Midterm 5 questions for Intro to ethics

This is Part Two of the Midterm Exam now due on Week 8, June 17. It will now earn 100 possible points (raw score x 2). Read/study pages 309 to 324 AND pages 334-341 of Chapter 13—“Equality and Discrimination.” Turnitin will be set up for this assignment in the coming weeks. Please start reading/studying this early and space out the work over 4 weeks to avoid cramming and submitting a rushed work in Week 8. (In case you are wondering, the other half of the Midterm exams—the more objective part—based on Study Guides and Quiz questions will be posted in Week 7. As to why you are not yet required to read the entire chapter 13, the answer is that the topics needed to understand the rest of the chapter deeply have not been discussed yet. You will be required those pages and given additional questions for the Final Exam.) This is not a research paper. It is part of a guided independent study of an etext chapter. Your work should be based solely (and strictly) on pages 309 to 324 AND pp. 334-341 of the course eText. And so select/use direct quotes only from these pages alone and demonstrate what you understand by also explaining the quotes in your own words. Enclose these direct quotes in quotation marks, and copy them out word per word, without paraphrasing. Because there is only one required source, you only have to place ‘(MacKinnon and Fiala, page number)’ authors and page number, at the end only of the first direct quote. And then all other direct quotes that follow should just have the page number (____) at the end. Pages 334 to 341 are by other authors: Young (1st ‘reading’), Zack (2nd reading), and Appiah (3rd reading) but they are in our eText by MacKinnon and Fiala. So for them, if you use details in their essays to make your points more alive, citation is still the same at the end of the quote, however you must mention them when you introduce the quote in the answer: As Young states or as Appiah writes “_______________________ (page number).” Do not just give a string of quotes though. Don’t explain one quote by picking and following it up with another quote. I would not know what you’re learning or thinking. You need to explain what you understand in your own words. Also, to write this well, truly learn from the exercise, and earn a high grade-- imagine that your reader is not a professor who has read and assigned these pages but a College-level friend who does not have access to your eText and is not attending this course but is interested in becoming more informed and more thoughtful about the issue of equality and discrimination in the US. When students are not told to do this, they tend not to take pains to explain/discuss. They submit skimpy works that come across as disengaged. Answer the following questions: (All are required. There are consequences to skipping #5 and you will read that below). Don’t copy out each question before answering. However, I should clearly see 5 subheadings separating your 5 answers to the 5 questions below: (Race, Racism and Institutional Racism (1st subheading); History of Civil Rights Law in the US (2nd subheading); Ethics of Racial Profiling and Hate Crime Legislation (3rd subheading); The Principle of Equality (4th Subheading); “Connections with Topics in the Course” (5th subheading). 1) Based on the eText, explain the concepts of race, racism, and institutional or structural racism. (5 points) 2) Write an objective summary (that means don’t judge it yet, just report) of the history of civil rights law in the US, as presented in the assigned pages in the eText. (10 points) 3) Evaluate the ethics of racial profiling and hate crime legislation. To ‘evaluate’ means to bring out both strengths and weaknesses of such legislation. (10 points) 4) Explain the ‘principle of equality’. (5 points) 5) Make connections between the principle of equality and concepts learned so far. (20 pts.) You are not allowed to skip this question. Most of your independent thought and of what you’ve learned, so far, is gauged in this one. If you skip it, all other questions above will get half the points you earned. Let me help on this one by giving you specific questions to answer. You need not copy the specific questions. Just answer. We started the course with ‘Critical Thinking’ and the topic of ‘good arguments.’ Is there a good argument for racism? (Some people say, it is a natural part of one’s psychosocial development to affirm one’s own race with pride and to feel one belongs to the best race. How would you answer that?) In chapter 2, we mentioned ‘inalienable rights.’ Is being treated like everyone else an ‘inalienable right’? (Some people say: there are no inalienable rights; there are only the rights recognized and granted by one’s own laws and government. And ‘government’—especially a democratic one-- is what happens to be agreed upon by the people—whatever their different moral or religious principles are. So just accept what is agreed upon by the people at any given time in history. How would you answer that? There are also those who say, that as a matter of fact, we are not born equal in physical capabilities, intelligence, skills, character, education, economic resources etc. So equality is an empty and impossible dream that just denies the facts. What would you say to that? In Chapter 2, we talked about global religion. Can religions have a positive impact on the dialogues and debates on equality? Is this equality a legitimate concern, at all, for religions or should this be left to governments? Chapter 3, we talked about cultural relativism. If cultural ethical relativism or individual ethical relativism were right, how would this affect the issue of inequality and discrimination? Should anything be done about the inequalities and discrimination if both of these were right? Finally, in relation to Chapter 4 this week, how would Ayn Rand’s philosophy and laissez faire capitalism (which is associated with Rand and which has inspired members of our current government) affect efforts toward more equal, more economically inclusive society ? You are required to proofread your work for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. I suggest you work on a separate MSWord file first and upload it later. That way, MS Word (and or the free app, ‘grammarly’) could help you catch errors before you submit it.