Racial Reckoning: Intro to Ethics course examines systemic racism

In the second module of her Intro to Ethics course, Ethics Lab Director Prof. Maggie Little’s class discussed racial injustice in the United States and considered ways to repair moral damage done to individuals, communities, and society as a whole. 

“I didn’t know how to teach an Intro to Ethics class this semester without addressing this issue,” says Little. “The events since George Floyd’s murder have shined a light on long deferred, true reckoning on race in America.”

She challenged her class of 100 students to think critically about the role of systemic racism in their own lives, and consider ways to repair moral damage racism that has been done. Each of her students came into the course with a different understanding of systemic racism, so one of the initial course goals was establishing conceptual tools that students from all backgrounds could use to grapple more deeply with these issues.

“Part of the challenge of this unit is that there’s so much to say, so much spectacular scholarship, and so much history that is underappreciated,” Little reflects. “My challenge was to think about how philosophy concepts can offer tools for people, wherever they are in their journey, to better understand race in America.”

The racial reckoning module progressed in three stages. The first was an exploration of the anatomy of systemic racism—what does the term mean, and what are the component parts of this racism? 

The second was an examination of epistemic injustice, “a really beautiful area of philosophy that looks at ways in which certain groups’ testimonies may be systemically undervalued,” Little says. “It also examines our collective interpretations of the past, particularly interpretations with fundamental distortions or deflections, and how those distortions impact our collective understanding of systemic racism.”

The final section of the module was dedicated to exploring the concept of moral repair. “What does genuine acknowledgement of historic and ongoing wrongs, at a national and individual and community level, look like?” asks Little. “In addition to obvious institutional change, there needs to be interpersonal and individual work.”

The class discussed reparations in various forms, examining Georgetown’s own history and the work of the Slavery Memory Reconciliation Fund, and asking themselves what genuine repair might look like in this space.

“You’ve got to look at your own house if you’re going to do these reflections,” says Little. She invited Adam Rothman, a History professor who serves as the Fund’s archivist, and Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, from the Philosophy department, to discuss these issues, in the context of Georgetown, with the class. 

This racial reckoning module ties into Little’s broader goals for the course, and it was a topic she felt strongly about including in the syllabus. “I see Intro to Ethics as an opportunity to look at core moral issues of the human condition, and that includes fundamental issues about justice and injustice,” she says. “It also includes fundamental issues about how we understand one another, and how we develop interpretations about our past, our present, our future. Racial reckoning touches on every one of those things.”