Out with the Old

I was doing some research for an article, and I ran across this blog called "stuff white people do" (written by a white guy, by the way). One post was about the casual way American's toss around the word "Nazi," as in "the soup Nazi" from Seinfeld, the "parking Nazis" who give you tickets, etc. Perhaps you have used this word in passing or in conversation. I have. And in so doing, I have cheapened it and made what the Nazis did much less horrible by comparing it to my own inconsequential problems.

How many other words do we use every day that trivialize people's pain and suffering and cover up our own bleak history of privilege? Here are a few I can think of that really have no place in our lexicon:

rape, as in "The banks are raping us with those high interest rates."

butt hurt (I have not used this one--it's new on the scene of twenty-somethings and makes my stomach flip every time I hear it), as in "She was butt hurt because he didn't call her back right away."

slave, as in "That intern will be your slave for the summer" or "I slaved over a hot stove all day."

retarded, as in "Those song lyrics are so retarded."

And don't even get me started on swear words. We live in a Christian-dominated society, yet "Jesus Christ" has become an accepted curse, even when used by Christians. Being a non-Christian, I started thinking about how my use of these words would be offensive to some of my more faithful friends and have begun retraining my brain.

Does your language reflect your respect for other people, their beliefs, and their lifestyles? Mine doesn't always, but I'm thinking about it, and trying hard to match my mouth to my mind.

Corporate Philanthropy: Good or (Making Up for) Evil?

This past week, my students brought up an ethical issue that made me think twice. Is it better for for-profit corporations to sin and then repent through corporate philanthropy or to sin and not atone at all?

Perhaps it is a bit hypocritical for that local brewing company to repeatedly dump in the creek and then turn around and give millions to social causes through its foundation. But as a wise friend pointed out, the woman in charge of that foundation likely has no control over, and may not even have any knowledge of, the bad, bad things that the company does, despite the fact that she shares the same last name.

Research shows that 89% of consumers aged 18-35 would switch brands for a comparably priced product if a company showed that it was a "giving" company. Where does your loyalty lie, and do you do the research before you support a company that, on the surface, seems to be charitable?

The Ethics of Credit Checks

This weeek, a student in my nonprofit financial management class questioned the ethics of conducting credit checks on potential employees. The students in my class are social workers, and I'm finding that their code of ethics (http://www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp) can be quite different than the code of ethics I live under as a CPA (http://www.aicpa.org/about/code/index.html) and business ethics in general. But as we know, in some cases, business ethics have gotten corporations into a l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-t of trouble.

The student argued that prying into someone's personal financial affairs and making a judgment about her ability to do a job, even a finance or money-handling job, is not in alignment with the basic social-work value of respect for another human being. She gave good examples of how this protocol could be misused and abused. I can definitely see her point, but I don't want to be the nonprofit leader who has to explain how $50,000 was embezzled by an employee I didn't do a background and credit check on.

I'd love to hear your perspective on this issue!

The Devil Came on Horseback

I watched the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback this week. Wow. It's about the ongoing genocide happening right now in Darfur, which is in western Sudan. After I got over the first wave of shock, my first thought was, "How could I not know this?"

I explained the whole thing to Gary, and he said, "How could I not know this?" I said, "Because Americans have a short little span of attention."

It did make it into the media, complete with horrible, gruesome photos. And a description of the intentional burning of entire villages hut by hut, brutal murders of hundreds of thousands of people at the hands of the Arab government and their flunkies, and the use of rape as a tool of war because it breaks up families. People were outraged for a while (a few days? a few weeks?). Then we moved on to other news. Wow.

The matter was referred to the United Nations, who referred the matter to the International Criminal Court. The Sudanese ambassador to the UN actually smiled when asked if he would turn over those people the ICC determined were most responsible for the crimes. Wow.

So I went to the website http://www.savedarfur.orgto see what I could do. "I'll write letters to my Congresspeople," I thought, until I couldn't figure out what I would say. "Kill those evil people," was the first thing that came to mind. But then I wondered, "What next?" How can we build an infrastructure in the entire continent? That's what would be necessary to give them the economic self-sufficiency they need to recover from the fragmentation and devastating effects of slavery and destruction of their society wrought by British and French colonization.

I'm not sure what I can ask my Congresspeople to do. Murder the bad guys and leave a country with no government and no militia to protect its people? Right, so they can be prey for the next armed group who wants their piece of land? But how can we just stand by while they continue to rape, murder, and pillage?