Racial Power and Moral Power

The relationship between racial power and moral power, as described in Shelby Steele's essay "I'm Black, You're White, Who's Innocent?", is a relationship of conflict. Racial power to Steele is power achieved or sought on the basis of race, whether by blacks or whites. Racial power posits that one race is superior to the other and/or justified in taking whatever steps are needed to acquire or re-acquire that power. Moral power, on the other hand, is power achieved or sought on the basis of self-sacrifice, spirituality, and a genuine, hard-earned innocence. Moral power posits not the inferiority of the other "side," but rather grants that that side can rise above its racial restrictions and act morally, can in fact translate its racial power into moral power. "Racial power," says Steele, in reference to the early days of the civil rights movement, "was the enemy and moral power the weapon" (Steele, 1995, 337). Moral power can be used, then, to transform racial power into itself---moral power.

Steele's basic argument about the racial power/moral power relationship seems simple and incontrovertible. As long as a human being---white or black---tries to make a human being of the other color evil in order to make himself feel or appear to be good, he can do no true good. He will be at war within himself, hiding from his own faults and projecting all of those faults onto the perceived enemy. He will blame those of the other color for his problems, and whatever he does to try to g

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s workers sought, rather than the "earthly power" which would have been the reward of racial power. For Steele, then, there is no room for compromise between moral power and racial power. Racial power is inhumane, even evil, because it allows individuals to see others as less than human, and excuses any action in the name of superiority. Moral power,k on the other hand, is both humane and spiritually good because it assumes that evil (racial power) can be touched and transformed by goodness (moral power). Racial power destroys the humanity in both the ones with the power and the ones without the power. Moral power, on the other hand, elevates the humanity in both, by living according to the belief that non-violent, spiritual action can overcome evil and racial power. Nel Noddings, in the essay "An Ethics of Care," advocates essentially the same humane approach to ethics as Steele. In addition, Noddings agrees with Steele that the judgments that are at the heart of both conventional ethics and racial power are ultimately counter-productive in both spiritual and practical terms: I want to build an ethic on caring. . . . There is a form of caring natural and accessible to all human beings. Certain feelings, attitudes and memorie

Category: Psychology - R