Is a Life Equal to a Life?

A life should be equal to a life, but it is not. Historically speaking, it never has been. In every society, especially those that we remember as great civilizations, there were sharp economic and social distinctions between those who ruled and those who provided the manual labor necessary for the state to function. The disadvantages of the lower socio-economic groups were always a calculated part of any state's system. While slavery in ancient societies was understood as a necessary evil, racial discrimination is a byproduct of modern day colonialism. 19th century racism not only undermined the cultures, traditions, and belief systems of colonized peoples by labeling them barbaric or "uncivilized", but also by introducing the white Western perceptions as the norm. Even though currently whites are clearly the minority with only about 16% of the total world population, beauty ideals, fashion designs, and white Western modes of thoughts still dominate global understandings today. Even in the decolonized world racism is still exists and is a big market for enterprise as e.g. skin whitening creams still are profitable products and in some rural peripheral regions a whiter skin color is still the sign of higher social status.

Here in the U.S. racial discrimination is illegal, yet it occurs on a daily basis. Not only are there still white supremacist movements plotting against African-Americans in various parts of the nation, but the recent unfortunate incidences in Baltimore and Ferguson (and elsewhere) have revealed that there is a much broader segment of society that not only believes in segregation, but even active attacks on African-Americans. A recent study has pointed out that it is much harder for African-American college graduates to find an appropriate job than for Caucasians. Their unemployment rate was twice as high as that of other college graduates. A different experiment investigated racism that job applicants faced with Hispanic and African-American sounding names. In both cases the call backs for an interview were significantly lower than for typical "Caucasian-sounding" names. The experiment clearly showed that candidates with Hispanic or African-American names do not have the same chances at getting a job interview as Caucasians. In fact African-Americans have 50% less of a chance at a call back than Caucasians. Research has shown that they get hit twice by discrimination, because it is not only harder for them to find a job, but also to improve their employability.

Countless other occasions of discrimination have surfaced in the social media since the death of Freddie Gray, on you-tube, twitter or Facebook. Here is this one example of an African-American father who walks into a mall to pick up his children from daycare. While walking around the mall, this man is being approached by a police officer asking to identify himself. The man knows his rights and replies that he has not done anything suspicious and he should not have to identify himself. He is repeatedly asked to show his ID, which he refuses insisting on his legal right. Suddenly more officers appear and the man is handcuffed as his two children watch. He is recording the entire incident and it is heartbreaking to see that even though he has done nothing wrong, he gets arrested. This highlights the well-known fact that racial bias is part of current police practices. Just imagine that it would have been a white man in his thirties who did not display any kind of suspicious behavior. Would police officers have asked to see his ID? Most likely not. Now imagine that it was a woman walking around in the mall (white, African-American or Hispanic). Would she have been suspicious? Would the police have arrested her for no reason? Probably not. Fact is that African-Americans and other non-white (e.g. Indian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic) looking men get stopped more by the police and asked for identification, even if they have done nothing wrong. Many more incidences of this kind of injustice have surfaced recently that illustrate a reality that is far off from equal to all citizens. What makes it worse is that the officials in uniforms who are supposed to uphold the laws of the nation and protect the rights of all citizens seem to be the ones who disregard the same laws and endanger African-American lives. Why has this developed into a string of incidences and why have the highest levels not been able to put a stop to this process? Considering that the first (half) African-American President is in power whose election campaign motto was "change", the development is more than sobering. Innocent, unarmed, non-suspicious people should not be attacked by the police, let alone arrested or killed. Period. And if it happens, there should be major consequences for the police officers involved. To prevent such injustices in the future, severe retraining and education of the police force should be a priority.

While these horrific developments are ongoing, there is still a weird taboo associated with talking about issues of race. It is an underlying, unspoken maze that stretches through all walks of life, but at the same time, it should not be mentioned. It seems that those who discuss it, get stigmatized as they destroy the generally accepted illusion that racism doesn't exist in this democracy. Maybe it is because discrimination and racism are illegally, that we feel it could be perceived as unpatriotic if we point out such blatant flaws in the system, but of course the opposite is true: In a democratic nation we have to assure that practices of discrimination and racism decrease and talk about them until they do. However, the media plays its part in promoting the status quo from which it benefits. If we keep pretending that everyone has the same opportunities and that success is just about working hard, we forget that the starting point for different social, economic, ethnic and other groups varies significantly. If we look at the well cited statistics for this issue, we have to admit that it cannot be a coincidence that the numbers of incarcerations, school drop outs, teenage pregnancies, single parentage as well as areas of severe gang activities all point to African-Americans in a highly disproportionate fashion. African-Americans only make up 13% of the total U.S. populations, yet they account for 37% of all the people currently imprisoned. For the age bracket of 27-34 year-old men this means that every 9th African American man is currently in jail. Taking out the men of this age groups robs the African-American community of the group with the most potential of social mobility, but also denies them to provide for their families adequately. It leads to disadvantaged future generations who have to grow up without a father present and without having sufficient male role models. Conservatives may argue that this trend indicates behavior patterns that feed into the vicious cycle and thus prevent any change to the status quo, but they clearly forget that the chances from the beginning were not equal and there is a major historic debt that needs to be paid up before equality can truly exist. In other nations, when there has been a history of unequal treatment of certain segment of society, politicians put quotas in place to guarantee that this specific group gains access to the same opportunities and slowly catches up with the rest of the society, like the women quota in many European nations or the quota for college admissions for students from India's lower castes.

Growing up as a German white girl in South Africa during Apartheid has confronted me with historic guilt on many levels and made me especially aware of discrimination and racism. As a child, I remember seeing unequal, unjust treatment of Blacks everywhere, but at the same time nobody was talking about it. It was an accepted reality that made no sense to me who was taught that all human beings were equal. What Germany's bad history of the Holocaust has taught us is that civic duty and responsibility in a democracy is a force that has to be applied and should not be underestimated or ignored. Citizens' critical thinking about the nation's reality and procedures are necessary to double-check the political path that the nation is taking. If citizens believe that minority rights are violated, people are mistreated, or specific racial profiling has become a standard procedure, people have to stand up and demand justice. If lives are lost, we cannot stand by and let it happen. If it happens repeatedly, then something needs to be fixed within the system to prevent further violations. We have to remember that in a democracy, the state apparatus is the instrument that enables the rule of the majority and whose role it is to protect the well-being of all its citizens, including the minority.

What if we Were More Intelligent?

Last month, I watched the movie Lucy on the plane. Even though it was not one of the best movies I ever saw (far from it), I still keep thinking about it. The interesting thing about it was the particular set of questions raised by it. In short, the movie is about a woman called Lucy (played by the beautiful Scarlett Johansson) who involuntarily consumes drugs that enhance her brain capacity from ten percent (the film works with the premise that this is the norm for humans) to the total of 100%. A brilliant neuroscientist (played by the amazing Morgan Freeman), who devoted his entire life to hypothesize the outcomes of humans being able to utilize more of their brain’s capacity, can witness Lucy’s transformation. The way the movie plays this plot out is not so interesting to me, because it seems forced at times, but I rather enjoy the larger questions that it raises: What would happen to the world and us humans, if we were able to become more intelligent? What would the world look like? How would humans interact with each other? Would there still be violence in the world? Would people still waste time on petty little things or would we focus on the bigger, pressing issues that need to be addressed.

I enjoyed the naming of the protagonist and the film as Lucy. It wasn’t a coincidence, but was carefully chosen and makes perfect sense. The protagonist is named Lucy, because the name indicates a connection between her and the first known female, our almost human (Australopithecus afarensis), ancestor who lived 3.2-million-years ago and who scientists discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. National Geographic reported that scientists named her Lucy after the popular Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds that was played again and again at the party to celebrate the unearthing of our earliest ancestor. The Lucy of the movie is the pinnacle of human evolution as she is the highest developed human who ever lived. So the name Lucy is linking the most primitive to the most sophisticated "woman" in human evolution.

Before going into the details of the hypothetical questions, we have to note that the premise of the movie, that humans only use ten percent of their brain’s capacity, is wrong. For many decades, scientists have unsuccessfully been trying to debunk it. The original statement that led to this false belief goes back to the 1890s, when a scientist first declared that humans only used a small percentage of their brains, but never actually attached a number to this statement. It kept getting repeated and in the 1930s, the figure of ten percent became attached. Despite scientists' many efforts to destroy the common misperception and a number of conclusive studies to show that humans activate “most parts of their brain” during every day and "many parts of the brain" remaining active while we sleep, the myth still persists until today. The movie plays into this and will unfortunately help to spread the myth even further.

Despite the false premise, the movie raises many interesting questions. Even if we humans use most parts of the brain throughout the day and many parts even during the night, there seems to be still a lot of room for improvement. So what if we (the human race) were to become more intelligent? What would that look like? How would we interact with each other and in what kind of world would we live in?

The movie made us believe that violence would still play a big part in everyday reality, even if we were more intelligent. I doubt that. I believe that if we were to be more intelligent, there would be no need for violence. If people would be more reasonable, we would come to the conclusion that violence leads to more violence and cannot be a solution. Using simple logic, we would realize that intolerance and discrimination of any kind are unacceptable forms of dealing with others. Period. People would realize that dividing people up in different groups worth different treatment makes no sense. Why would a human life in one region of the world count less than in others? Why would girls be valued less than boys? Why would one skin color be preferable to any others? All these differentiations, we would realize, make no sense.

If humans were more intelligent, intelligence would not only encompass hard factual knowledge or the ability to reason, but also social and emotional intelligence that leads to empathy and responsibility. Humans would be more aware of the inequalities that persist in this world today and more willing to help each other, because we are all one (the human race). Competition between nations would not persist. Exploitation would not be tolerated. Rich people would share their wealth with less fortunate, not because any government forced them, but because they would agree that the money needs to be invested in the most reasonable way. Food supplies, for example, would be divided up differently so that no person in inner-city districts in the Western world and in broad regions of the least developed world have to go hungry or starve to death. 

Humans would make sure, out of responsibility toward each other, that everyone lives in decent, acceptable living conditions and that every child receives a good education, not only because that is the right thing to do, but also because it is the best way to assure future political stability and economic well-being. We would realize that with increasing globalization and interconnectedness of the world, we need secure, clean, safe, and positive living conditions everywhere to protect ourselves against poverty, violence, and orthodoxy.