When should ethics be taught? As an ethics keynote speaker, ethics consultant and book author, I think about these issues a great deal. Despite the divisive arguments about diversity that have marched all the way up to boardrooms, I fear our society is no closer to solving its problems than it was decades ago.
A small high school in Wisconsin
To illustrate my point, I will point to Muskego High School (not in the Deep South) but in Wisconsin. Muskego was the “home team” in a game against Beloit Memorial High School. The incident didn’t happen in 1953, but March 3, 2023, in a time where we are congratulating one another on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and immunology.
The game was marked by many in the Muskego student section wearing what has been described as “thug outfits” showing Black people in a racist context. There were racist chants and “monkey sounds,” as well as racial slurs and a swastika seen in the Beloit Memorial High School visiting team locker room.
According to demographic statistics, nearly 90-percent of the student body of the Muskego home team is white, while 66-percent of Beloit Memorial High School are minority students with 21-percent African American.
To complete the details, at another game in Janesville, Wisconsin, the Beloit Memorial High School was met with racism during a girls’ basketball game.
In regard to the boys basketball game at Muskego, it took the officials well into the latter part of the game to throw out the students making racist chants. The students were recorded and they are being put up for disciplinary action. Naturally, the local politicians, school, and school board are saying all of the right things, but there are much deeper societal problems that are being ignored.
Where there are No Ethics
Sadly, Wisconsin is no stranger to racism and open discrimination against African Americans has been well-documented since the Civil War era. It has been characterized as a public health crisis, especially given the state’s income disparity in minority communities. Wisconsin does share in the history of so-called “Sundown Communities,” where Black people are harassed and/or arrested for walking around certain towns after dark. It seems incongruous, at first, racism in an Upper Midwest area, but why not? And, I suppose, as an ethics keynote speaker, ethics consultant and book author I must come around to my original point.
In the absence of ethical training, in the absence of ethical expectations, endemic racism or sexual harassment or persistent fraud itself, will keep occurring. In this particular case, and in fact, with the two schools in question, I fear this is a learned behavior. It is taught, parent to child and enabled by the system that has poor, ethical expectations.
When unethical behaviors perpetuate it doesn’t stop in high school or college, it goes right to workplaces – and that’s what makes cases like this so troubling.
Saying the right things are wrong
In this case, simply saying the right things to impress the media, the school board or even to satisfy a compliance document does little to correct the problem. Without a system wide ethics training program in place, such behaviors will continue. From a life-time perspective, paying lip service won’t change much. There must be deeper understanding, respect and a sense of urgency in treating the problem.
When there are no ethics, this is what happens, and make no mistake that a lack of ethical behavior in one area will lead to a whole range of unacceptable behaviors in others.
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