Sources of Normativity: How Multicultural Values Emerge

Introduction

Catherine Myser argues in "Differences from Somewhere: The Normativity of Whiteness in Bioethics in the United States" (2003) that previous efforts to highlight sociocultural diversity in bioethics fell short because they failed to problematize and displace white dominance and normativity. This, she contends, is necessary if diversity research is going to make a difference.

In response, this paper explains why the sources of normativity matter. I first show why the sources of mainstream ethics and bioethics need concern us. I then consider Myser's proposal to do away with ("displace") mainstream bioethics and render White bioethics problematic ("problematizing"). I give reasons for doubting that such an approach solves the problem at hand. Finally, I suggest an alternative strategy. This strategy appeals to Rawls's notion of a veil of ignorance and elaborates an interpretation of this approach that addresses the concerns Myser raises.

The Problem

"Whiteness" for Myser represents a marker of location or position within a social and racial hierarchy. White persons wield privilege and power within society and, more specifically, within the scholarly field of bioethics. The dominant position of Western values in bioethics and ethics more broadly is problematic, according to Myser, precisely because its origins stem from the power and privilege of those who espouse it. According to the analysis she suggests, the source of normativity in bioethics is the universalization of a dominant white group's experience and culture and its establishment as the norm. Cultural imperialism, rather than reason and reflection, yields normativity.

Assuming that this analysis is correct, or even largely correct, it stands to reason that nonwhite persons who live under cultural imperialism find themselves defined from the outside. As others note, being defined from the outside implies being "positioned, placed, by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere, from those with whom they do not identify and who do not identify with them" (Young 1990, 59). This creates the experience of otherness. Such an experience is fundamentally unfair because it is despotic. As Young expresses, "the oppressed group's own experience and interpretation of social life finds little expression that touches the dominant culture, while that same culture imposes on the oppressed group its experience and interpretation of social life" (60).

One Solution

One possible solution to this problem is to banish mainstream bioethics altogether. According to the approach suggested by Myser, white bioethics cannot be "fixed" merely by adding diversity and stirring. This is because whiteness remains an unmarked or neutral category, while "diversity" remains marked and vulnerable to white acceptance. Rather than putting diverse moral values on equal footing, such a strategy continues to assume that mainstream bioethics represents the norm. Only by putting down and displacing "white talk" can the whiteness of bioethics be seen as itself requiring some sort of justification. Only in this way can we "mark" white bioethics rather than assigning it to a neutral category.

While initially appealing, such an approach encounters distinct challenges. It is in certain respects reminiscent of the strategy suggested by some feminists in response to the dominance of men's voices in ethics and moral philosophy more generally. Thus, Card argues against developing feminist ethics by reflecting upon existing ethical theory by male moral philosophers: criticizing, modifying, and extending it in light of feminist insights. She urges instead that women develop feminist ethics out of the "raw data" of women's experience, viewing their own lives as a starting point for moral theorizing (Card 1991).

Yet the approach of starting anew takes for granted that women have "raw" experience unaffected by living in a world alongside men. Likewise, displacing white bioethics takes for granted, for example, that Latinos can invoke a "purely Latino" experience. It also sets up an oppositional account that focuses attention on differences at the expense of similarities. In short, it assumes that people of diverse cultures have little or nothing to gain from "stirring and mixing&quot...