Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid icon, dies at 90
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It gets it's name of course from the "official residence of the Archbishop of Cape Town" (Anglican / Church of England).
It was of course a "whites only" area under Apartheid until 1991 (2). Black people there could be assumed to be house or garden servants.
When Mr Tutu was installed there as the first black Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, he moved in without seeking exemption from this law (3). He would put on his jogging outfit and take his exercise on the streets there, smiling and waving to neighbours as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And in time, it was.
That is praxis.
he was one of the best of us, always seeking a way to reach out.
1) "ranked sixth richest suburb in South Africa" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishopscourt,_Cape_Town
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Areas_Act
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu#Archbishop_of_Cap...
You can't debate apartheid because it's farcical to begin with. The terminology even - exemption - makes our brains feel fuzzy, confused. What is this "exemption"? I'll just do my thing, thanks.
We could all learn something from this.
That's a tactic to be used in specific circumstances, such as by the Archbishop in a specific, peaceful neighborhood. It's for people who are safe.
For a vulnerable person, it can be very dangerous: violating norms can end in being arrested or lynched - that's what lynchings and oppression are. That is the problem. Civil rights tactics such as lunch-counter sit-ins worked because they were carefully strategized and organized, and many people still got hurt and killed. For example,
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=civil+rights+birmingham+fire+hoses...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_in_South_Africa it's a litany of explosions and killings, and the turnaround may have been in the works, but it doesn't surface until December '88 when "Nelson Mandela is moved to Victor Verster Prison" (from Robben Island)
I don't recall school in integration in '86 near me and yes, I would have noticed. If you had that you were lucky.
I wasn't assuming that Mr Tutu was taking any great personal risk, but he was driving progress with cheerful good humour.
The person was asking for Tutu's assistance in transferring the fabulous wealth of a deceased Nigerian prince to his widow.
“Ah, a 419 scam,” I said.
“A what now?”
I explained what a 419 scam was, and, fearing the worst, asked what he had done about it. It turned out that he still had a number of friends in that area, and had forwarded it on to a friend to investigate.
“Never heard of this lawyer chap,” the response came, “DO NOT respond!”
So, of course the Archbishop responded.
For a moment, I put myself in the shoes of this “Nigerian Prince”, getting an email from “Archbishop Desmond Tutu”, shaming the alleged prince for attempting to scam innocents on the internet. I started giggling.
“So what happened next?” I asked.
“Oh, he emailed me back, and tried to sell me something else.”
― Desmond Tutu
May he rest in peace.
His mispronunciation of "balloons" was endearing and stayed with me ever since. Our family would often remark on it with affection.
At the demise of apartheid he led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was such a critical instrument in the peaceful dismantling of apartheid.
It's a shame that we don't see more of this approach around the world.
RIP.
I had the privilege to attend a week-long convention where he delivered the keynote address each day back in '87. Everyone talks about Mandela, but I have always had far more respect for Tutu and his role in bringing about the end of aparteid.
Rest in peace.
"If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
The moral obligation Tutu captured with that aphorism has affected me immensely over the years.
Also:
“All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity of others.”
Every time you say something like that, imagine that someone whose sense of injustice is opposite to yours is using it. Maybe they think that abortion is literal murder. Maybe it's the 1950s and they think some poor black guy has raped a white girl (because how would she ever consent?) Maybe they're a Russian living in Ukraine and they think the Ukrainian government is oppressing the Russians and the only way to stop this is by helping Russian troops take over.
I want people to say "No, I do not have to bomb that abortion clinic. No, I do not have to join that lynch mob. No, I do not have to overthrow the government." If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you haven't chosen the side of the oppressor. Rather, if you're neutral in situations of injustice, it means that you have figured out that humility can be a virtue.
I'm not sure I understand how humility comes into the picture? I don't think anyone didn't join a lynch mob, yet allowed them to continue on their way to the victim and thought of themselves as humble.
This line of reasoning only makes sense if you think that moral positions have no qualities other than how strongly people hold them. If, on the other hand, you believe that two people can hold two opposing moral positions with equal strength, and one of them can be correct while the other is incorrect, this line of reasoning doesn’t make sense.
Of course, this was obviously Tutu’s position. Tutu probably didn’t think “before you go and help the mouse, realize that doing so might be just as upsetting to the elephant as your neutrality would have been to the mouse.”
Of course there are differences in moral positions other than how strongly people hold them. But if you're going to make a rule about them, your rule can't take those differences into account, because everyone thinks their own moral position is correct.
It's like having a rule "the police may coerce confessions from suspects, but only if they're guilty". This rule is impossible in practice because every officer coercing a confession thinks the suspect is guilty.
That's absolutely not true; coerced confessions absolutely are used against people known to be innocent by those coercing the confession (heck, even when the coercers are, in fact, the guilty parties.)
OTOH, it is true that the cops will always say the target is guilty, because that’s the whole point.
No, that’s precisely what I’m disagreeing with. The point is that it is possible to think your position is correct, and your opponent thinks their position is correct, but you are correct and they are incorrect. Why can’t a “rule” take that into account? Any notion of justice clearly has to take this into account already!
I have my position, but I can’t find any reasonable way to conclude that it’s ironclad “correct”.
Is bodily autonomy a right that extends to all people including females from about 12 to 50 years old?
Bodily autonomy is so deeply held that we cannot even harvest life-saving organs for donation from the dead if they dictate it shall not be done.
Abortion is the only exception we make as a society. We even pass laws preventing birth control from being paid for with group health insurance policies.
Anti-abortion positions have never been about fetuses; they are about limiting the rights of women.
When you restrict access to choose, you are granting greater agency to corpses than living women. Ask the right questions.
Even with that agreement, I don’t see how our views are rooted in some fundamental truth that precludes someone from arguing the opposing point of view (or arguing that the cutoff from one conclusion to the other is at a different number of weeks; I do not believe abortion should be generally legal at 39 weeks, nor at 38 weeks, ...)
Lots of people follow their conviction; travel far away to hurt others and deminish their and others humanity, that might be to help someone but in the end it's not ethical. Recently there was an discussion about the quote from Aristotle¹ that can be shorten to "virtues are actions, not words", but that leads to misinterpretations. Same with this quote from Tutu, you can not take it out of context and make it out as neutral to the ethics.
Historically scrutiny originally fueled because Israel is seen as a supporter of the apartheid system even after all other western countries had withdrawn support https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-israel-supporte...
An outcome like the above is of course clearly completely unacceptble, locally and in the west.
However Israel cannot allow even those territories to become independant because that would require giving up security control, control over valuable land and other natural resources like water. No nation gives away its territory easily!
So current status quo with the territories must be maintained!
There is no irony in celebrating the life of a man who universally condemned oppression and called for a peaceful resolution to one of the most complex conflicts of modern times.
A man met with Mr. Tutu and asked him to pray for the man's son, who was gravely ill and in need of medical treatment. The boy got the treatment he needed and became healthy again. Years later, the same boy fell ill again and the boys father once again asked the archbishop to pray for him. Mr. Tutu replied to the boys father "I never stopped (praying for your son). He had such deep, meaningful compassion for all his fellow humans. Just reading his writings made a significant meaningful positive impact on my life and well being. Thank you Mr. Tutu.