Published in "The Philosophers' Magazine," issue 72, 1st Quarter 2016, 113-114.
I had the pleasure of receiving a request to write for The Philosophers’ Magazine, which was planning an issue on “50 New Ideas.” My proposal was to revisit and rethink an old idea that people have been criticizing quite a lot lately: political correctness. Click here or on the photo of the piece here to open a PDF of my article:
This piece is a short, op-ed snippet of the larger project I’m working on, called A Culture of Justice. It’s an example that shows clearly how and why culture matters for policy, such as in trademark registration, free speech, and the cultural responsibilities of leadership and symbolism. Check it out.
I’m grateful to Chris and to Maja Niestroj for the interview, the video, and the hospitality while I was in Berlin. It was a great conference on a wonderful public philosophy, Dr. John Lachs, who has been my mentor in philosophy since around 1998 or 1999.
In July 2015, University of Mississippi graduate, Adebanke Alabi invited me to comment on race and the Church for a series on her blog. The following is my piece, originally published on her page and reposted here with permission.
Mississippi is still home to obstinate racism, even while in 2014 Gallup found it to be the most religious state in the United States. The vast majority of the 44 failing school districts’ enrollments in the state are majority- to almost totally made up of African American students. Some districts have been accused of not having desegregated. We have seen symbolic racism at the University of Mississippi, as well as troubling direct confrontations. Some young people planned and executed a racially motivated murder a few years ago in Jackson, MS.
Despite all of these disturbing cases of racism in Mississippi, many citizens and public officials continue to resist change even to symbols of racism. I have argued that falsely romanticizing heritage does us harm and that symbols, like the Confederate Battle Flag featured in the canton of MS’s state flag, contribute to the perpetuation of racism and injustice. What has gotten very little attention is the tragic inconsistency between the religious beliefs people say that they hold dear and the contradictory behaviors that we see here in Mississippi.
Eric Thomas Weber, first published July 8, 2015 in The Prindle Post.
The June 2015 murders in Charleston, South Carolina, have prompted a remarkable cultural shift in the American South. States around the region are removing or are voting to remove Confederate symbols of various kinds from public spaces. South Carolina and Alabama have made significant moves, and in Mississippi, the Speaker of the House and both U.S. Senators have called for changing the state flag, which presently features the Confederate Battle Flag.
I have argued recently that some heritage can do harm and that denying that Mississippi’s secession had to do with slavery is ignorance, not love, of heritage. For those who acknowledge our troubled history, an important question remains: Why is there such a push to get rid of the flag all of a sudden? What does it have to do with the Charleston murders or justice?
Eric Thomas Weber, first published in The Clarion Ledger on June 27, 2015, 5C.
This article was published online with the title “Sometimes Heritage Does Harm,” and in print, with the title “‘Heritage’ Argument Overlooks History.” It is republished here with permission. Click on the image or here to open a scan of the printed version, or here for a PDF of the online version. The text from the online version is included here below.
Flags communicate pride for heritage, but, for some, so do nooses.
Unqualified love of heritage inflames America’s deepest moral wounds. Heritage is palpable in places like Mississippi and South Carolina, where it is prized wholesale, the good with the bad. In the wake of Charleston’s mass murders, it could not be clearer that heritage is harming the country.
In 2012, James Craig Anderson was murdered out of racial hatred in Jackson,. Two years later, young men hung a noose and the old Georgia flag, featuring the Confederate stars and bars, on the statue of civil rights pioneer James Meredith in Oxford. Some courageous public officials and university leaders have begun to speak up about the need to transform our cultural symbols, while others stand in the way of progress.
In the name of loving heritage, those opposed to moving forward leave out the unpleasant parts of our history. Mississippi and South Carolina were among the states most honest about their defense of slavery in their justifications for secession. Nevertheless, South Carolina until this week flew the Confederate flag in the state’s capital. Mississippi’s state flag bears the stars and bars alluding to the Confederacy.
This piece is a short, op-ed snippet of the larger project I’m working on, called A Culture of Justice. It’s an example that shows clearly how and why culture matters for policy, such as in trademark registration, free speech, and the cultural responsibilities of leadership and symbolism. Check it out.
