PLATFORM : Going Beyond Rules

RUSS GOUGH, an assistant professor of ethics at Pepperdine University, comments on the suspension of Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for making racial and ethnic slurs. He told The Times:

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The case of Marge Schott proves we do and must legislate morality at times. Schott’s attorney claims that her remarks fit none of the categories that are cause for discipline under the rules of the Major League Agreement. He is right. She broke no codified rules. But the crime at issue is not one of illegality but of immorality.

Her racist tongue is indeed “an embarrassment to the game” and most definitely “not in the best interest of baseball”--remarks often heard from other major league owners. But conspicuously absent in baseball’s public criticisms of Schott is the heart-of-the-matter adjective, immoral. In such clear-cut cases of racism, we need to stop being fearful of making moral judgments as though we are merely expressing an arbitrary, subjective point of view.

Racist remarks, especially coming from a high-profile business executive, are not simply “distasteful” and “embarrassing.” They are distasteful and embarrassing because they are blatantly immoral.