In preparation for Spring Weekend, student entrepreneurs are marketing a colorful array of festive tank tops. Most make reference to the headlining artists slated to perform in April. There is one, however, that has seemingly caught everyone’s attention. Its plain white background sports a bright purple image of former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly with the words “Gettin’ Frisky” written underneath.
While wearing such a top certainly isn’t legally contentious — we fortunately have yet to completely demolish free speech — many were quick to announce their outrage, using words such as “racist,” “insensitive” and “offensive.” Others defended the design, noting that, given the context, it was only a joke and should not deserve such condemnation. While this specific issue is particularly relevant to Brown, it is part of a larger campaign against all such offensive jokes.
It’s useful here to examine our use of the word “offensive.” Many people have the view that something deemed offensive is necessarily bad. And this denunciation goes beyond considerations of personal preference or taste. Making jokes that offend a group of people is considered a moral crime.
But this view has absurd consequences. For the vast majority of history, gay people have been demonized by the majority of the population. Those on the American right voiced fears that such “alternative lifestyles” would destroy America’s conservative religious culture. To a large degree, I think that actually did happen. I also don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It seems to me that those who fought for the enfranchisement of this and other such oppressed groups were not committing a moral crime, even though they certainly offended many people.
Comedian Ricky Gervais put it more eloquently than I ever could: “Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.” I want to be clear. An emotional response to a set of sounds or series of images is an awful measure of morality with terrible ramifications. Among other things, if we want to believe supporting homosexuality — especially when it wasn’t popular — was ethically justified, then we have to do away with this moral relativism. It’s not logically incoherent to hold onto this view, but it’s much more palatable to throw it out than to accept its unsavory consequences in full.
Last month, I wrote a column (“Powers ’15: Principles of American ethics,” Feb. 13) detailing the problems that arise when one does not rigorously formulate one’s ethical foundations. There seem to be many people who think being offended puts them on the moral high ground, while refusing to embrace the conclusions this view entails.
This is exactly what happens when people attempt to retroactively justify their feelings on individual issues rather than working from the ground up. There is an obvious logical inconsistency that very brief introspection would reveal. It’s intellectually irresponsible to be so loud, confident and imposing while clearly not having put any substantive thought into the issue.
So where does this leave us? Well for starters, it’s disingenuous to use the word “offensive” to create a connotation of immorality to vilify individuals. The term is not a sufficient — and I think not even a necessary — condition for such a judgment. If we want to condemn certain jokes or behaviors in general, we need to appeal to an objective sense of morality.
Long story short, this isn’t a fruitful approach either. On many ethical issues — including this one — there are countless intelligent individuals supporting every possible view, which should make us extremely unconfident in our views.
Imagine you and a friend are at a restaurant and plan to split the bill. The check comes and you both calculate a 20 percent tip in your heads. Just as with moral considerations, most of the time you get the same answer. Analogously, both of you come to the conclusion that murder, rape and cannibalism are morally reprehensible.
But every once in a while the two of you get a different answer. One of you believes we should raise taxes, while the other believes we should lower taxes. In the case of morality, it’s quite possible for both of us to check our work without finding any glaring issues. Such intractable disagreement should make us less certain of our original conclusion.
It’s the arrogant individuals who stubbornly cling to their controversial moral opinions. They don’t seriously consider the possibility that the people on the other side of the disagreement could be as intelligent or well-informed as they are. In their view, when your friend calculates a different tip than you, it’s probably just because he’s just not as bright. Beyond being obnoxious, this interpretation doesn’t seem justified, as there are usually plenty of smart people on both sides of any moral dispute, including the one at hand.
What individuals should take away from this is that they should be more morally permissive and slower to moral judgment. It might superficially sound like a hypocritical statement — criticizing others while asking them not to criticize. To reiterate, my claim is that we should make fewer moral judgments. This judgment is not a moral one, but rather one of rationality. It’s not wrong — ethically — to censure offensive jokes or to use whatever justification you want to do so. You can say two plus two equals five all day. But you should understand the irrationality involved in doing so.
And honestly, the tank is pretty clever.
Andrew Powers ’15 can be reached at andrew_powers@brown.edu.
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