A Commitment to Moral Equality

“My starting point is a commitment to practice moral equality. This is not an effortless task or a light undertaking because, as a friend of mine used to say, ‘We’re blind to what we’re blind to.’ 

Moral equality is akin to Kant’s categorical imperative to treat every person as an end unto themselves, but it goes further. If I am serious about recognizing all human beings (everywhere) as equal members of the human community, I need to have good reasons to treat those who are my family, friends, neighbors, or countrymen in some way that is prejudiced in their favor. Why should my children have better schools? Why should the neighbor who has lived here all his life face deportation to a country he has never known? Why is the young woman with brown skin more likely to be stopped by police? Why can people from my country set up communities in another country, but outsiders can’t do the same in mine? 

Most of us would like to believe that we have no outsized biases in favor of kith and kin, but research findings from neuroscience make that pretty unlikely. My commitment to moral equality is thus a commitment to be as sensitive as I can to areas where my biases might lead me to make unwarranted assessments. We are challenged, first, to notice unfair practices — and then to speak out against them.”

— Susan Waltz, 2017 (source)
Quaker political scientist and human rights campaigner