To the Editor–
Council member Alex Fisch is now openly displaying an insidious and corrosive form of racism. At the last Council meeting he stated that criticism of Mayor Daniel Lee’s failures as a Council member is equivalent to claiming “all Black people are lazy.”
Moral agency is the capacity to make moral decisions and be held responsible for their consequences. Alex Fisch is robbing Daniel Lee of moral agency. Daniel Lee, in Fisch’s view, can only act as a representative of the category “Black people”—his moral decisions are not things that he is accountable for as an individual. If Lee is criticized, in Fisch’s view, it is simply criticism of Lee’s category.
Alex Fisch would never say, “criticism of Donald Trump is equivalent to claiming all white people are treasonous ignorant narcissists.” Since Trump is white, it’s taken as given that he has moral agency, and is individually responsible for what he does. For Fisch, it’s NOT taken as given when the person is Black.
To rob someone of moral agency is to make them not fully human. That’s how Alex Fisch thinks of Black people. And that is white supremacism at its very core.
Sometimes the most profound racism comes from people most loudly proclaiming themselves antiracist.
Alex Fisch should resign.
Kenneth Alexander
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