danger to self and others.  Just because

there are fleeting moments when that

person imagines and MAYBE even acts to

be moral, in no way justifies giving that

person the benefit of the doubt, GIVEN

HIS SOLID RECORD OF CRUELTY AND

APATHY IN THE FACE OF CRUELTY.  

Humanity does not deserve another

chance at proving it cares about other

people or will act on its highest moral and

religious values.  When you learn about

the Holocaust deeply and fully, you must

accept that there is nothing and no one

you can trust in this world, since each of

us would surely act THE EXACT SAME as

all of those supposedly “Good, decent

Germans” who did ABSOLUTELY

NOTHING – even when the evidence was

irrefutable that their apathy results in the

murder of innocent men, women, and

children.  

Just like them, we, too, will find a way to

live with ourselves and think of ourselves

as decent people when we are complicit

with immorality and injustice (think

about how easy you rationalize, even now,

your own behavior you know is immoral

– YOU KNOW IT IS WRONG BUT DO IT

ANYWAY, AND THEN LOOK AT

YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR WITH NOT

A SHRED OF SHAME; BE HONEST, YOU

DO THIS ALL THE TIME!).

Or…

b)

Yes, humans have done and still do

unspeakable things to each other.  But, if

you look carefully in history and today,

you will find that there have ALWAYS

been those who prioritize being an ethical

person at all costs.  

Calling these people “heroes” puts a

distance between them and us, but the

REALITY is that EACH OF US can choose

to take the moral path, to do to others

what you would want done to you, etc.  

It is COP-OUT to say “I could never do

what the rescuers did” or “I’m no hero” –

that’s self-serving nonsense.  It is

DIFFICULT to be moral!  It is RISKY!  It

is, at times, TERRIFYING!  It WILL

CERTAINLY COST YOU to be good!  But

you can still choose to do the right thing

anyway.  

You and I COULD do what all the great,

everyday moral “upstanders” of history

have done, who have all rejected being a

passive bystander in the face of injustice

and cruelty.  

Each time you hear the cry of someone

who needs you, and every time your

conscience is disturbed, you are being

TESTED.  Will you choose to prove the

pessimists right?  Or choose, in that very

moment, to actualize your highest moral

potential?  

Will you prove the pessimists wrong by

SHOWING THE WORLD the IMMENSE

GOODNESS LYING DORMANT WITHIN

EACH OF US, only waiting to be

actualized?      

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

After doing all of these readings and watching the movies, please

write your paper in this format:

1) In terms of citations, please use this style: (Author, Page

Number); if there are no pages, please use the (paragraph

number) method, referring to the number of the paragraph, in the

essay, you are referencing, such as: “Morality is perplexing,” he

said (paragraph 4). As long as I know where it is coming from,

then you will be fine.

Always give credit to your sources,

and please do not do anything remotely resembling

plagiarism (including having others write your paper for

you), since it cheats you out of an honest education and

can risk your academic career with serious

repercussions (all professors are encouraged to report

all instances of suspected plagiarism).  Remember that

your professors know your writing level and style by

now, and we are told to report all instances of suspected

plagiarism.

2) Please use the following specifications for your paper: font size

12, one inch margins all around, double spaced, times new roman

font, avoid using all bold or all capitalization, and double check

for spelling and grammar problems. No cover page is

necessary. You do not need a title; please just put your name on

the very top line of the first page. You can treat each page as

separate from the others, so no transitions or introductions are

necessary.

To get full credit, please be sure to follow all of

these conditions.

3) Again, please list your name only on the very top of the first

page (please do not list date, course name, title, etc.).

4) Again, no late papers accepted, so please plan to turn the paper

in early in CANVAS, under “Assignments.”

5) I encourage you to start on your paper immediately, so you do

not rush your paper. Please try to hand in something you are

proud of. A quality paper, as well as a hurried paper, are easy to

spot!

6) Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions along the way.

Writing a paper is work, of course, but you should also enjoy

getting the opportunity to analyze a point of view and get clear

about your own philosophical positions. (Always being open to

another point of view, remaining critical of all views especially

one’s own, and avoiding dogmatism are the hallmarks of a true

philosopher, and a thinking person in general.) So try to enjoy the

process of philosophizing and thinking deeply on these topics.

7)

It will be impossible to pass this paper without

showing a significant understanding of EVERY article

and movie covered, so please do not skip any of the

material.

8)

Good luck!

And, again, please email if you have any questions

or concerns.

****ALL MATERIAL MAY APPEAR ON THE FINAL EXAM****