speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Confused Consequentialism
women. Although all were normal weight, four-fifths had dieted,
and 10 percent had had eating disorders. Half of all American
women say they would consider cosmetic surgery. There were
643,910 such operations in 1990, including 89,402 breast augmentations
and 109,080 liposuctions. Even (perhaps especially) women
whose bodies are envied or desired by millions—Cher, Mariel
Hemingway, and Jane Fonda—have had breast augmentations. As a
result, the American cosmetic surgery industry earns $300 million a
year, the cosmetics industry $20 billion, and the diet industry $33
billion. 59 Advertising also reproduces racial subordination. African
American women use skin lighteners, which may be linked to
cancer. These have become popular in Africa, where they contain
much higher concentrations of the active ingredient, greatly increasing
the risks. One of the many illustrations of the impaired racial selfimage
is the preference by darker adoptive parents for lighter
adopted children—a finding reported in Ebony magazine opposite
an ad for Vantex Skin Bleaching Creme. 60
The consequentialist case against speech dates to the early postwar
decades, when critics blamed rising crime rates on television. 61
But just as the critique of pornography implicates all advertising, so
the attack on media violence incriminates movies, comic books,
and much of literature, including the Bible, Shakespeare's histories
and tragedies, and Tolstoi's War and Peace. This debate has
acquired racial overtones as commentators have attributed the
violent response of some audiences to the content of films by African
American directors about inner-city life: Ernest Dickerson's "Juice,"
Mario Van Peebles's "New Jack City," and John Singleton's "Boyz N
the Hood." 62 "New Jack City" star Wesley Snipes regretted the
violence but disavowed responsibility: "This film is anti-drug, antiviolence
and anti-fratricide right across the board. If it was the film,
then why don't we have a melee at each of the 800 plus theaters
where it's showing?" 63 The producers maintained:
Some of the films we have made attract black youths. What
happens when they get together is not the films' fault. They take
their beefs with them.
The media has begun a pre-release witch hunt with black films.
You see cameras setting up outside theaters waiting for violence to
happen. Sometimes, it's a self-fulfilling [prophecy]. 64
Just as African Americans have complained that black rappers are
95