Abstract
In a context of political conflict, the practice of vengeance, the paying back of harm in exchange for harm suffered, is obviously an ethical problem. The practice of forgiveness is equally though differently problematic when applied to political conflict despite the fact that it is a moral ideal. A third approach, the practice of moral accountability, is more ethically justifiable, yet it remains unclear what it is conceptually and what it would involve practically in a particular context. In this essay, the author develops a conceptual framework for moral accountability, grounded in a broader understanding of justice as responsibility to conflictual and unchosen relationships. Drawing on contemporary sources in Christian ethics, as well as insights from anti-racism community organizing, the author argues that practices of moral accountability restructure the pattern of these relationships, such that perpetrators and guilty bystanders are more likely to assume, rather than avoid, responsibility for causing structured racial harm.
Highlights
In a context of political conflict, the practice of vengeance, the paying back of harm in exchange for harm suffered, is obviously an ethical problem
If we extend Paul’s discipline by analogy to the current contextual manifestation of structural evil, being a white ally who practices accountability to persons of color in an organized, anti-racism collective will inevitably involve this peculiar punishment, this realization that one is not in control of one’s ability to avoid causing harm due to the emergent properties of the structural evil from which one benefits
I have developed a conceptual framework for practices of moral accountability by drawing upon Rajendra’s reframing of political justice as responsibility to unchosen relationships
Summary
In the transitional justice literature, one can generally find broad acknowledgement of the moral compromises involved in all of the existing, viable strategies available to post-conflict societies, including truth commissions, conditional amnesty for perpetrators, criminal prosecution for perpetrators, structural reforms, and monetary reparations for victims and survivors. Desmond Tutu argues that this desire for vengeance, while understandable as an attempt to affirm the dignity of victims and survivors, does not promote social reconciliation, not to mention the fact that the prosecution of perpetrators is often practically impossible and prohibitively expensive in the context of a post-conflict society While it has become obvious that both vengeance and forgiveness are highly limited as means to reconstructing this culture in post-conflict societies, we have fewer mileposts for knowing how to preserve and practice moral accountability in societies moving in the direction of authoritarianism. Tutu employs the term to refer to a moral ideal in which perpetrators voluntarily assume responsibility for harm, but he understands the reconstruction of this ideal in the South African context to be dependent on the conditional amnesty procedure of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on the distinctive cultural worldview of ubuntu How is moral accountability to be practiced and understood in the context of increasingly authoritarian societies such as the United States, which lack the benefit of moral hindsight possessed by many post-conflict societies? Is moral accountability possible if responsible agents are acting—or failing to act—with impunity because the pattern of structural harm is, entirely legal?
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