“You can’t give respect unless you get it first.” That was the ethical maxim presented to me
over a decade ago by a young black high-schooler. The assertion possesses a
superficial plausibility that attends so many pop-cultural aphorisms—like the bogus
observation that folks can’t love others unless they first love themselves. It
would have been nice had the student put forward his dictum in my class as a
topic for reflection. Instead, the
saying was proffered in a hallway as justification for the chip he carried on
his shoulder toward a classmate.
Fortunately, as an ethics instructor I was able to offer
what I considered a convincing refutation of his motto by asking the young man to envision a room
full of strangers all demanding respect of everyone else because, “You can’t
give respect unless you get it first.” Under this not-so-implausible scenario, a
simple meet and greet is transformed into a confrontational game of “respect
chicken.” “You respect me first.” “No way!
You respect me first.” No individual can respect anyone else because he
or she hasn’t “first” been respected by the others. The issue at the center of
this interpersonal standoff revolves around the term “first”—with one party
required to submit to another and offer respect without “first” having received
it. Clearly, what’s at stake here isn’t mutual
respect but rather establishing a pecking order that’s akin to kissing
Godfather’s ring.
By contrast, the traditional moral view is that all persons
should be afforded respect unless there is some good reason not to do so. And even in the latter circumstance,
politeness is, with few exceptions, the default position. The cultural basis
for this practice is largely religious—grounded in the belief that all persons
are created in God’s image, though one could also argue for mutual respect on
philosophical (e.g. Kantian) grounds. What interests me, however, is the
cultural genesis of my student’s faux-maxim. Where did he come up with this
very flawed vision of respect?
In the last half-century “respect” became a very important
term in black communities and especially in what is colloquially called “the
hood”—neighborhoods characterized by broken families, substandard housing, and
a degree of violence most Americans would find appalling. In this milieu being
“respected” came to be associated more with being feared than with being the
by-product of respectable behavior. Gang leaders, for example, were “respected”
because of the terror they instilled in subordinates and the power they
possessed to do as they pleased.
Not being “respected” thus became a challenge to one’s
manhood akin to the “it’s on” or “you’ve been served” idioms. The idea that
receiving respect implied acting with reasonable concern toward others was lost
thanks to a survivalist environment and innumerable media images that glorified
this misbegotten vision of black life via tough guy stereotypes like those made
famous by Samuel L. Jackson. Meanwhile, morally condescending white liberals reinforced
hip-hop and gangsta-rap perversions of civility by hailing them as authentic
expressions of “black” or “African-American” culture. Thus, these self-appointed moral mandarins succeeded,
as Thomas Sowell ironically describes in his book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, in saddling blacks with a
violence-soaked, respect-me-first identity akin to the racist Southern culture
they had struggled against for centuries and whose origins can be traced back
to the Scottish highlands.
In short, like millions of other young persons (not just
African-Americans), my aggrieved student had been indoctrinated by an
incestuous cadre of Hollywood, New York, and D.C. elites in an ethical formula
that’s guaranteed to produce violent confrontations and resentment. What better
way to keep that large cohort of individuals perpetually dissatisfied, mostly
marginalized, and overwhelmingly Democrat!
