Rasisme og rasjonalitet

Det er mange måter å begrunne menneskeverd og moral på, på samme måte som det er mange måter å avfeie dette på, eller i hvert fall gjøre unntak her og nå, for meg.

Som i "egentlig er jeg for militærtjeneste, men ikke meg akkurat nå".

En av de viktigste etiske utfordringene er dermed å motvirke ikkemegakkuratnåismen som fra tid til annen, for ikke å si stadig, forlater jungelen og herjer by og land, land og strand, mann mot mann.

Men hvordan er det så med rasismen? Er det slik enkelte hevder at det er takket være en gryende evolusjonsvinkling og ikke minst sosialdarwinismen at denne fikk sånn vind i seilene på 1800-tallet? Eller var tvert i mot Darwin redningen, siden han (og hans etterfølgere) viste hvor nært biologisk beslektet vi er, og ikke bare med andre mennesker, men med andre dyr?

Slik at man kunne bli kvitt disse sterke og utbredte teologiske begrunnelsene for rasisme, kjent fra et utall omtaler av en ... liten håndfull sørstatsteologer.

Muligens er det tanken på de sistnevnte som har fått enkelte til å hevde at

. . .it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist. Darwin made it possible to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter [Why are people?] We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man? After posing the last of these questions, the eminent zoologist G. G. Simpson put it thus: 'The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.' (Richard Dawkins, i The Selfish Gene, som sitert her).

Men hva mente man så før 1859?

Eller drøyt 1400 år før det igjen.?

La oss se hvordan en ikke helt ubetydelig størrelse som Augustin tenkte om spørsmålet.

Whether Certain Monstrous Races of Men are Derived from the Stock of Adam or Noah's Sons. 

It is also asked whether we are to believe that certain monstrous races of men, spoken of in secular history, have sprung from Noah's sons, or rather, I should say, from that one man from whom they themselves were descended. For it is reported that some have one eye in the middle of the forehead; some, feet turned backwards from the heel; some, a double sex, the right breast like a man, the left like a woman, and that they alternately beget and bring forth: others are said to have no mouth, and to breathe only through the nostrils; others are but a cubit high, and are therefore called by the Greeks "Pigmies:" they say that in some places the woman conceive in their fifth year, and do not live beyond their eighth.

So, too, they tell of a race who have two feet but only one leg, and are of marvelous swiftness, though they do not bend the knee: they are called Skiopodes, because in the hot weather they lie down on their backs and shade themselves with their feet. Others are said to have no head, and their eyes in their shoulders; and other human or quasi-human races are depicted in mosaic in the harbor esplanade of Carthage, on the faith of histories of rarities. What shall I say of the Cynocephali, whose dog-like head and barking proclaim them beasts rather than men? 

But we are not bound to believe all we hear of these monstrosities. But whoever is anywhere born a man, that is, a rational, mortal animal, no matter what unusual appearance he presents in color, movement, sound, nor how peculiar he is in some power, part, or quality of his nature, no Christian can doubt that he springs from that one protoplast. We can distinguish the common human nature from that which is peculiar, and therefore wonderful.
  - The City of God, Chap. 16, Book 8

Mulig jeg er fordomsfull, men jeg vil vel tenke litt enkelt at de to siste setningene her ikke er noe jeg uten videre vil ignorere fullstendig.

Selv om noen sørstatsteologer ser ut til å ha fulgt Dawkins' råd, synske som de var.