Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Day 8: Veil of Ignorance and "the Insider".

The main topic of the day, at least for what I was doing, concerned Justice Theory (Chapter 17).

I will admit this is a complicated topic and I oftentimes shy away from it back home. A few weeks ago as I was plannig this course I thought I'd give it a try.

Now that I'm wondering what I got myself into. The text describes several different types of justice and I don't want to just stand there repeating all that. But I'm not sure what else to do.

Last night I came up with an idea, a variation of which I've seen several people talk about. This would be a veil of ignorance exercise, using information either that I knew about this country or they had given me.

I started by giving each student a money card, face down. One the other side of the card would be their starting salary as a young person. I know that somewhere between 35-40% of the country lives in poverty. So I assumed that was minimum wage, $3500/year. So there were 6 cards out of 16 that were poverty cards. 7 cards were middle-income, what I assumed to be $20,000 (a student later told me it should be 30,000, I said fine, change it.). 3 cards were upper-income, $150000.

Before they turned there cards over I told/yet sort of asked, "Panama is a class-based society. More than anything else, how smart you are, how talented, how hard you worked in school and your grades, access to a high paying job will depend on which class you were born into. You had no control over this. You had no choice whose womb you were in. This same circumstance is true in many countries, including my own, the United States." I offered them a change to challenge my premises, anything, before they found out their starting salaries. Nobody did. So I told them to turn the cards over. There was a lot of commotion, some people excited, some laughing out of frustration.

Then there was a second card I placed in front of everyone. This was a "male/female" card. Face down. I told them half the cards were male, half female. I mentioned that in the U.S. women tend to earn about 80% of what men earn. They confirmed that ratio is consistent in Panama. Ok then, if you have a "male" card, you'll be able to multiply your income by 20%, if female there is no adjustment. I tried to allow them a chance to challenge the system, there was none. Pretty consistently everyone would say "well, that's just the way it is". And ten out of 16 students are male. So they had the chance to look at their cards.

Last card... this time I used information they had given me the previous two days. I told them on the next card they would either be "athletic" (the word commonly used in job advertisements to indicate "good looking"), "average" or "feo" (spanish word for "ugly"). I figured 40% could be considered good-looking, 40% average and 20% ugly. Attractiveness I concede could to some extent be influenced by our choice, but again this is mostly a random event. Beautiful parents will have beautiful children, etc. etc. If you get the "athletic" card, you can double your income. "Average" no impact, "Feo", jobs are scare, divide your income in half. Again before allowing them to see their cards I asked if this process was how they had the described their country to me. No one challenged me. Turn your cards over I said. I went around the room, asking who was born rich, who was born male, who was born "bonito/a". Interestingly, no one was blessed with the magic combination. (all my "athletic" people were in the middle or lower class, that's how it came out). They seemed to enjoy the exercise, but I can't say we processed it at a level that satisfied me. They seemed resigned to their fate, maybe that's the lesson.

For what it's worth, a student said to me, "this is the way it is, we can't do anything about it." I acknowledge this and then pointed out that I thought in the U.S. the advantages of being beautiful or "ugly" weren't always so extreme (maybe I'm out of touch). I mentioned you can still live in, work toward, advocate toward a system you think is "fair". That means potentially giving a person from a poor background a chance, or maybe hiring someone that is qualified but not so attractive.

I then showed the film "The Insider". This is my third viewing. It's a powerful film, very long. We will process some tomorrow I hope.

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