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Race Relations

In "I'm Black, You're White, Who's Innocent?," Shelby Steele raises questions that can be answered, in part, by referring to Nel Noddings' "An Ethics of Care." Steele opens with a story about a dinner party with a number of professional people at which one guest, an African American man, mentions how it disturbs him to send his daughter to a school where there are very few black children. He is afraid, he says, that his success has put his daughter in a position where she may "lose touch with her blackness" (333). The remark makes the white hosts and guests uncomfortable. No one responds to the remarks and the party breaks up quickly. The question Steele raises is why racism and race relations are subjects that make people so uncomfortable that they are unable to talk about them -- at least in racially mixed groups. The problem, as Steele sees it, lies largely in the confusion of questions of morality and power in regard to race relations. It is the refusal to recognize the power struggle that lies behind racial division as the source of America's problems. This refusal leads to the failure to acknowledge the moral dimensions of the question and, fearing that it will be pointed out to them that they are moral cowards, people wish to avoid the question altogether. To go beyond the problem and make the moral effort needed to solve the problem of racism would require the courage to adopt a new ethic -- one based on caring rather than on power.

In her discussion of caring Noddings points out that "conflict and guilt are inescapable risks of caring" and courage is required to deal with the consequences and the related difficulties of caring (182). She suggests that it is an active process that, like any human process, and is not going to be simple or straightforward. Steele himself suggests that nothing can be accomplished without effort -- "relentless effort, moral effort" (338). It is the desire to avoid effort and guilt a...

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Race Relations. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:01, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682605.html