How I suggested to my black students that they should be the slaves of the white students
About a year ago, I was giving a lecture on utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is, in a nutshell, the idea that an action is right to the extent that it is good, and that one ought to seek to maximise the general level of welfare in the world. It's fairly commonsense, but there is a couple of objections to the theory, one of which is that nothing is ruled out as just plain wrong as long as the welfare calculations stack up the right way. And this strikes many people - me included - as a flaw with the theory.

I have a couple of good thought experiments to demonstrate the flaw, and was really hitting my stride in this particular lecture. "So," I said, "let's imagine that you guys" - I waved vaguely to the four students sitting on my left - "are to be the slaves of the rest of us" - waving vaguely at the 12 or so students sitting in front or to my right. "There are certain conditions. Slave owners must treat their slaves well, give them occasional days off, not work them too hard, and so on. So although the slaves' lives will be worse than they are now, they won't be intolerable: they'll still be worth living. And because the slave owners get a slave on a rota basis, their lives will be a bit better. And because there's more owners than slaves, that welfare will be multiplied through. Overall, the world will be a slightly better place. So utilitarianism tells us that we ought to make these guys our slaves."

I was really going for it. I was on a roll. But only as I had uttered these words did I notice that the students on my left - the slaves - all happended to be non-white. And, with one exception, all the slave owners were white.

The lecture was being filmed to be put online for future use. I have since watched the film. I think that the faux pas would have gone unnoticed had I not flinched so visibly when I realised what I'd done.

And that is how I suggested to my black students that they should be the slaves of the white students.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 13:31, 2 replies)

crikey
you had an apartheid-based seating system?
(haberman is singing in the changes, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 16:44, closed)

It seems quite reasonable
that you should base a hypothetical situation on an actual situation that had gone before.
(Seance Trumpet has got no beef with a man enjoying a croissant, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 22:27, closed)