Is institutional / systemic racism legit?
In my humble estimation, racism in an individual is characterized by insulting language, pet hate names, mistrust and fear. It is the consequence of a generalization about an entire group of people, based on a limited experience with individuals of said group, or hearsay. Needless to say, it is a negative view, and the more stubborn the individual, the less they are likely to revise their opinion.Institutional racism is a vestige of a time when slavery was legal, followed by the s-l-o-w process of phasing out laws that allowed official discrimination. For instance, it is now illegal to deny someone employment based on their color, or service at a public gathering place like a restaurant or store [individual racists find ways around the protective laws if they put their mind to it, but it’s gotten harder to get away with that].Some clear manifestations of institutional racism are our under-funded urban school systems and the tendency for industry to move away from inner cities to places with less poor people. Another is the disproportionate number of minority people in our houses of detention.You and I are not personally responsible for these inequities, but until our lawmakers find a way to rectify the situation, we can easily state that institutional racism is very real.
What is meta-ethics, and what are some examples?
A simple way to think of this is to divide ethics into three main categories:Applied Ethics (Is it moral to eat meat?)Normative Ethics (Should morality solely be based on achieving the best outcome?)Metaethics (Is there such a thing as moral facts?)Metaethics is sort of like the machine room of ethics. It’s where the most fundamental questions get asked such as:Can moral statements be true or false? (Cognitivism vs Non-Cognitivism)Are moral assertions actual assertions, or just expressions of emotions? (Emotivism)Can moral facts, if they exist, be reduced to physical phenomena? (Naturalism vs Non-Naturalism / Reductionism vs Non-Reductionism)Is there such a thing as moral facts? (Moral Realism vs Moral Anti-Realism)