The Ethics of Living American Primacy, or, Towards a Global Jim Crow, and Its Discontents

This chapter shows a contention that global ethics have entered what must be called an ironic phase. Richard Wright used the term "ethics" ironically, to denote the coherent and patently unethical set of social and cultural practices called "Jim Crow" by which black folk were compelled to accept, act out and even internalize the dictates of white supremacy. The original Jim Crow laws emerged out of a similar moment over one hundred years ago, ushered into being by the bloody national tragedy of the Civil War, and given greater impetus by the American triumph over Spain in the 1898 war and the resultant rise of the USA as a global empire. The parallel between Wright's depiction of the extra-ethics of Jim Crow and those of American global hegemony are striking, for they parallel the way that American hegemony has promulgated a similarly divisive, two tiered set of extra-ethics, and this time on a global scale.