... And waking up beside them

After I was done and over with yesterday's post I realized that I never got to mention the original piece that drew me through the rabbit hole of reevaluating my school friendships and other relationships I have had and that I still currently have. It all came from this letter to the column "The Ethicist" in the American newspaper The New York Times. The reader explains the conundrum in which they find themselves, forced to deal with the apparent racism that the COVID-related public health measures have revealed in  their social group. 

By their own description, they belong in a very affluent community of Jewish descent where sheltering in place, working from home and keeping the social distance is not much of an issue and infection numbers are low, but a city-wide lock-down has been mandated to contain, primarily, outbreaks in several housing project inhabited to a great extent by immigrant workers of African and Asian descent. Their social circle refers to them as "these ethnics" with an obvious derogatory undertone and that stirs a profound uneasiness of ethical nature for this reader: apart from the prejudice implying that all African and Asian immigrants are menial workers, the fact is that a big majority of the Australian population are immigrants arriving in the last two hundred years to the detriment of the original inhabitants of the land, which have been locked out, chased away and hunted down to the brink of extinction. Only this marginalized five percent of the population would have an justifiable argument to call everyone else immigrants.

Photo: ohmann alianne

The columnist's answer, pretty much in line with my reasoning yesterday, consider three possible ways ahead. The first one is plowing ahead and learning to live with the bigotry of their friends in a similar way as I do with my schoolmates. However, in their case this option does not seem to be very viable because the contact is much tighter, so the irritation comes up frequently. The option of severing ties with this community would solve the ethical quandary, but would leave the reader orphan of their social group, so it is also an undesirable outcome. Besides, by distancing themselves, the bigotry would only become invisible, it would not go away. The third solution, that would probably require a daily effort (but which relationship does not), is reminding their friends, on a regular basis and in as kind a tone as possible, that "those ethnics" are also humans, that they have the same right to look for a good living as anybody else and that if their living circumstances make them more susceptible to contracting the virus we should not spurn them because of that but try to help them instead. We will probably never know what happens with this community, but let us hope that things evolve for the better.

The ethical question reminded me of an assignment that Trevor got in biology class the other day. In his view it would have belonged better in the ethics class, because it revolved around a girl who is a smoker and her boyfriend that would like her to quit. Trevor was asked to gather arguments in favor of the boy's request, and the situation has a number of parallel aspects to the Australian example.

The most important reason is probably the boy's desire for the girl to have a long and lengthy life, which would in principle be hampered by here smoking habit. In that sense, quitting is the only real mitigation in the same way that reminding and eventually convincing their friends that "all humans are equal" was the only real mitigation for the racist bigotry. The secondary victims of the smoke are the boyfriend and everybody else in the girl's environment. This damage could be completely removed by breaking up the relationship or by the girlfriend refraining from smoking in his presence, but this would do nothing for the girl's health and would leave them both without a partner.

The option of just doing nothing is probably the most damaging of all, because it not only affects the health of both the girl and the boy, but would probably keep causing discomfort to the boy whenever he is with her. Given that this is a close relationship as in the New York Times column, putting up with the inconvenience is probably not going to be a long-term solution and it will fall back to either breaking up or addressing the problem.

Have you recently experienced similar dilemmas? Has the altered life rhythm of COVID caused you to wake up and find yourself with close acquaintance that turned up to be "the enemy"? In any case, I hope you manage to work out an acceptable solution. Have a nice evening.