That does make it trickier. While I’m in full agreement with the OP with the scenario he outlined (in the act of leaving/escaping), I think that the death by a third party is murder. That person is acting as a judge and jury on a philosophical issue. Someone killing their “owner” is eliminating that which impedes his moving about freely. Two very different things.
What does it mean for something to be “morally/ethically murder”?
I don’t think it’s that clear cut.
I can easily imagine a scenario where I’ve escaped the clutches of a slaveowner and have returned to free my family and friends. I have a gun and a clean line of sight to the head of the overseer, who has a gun pointed at my folks. Is it morally wrong to shoot him? Remember we’re talking about slavery times. There is no judge and jury that would ever punish the overseer or his boss for their crimes–because the law doesn’t recognize their action as crimes. So what other alternatives do I have? Cross my fingers and hope the Emancipation Proclamation (that I don’t ever think is going to come) is issued soon so I can be with my wife and kids?
Here’s another twist to the question–one that really is tricky. Say you’re Harriet Tubman and you’re gathering a bunch of runaways from a plantation late at night. A slave not hip to what’s up happens to catch everyone leaving and makes like he’s going to tell (snitches weren’t uncommon). Would it be moral for you, Harriet Tubman, to kill him? Not only is this dude risking your life, but the lives of all the slaves you’re helping. Like Skald, I’ll pretend that I’m the badass that I’m not and say hell yeah it’s moral. Kill his snitching ass and get the hell out of there!
I think he meant “morally-justified homicide”.
There would be no “probably”, IMHO. One should not submit to unjustice, and if peaceful means of protest are futile, then I think violence or other dramatic means of subversion is completely justified. Even if innocent lives are taken in the process. If countries can have “collateral damage” when they’re at war with the enemy, why can’t individuals? When the whole system is fucked up, everything becomes fair game. (Wow, I really can sound like a badass when I want to!)
It’s like the situation that RickJay offered, where the slaveowner and slave have a long-term relationship of mutual respect. I agree with him that such a situation was possible; slavery was such a weird institution that I’m quite sure there were house slaves that did admire and respect their masters, and slaveowners who felt something close to familial love towards their servants. But as I said, it’s a weird institution. If one of these beloved slaves up and killed his “nice” slaveowner, the question of morality can be kind of tossed out of the window. Why should we villify the slave as a murderer and not villify the slaveowner for falsely imprisoning someone for life and forcing him to be his life-time servant? We can do both, of course, but who comes out looking better? Who’s the innocent? The slave who finally snaps or the slavemaster who’s blindsided? It’s almost like an impossible question to answer because we’re talking about a bizarro world where morality becomes dependent on which player you’re sympathetic with, not on any “absolutes”.
When the underlying system is wrong, then any reactive wrongness becomes hard to judge.
It means that the killing in question is morally unjustified.
Anyway, as I’ve said in the past I agree with the position that slavers are hostis humani generis, the enemies of mankind. And as such, there are little to no moral issues with killing them. I’d make a point of killing as many as I could if I was trying to escape. As far as I’m concerned if you lift a hand to defend slavery you are at war with the human race, and killing you is no more morally objectionable than shooting a member of an invading army.
I think any action has to be judged both in context and on the basis of the intentions and motivations of the person committing the action.
Someone who kills his master to escape, I don’t view that as ethically wrong. Someone who kills his master not because he has to in order to escape, but because it will enable others to escape as well, I don’t view that as ethically wrong.
I don’t view the killings of Roman slave holding patricians by Spartacus to have been “murder.” (I do view his open brigandism often times directed against people who were no more part of the Roman power structure or no more beneficiaries of the slavery system than Spartacus himself to be immoral.)
If a slave genuinely felt themselves to be at war with the institution of slavery, then I’d view killings of slave masters to not be murder as part of that, regardless of their technical “necessity.”
However, a slave who has no such feelings and kills his master solely for material gain, or because of some corrupt bargain with whomever stands to inherit his murdered master’s lands and property–that is simple murder. To me the motivation is important.
Mm, I think that also has to depend on context. Most any illegal slave traders of the 19th and of course the present century I’d agree. However I don’t really think that concept has a place in the modern world, there’s no one whom international society has deemed “you can handle as you deem fit” these days. You can’t hang pirates in summary executions anymore. (Although if you’re Russian you can disable their craft and strand them in the middle of the ocean with no provisions, I suppose.)
Prior to a certain point in time, slavery was highly natural and probably merciful compared to the alternatives. I mean, Romans come off looking civilized when they didn’t just expunge conquered lands of the entirety of their peoples through mass genocides, but instead bound them over for servitude. The wholesale displacement and slaughter of conquered peoples wasn’t something cooked up during the great ethnic purges of the 20th century, that was essentially how humans resolved conflicts prior to a certain point in history. For all the nastiness the Romans did, it’s hard to look at that period of history and not view their actions as humane compared to the societies and military activity of their neighboring peoples.
Okay, here’s a fact, not a hypothetical. I lost the best job I ever had and one I wanted to keep for the remainder of my working life due to office politics which amounted to a conspiracy to cost me my job. Would I have been justified in killing the two people most responsible? I wanted to and still do. But, it would be murder.
If the act violates the law of the land, it is murder. Murder isn’t situational, no matter how morally justified you think it might be.
But there was a period of time in Texas when “He needed killing” was a legitimate defense.
Does it matter morally, when you’re looking at the question, whether the slave in question is born into slavery, or taken as a slave? Because if he’s born a slave, nobody’s taken away the person’s freedom. He’s never been free.
Right. Because 1) losing your “dream” job is a bajillion times different from losing your freedom, 2) losing your job does not put your life in danger, and 3) you have alternatives other than killing, like bringing a law suit against the company or the two individuals who you believe conspired against you.
That’s why the OP qualified the question with “morally”. We all know that it would have been against the law for a slave to kill his or her slaveowner. That’s a moot point. The question is, would it be inherently wrong for a slave to kill his slaveowner. And the majority opinion in this thread is that it wouldn’t be wrong, since slavery is akin to holding someone by lethal force.
Your post is so not in the same ballpark of what we’re talking about that I’m wondering if perhaps you’ve posted in the wrong thread.
I don’t think it matters. Slaves were very cognizant of what constituted freedom and what didn’t. All they had to do was look at the white people around them. Abused children eventually find out that their lives are “wrong” when they see other kids interacting with their parents. Just because they’ve never known anything else for themselves doesn’t make their condition less pathetic. It makes it more, if anything.
I’m reminded of that old Chris Rock stand-up act, when he talks about the tigers attacking Seigfried and Roy and how people kept saying the tigers went “crazy.” No, the tigers went tiger. When you treat a man in unnatural ways and then he kills his oppressor, he hasn’t gone “crazy.” He’s gone human.
It was hard to find the right word. In this case it would have to be someone who had in no way contributed to or benefited from the immoral behavior of the victims slavery. This would likely coincide with your definition. That New York Sheriff would have been culpable if he was going to act as you described. If killing the malefactor would cause him to ignite a keg full of black powder that would kill other victims, then opinions might vary. Of course the problem isn’t his death, it’s that pesky collateral damage thing.
I assume we’re talking about black slavery in the US here now? Someone born into slavery would know what freedom is, but, especially in the US, where slavery had such a big racial component, might believe, “Freedom is just for white people. I’m black so I should be a slave.”
Nice twists. The family aspect changes things. (and is new.) I think there is a scale on which these actions fall. If someone is trying to enslave you and prevent you from leaving, I think you can kill him and be in the moral right. Particularly if you kill him AS he is preventing you from leaving. But otherwise, as well. If you come back to get your family, I still think you’d be in the right. If you come back for friends, you slide down the scale a bit. But I think it depends on the particular circumstances.
Yes, much trickier. Nicely done. I’d say it depends on the relationship between the snitch and the slave owner. and the reason the former is going to tell the latter. I can envision a slimy, Gollum-like character in which one could justify his killing. But let’s say that the “snitch” is unaware of the emancipators’ motives and is just attempting to report “people breaking into the barn”. You’ve then taken the life of an innocent man. Or how about if he truly believes that escape is impossible (and lets assume he is correct) and that the owner’s retribution would be brutal, maybe even to the extent that he’d kill some slaves—maybe even the “snitch’s” children, you’ve then still killed someone with clean hands. So, I think it’s possible that you’d be on the moral side of things, but you’d be treading into even more dangerous moral waters. As you acknowledge.
I guess I don’t see what the motives of the snitch have to do with the right of self-preservation in the face of oppression. Just like I don’t see what the motives of the slaveowner have to do with whether killing him is just or not. Some slaveowners kept slaves not only for the profit they generated, but because they believed them to be helpless, childlike creatures who needed the firm but merciful hand of a Christian master to guide them. Some slaveowners were only about profit and couldn’t have cared less about being a “good” master. But both held people in bondage, against their will. When it comes to escape, I’m not going to discriminate based on their “niceness…” If either are standing in my way to freedom, I’m killing them.
Some slaves snitched out of fear of retribution. Some slaves snitched to get in the good graces of the master (the Gollum you speak of). And then some slaves snitched out of pure innocence. Children were notorious for spoiling slave rebellions because they just aren’t good at keeping secrets. That’s why code words and songs were often used to communicate break-outs and rebellions.
Now for the first two, I have no problem killing them. If I’m Harriet T. with my rifle and I come across Chicken George out in the collard patch, and he says, “I’ma tell Massa you’s out here stirrin’ up trouble!”, I have no time to sit down with him and seek out his motives. The pattyrollers are already on our backs. If I let Chicken George go, the end result is going to be the same regardless of his intentions. I’m going to die. So if I’m going to live and my charges are going to have a chance at freedom, Chicken George–bless his heart–is going to have to meet Jesus sooner rather than later. Sorry, but that’s just how we roll when we’re running away from oppression. You’re either with us or against us.
Children, however, aren’t as easy to handle in my mind. I know the end result could still be the same, depending on the age of the child, but I think I’d have a hard time killing a little kid who just happened to spot me coming out of my hiding spot. I might be tempted to take him or her along with me, but that would be wrong and dangerous. What I’d probably end up doing is scaring the beejesus out of them with some nightmarish threat. “If you even think about saying a word about this, I will personally hunt you down and kill you. And your Mammy too. Got it?” I would feel bad about scaring a little kid, but I’d do it to save my own life and those lives entrusted to me.
I think motives always matter. If I hit you with my car because I’m drunk, that’s one thing. If I hot you with my car because I had a mild heart attack at the wheel, that’s another. I never understand how people are so quick to take intent out of these moral calculations. I stand by my answers. The point is that there is a scale. It’s different to kill someone that is enslaving you, or your children, than it is to kill someone that is enslaving Person X. Not that all three can’t be justified mind you. But the last one, not as easily.
Onward.
Yes, it can be justified just as easily, or even more easily. If killing someone in self defense is moral, then so is killing someone to defend someone else. Since your own self interest isn’t directly involved that makes it more moral, if anything.
And at any rate I find it harder to justify not killing them if you have the chance.
Frederick Douglass wrote extensively on this in his Narrative.
If this belief had been widespread, there would have been no Underground Railroad, no slave rebellions, or former slaves who became vocal abolitionists like Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth.
There were slaves who were indeed brainwashed into believing they were inferior and deserved their lot, but I really don’t think this constituted the majority. I think most slaves had the mentality of most downtrodden peoples. “This system is fucked up but there’s nothing I can do but keep on keeping on. And then I will die and not have to suffer anymore.”
But I’m still not seeing your point. Just because it might have been “normal” for a slave to accept his lot in life does not mean that their lot was just, or that it would have been wrong for them to rebel against it. A house slave raised from childhood to serve his master day and night might accept this life just like a begger in the streets of Calcutta accepts his fate. But that does not mean that it would be necessarily immoral for that house slave to use brute force if he decided he wanted to be free. If he could run away without killing someone, then he should go that route, most definitely. But if someone’s standing in his way, then he’s morally justified in killing that person if need be, IMHO. It doesn’t matter if he thinks he deserves to be a slave or not. He has a right to be free regardless what anyone–including himself–says.