Responsibility is a very tricky word, and one which I cannot help but feel is greatly misused and misunderstood. One of the greatest sources of confusion in our modern discourse is the equivocation between the words responsibility and guilt. The truth is, you can be responsible for something you did wrong, but you can also be responsible for something someone else did wrong. You can even be responsible when nothing has been done wrong. Guilt is not shared in this same way.
If a child breaks the neighbor’s window, the parent is responsible for making the neighbor whole. A good parent will also use the opportunity to teach their child about responsibility, but ultimately the parent is responsible for resolving the situation. Guilt and responsibility are separable.
To give another example, suppose your grandfather dies, and you discover, while looking through his belongings, that he robbed a museum 60 years ago and was hoarding valuable stolen artwork in his attic. You are now in possession of stolen property, and that makes you responsible for that stolen property, even if you share none of the guilt of your grandfather. Responsibility is heritable. Guilt is not.
And that brings me to the topic of racism and discrimination. There’s this argument that is popular among conservative circles that says that because white people today are not guilty of slavery or Jim Crow, they do not inherit any responsibility for slavery or Jim Crow. As a strict matter of logic, this is an invalid argument. The conclusion does not follow from the premise.
The latest embodiment of this talking point is contained in Florida’s recently passed bill H.B. 7. This law now makes it illegal in the state of Florida for schools to teach that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears responsibility for . . . actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.” Instead, the bill states that schools must teach a curriculum consistent with the proposition that “a person, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”
My problem with this bill, much like my problem with the conservative talking point in general, is that such language erases the heritability of responsibility. You can believe, as I do, that guilt is not heritable, while still believing the responsibility is. In short, Florida has encapsulated this logically invalid argument into law.
Personally, I wholeheartedly oppose any attempt to make people feel guilty for their class privilege, social privilege, racial privilege, or any other type of privilege which might be inherited from past injustices. However, it does not follow that where there is no guilt there is no responsibility.
Anyway, that's just a thought. I wrote an essay on this topic of responsibility about 8 months ago, which I never finished because it became too philosophical and technical to share. I just felt the need to write a little something now after reading through the Florida legislation.
In the interest of being clear about this legislation, the law does not make it illegal to teach critical race theory, as some believe. What it says is that such theory cannot be compelled as a term or condition of one's employee or student status. One can teach the theory "provided such training or instruction is given in an objective manner without endorsement of the concepts." Of course, some people will interpret any teaching of the concepts of critical race theory as an endorsement, so this will still have a "chilling effect" if the current culture warriors signal a thirst for litigation, but the law nevertheless does not forbid teaching critical race theory.
To read the legislation, visit https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/7/BillText/er/PDF
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