John's Op-Ed Piece for Monterey County Herald

Posted: 02/24/2012 08:10:03 PM PST/ Updated: 02/25/2012 12:51:07 AM PST



Living with all the details
By JOHN BERTEAUX
Guest commentary


I have been traveling, exploring how the moral quality of liberal democracies are affected by the existence of racial groups.


Funny thing, throughout my recent travels, people have introduced themselves, asked me where I am from and when I responded "Estados Unidos," they simply answer back "Obama" and smile.


I nod or give them a "thumbs up." More often than not, that is the extent of our conversation — no details, just a smile and a thumbs up.


These experiences remind me of a line from the movie "Death and the Maiden." You may remember the scene in which Sigorney Weaver's husband interrogates her. Again and again he insists that she explain why she didn't tell him she was raped while in custody in Argentina's "dirty war."


Finally, in frustration, she blurts out "There is a difference between hearing the facts and knowing the details." I took her to mean that while she could give him the facts, it was details that rendered what happened to her real and he could never absorb the depth of her experiences — the details.


Since last June, we've visited a number of countries. In each country, people were quick to raise a thumb for Obama and assure me that race and racism was not a problem. So what have I found?


Fete du National Parade held
in the Plateau of Montreal



One stop was Montreal, where we lived in the French-speaking Plateau, where most are committed to multiculturalism. While I was in Montreal, white students at McGill University's elite business school donned blackface, the colors of Jamaica's flag, pretended to be smoking pot, and chanted "Ya, Man!" in a mock Jamaican accent to imitate world famous Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

So too, as he apologized for the state's past treatment of First Nations people in residential schools, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted the current discouraging economic and social statistics of aboriginal people.

By contrast, Argentina is said to be an assimilationist society — "all the blacks in Argentina have disappeared." And because Argentina does not ask about race on its census, no one is quite sure how many blacks (or aboriginals) are living in the country.




Argentines in black face celebrating
the different "cultures" of Argentina

 At one time, blacks were one third of Argentina's population. Although recent studies estimate that Afro-Argentines make up anywhere from 1 percent to 4 percent of the population, in Buenos Aires, one does not see blacks working as police officers, as retail clerks, in the post office, delivering mail on construction sites in the city or driving taxis. This in a city with a population four times that of Los Angeles.


Whereas these facts point to the limits multiculturalism or assimilationism, which often fail to embrace the lived experience of aggrieved groups, conversely there is a theory that stresses not just impartiality and equality in the existing structures of society, but equal consideration for the experiences of others.


If you have been in a caring relationship you know that it requires concern for the well-being of those in the relationship as well as concern for the well-being of the relationship itself. Indeed, Ethic of Care theorists say “Persons in caring relations are acting for self-and-other together.”


John Berteaux is an associate professor of philosophy at CSU Monterey Bay. He is now on a on sabbatical working on a manuscript "What about Race after Obama?", work that is taking him to Montreal, Buenos Aires, Tokyo and Paris. He can be reached at jberteaux@csumb.edu