Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

Impacts – Racism – Structural Violence

Racism causes structural violence for individuals globally

O'Neil 9 (Edward, M.D - Tufts, Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Perspectives, Volume 3, Number 1, Muse) jl

In summary, it is clear that through history the force of racism has worked on the international stage to elevate certain dominant groups over others, at times producing genocide, though most commonly inflicting damage more furtively through structural violence. The reallocation of the often scant resources this entails has direct implications for the health of those who receive less, in the form of lowered life expectancies, higher infant mortalities, and reduced access to potentially life-saving health care. Rather than stemming from the character deficiencies of any particular group, sources of disparity originate in the complex interplay of the economic, political, health, and social structures of a given society, themselves tracing origins to foreign conquest, slavery, and segregation.

We have a moral obligation to help others in the face of structural violence even if that leads to extinction.
Watson 77 (Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, World Hunger and Moral Obligation, p. 118-119)

These arguments are morally spurious. That food sufficient for well-nourished survival is the equal right of every human individual or nation is a specification of the higher principle that everyone has equal right to the necessities of life. The moral stress of the principle of equity is primarily on equal sharing, and only secondarily on what is being shared. The higher moral principle is of human equity per se. Consequently, the moral action is to distribute all food equally, whatever the consequences. This is the hard line apparently drawn by such moralists as Immanuel Kant and Noam Chomsky—but then, morality is hard. The conclusion may be unreasonable (impractical and irrational in conventional terms), but it is obviously moral. Nor should anyone purport surprise; it has always been understood that the claims of morality—if taken seriously—supersede those of conflicting reason. One may even have to sacrifice one’s life or one’s nation to be moral in situations where practical behavior would preserve it. For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps dead) patriot even when reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one, he remains silent. Similarly, if one is to be moral, one distributes available food in equal shares (even if everyone then dies). That an action is necessary to save one’s life is no excuse for behaving unpatriotically or immorally if one wishes to be a patriot or moral. No principle of morality absolves one of behaving immorally simply to save one’s life or nation. There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being moral, and adhering to Christian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one looks always to the highest light. The ultimate test always harks to the highest principle—recant or die—and it is pathetic to profess morality if one quits when the going gets rough. I have put aside many questions of detail—such as the mechanical problems of distributing food—because detail does not alter the stark conclusion. If every human life is equal in value, then the equal distribution of the necessities of life is an extremely high, if not the highest, moral duty. It is at least high enough to override the excuse that by doing it one would lose one’s life. But many people cannot accept the view that one must distribute equally even in f the nation collapses or all people die. If everyone dies, then there will be no realm of morality. Practically speaking, sheer survival comes first. One can adhere to the principle of equity only if one exists. So it is rational to suppose that the principle of survival is morally higher than the principle of equity. And though one might not be able to argue for unequal distribution of food to save a nation—for nations can come and go—one might well argue that unequal distribution is necessary for the survival of the human species. That is, some large group—say one-third of present world population—should be at least well-nourished for human survival. However, from an individual standpoint, the human species—like the nation—is of no moral relevance. From a naturalistic standpoint, survival does come first; from a moralistic standpoint—as indicated above—survival may have to be sacrificed. In the milieu of morality, it is immaterial whether or not the human species survives as a result of individual behavior.

Impacts – Racism – Genocide

Leads to genocide

Foucault 78 (Michel, Professor of philosophy at the college de france, The History of Sexuality vol. 1, p. 136-137) jl

Since the classical age the West has undergone a very profound transformation of these mechanisms of power. "Deduction " has tended to be no longer the major form of power but merely one element among others, working to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them. There has been a parallel shift in the right of death, or at least a tendency to align itself with the exigencies of a life-administering power and to define itself accordingly. This death that was based on the right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reversal of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life. Yet wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal, never before did regimes visit such holocausts on their own populations. But this formidable power of death--and this is perhaps what accounts for part of its force and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limits--now presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to wage so many wars, causing so many [people] to be killed. And through a turn that closes the circle, as the technology of wars has caused them to tend increasingly toward all-out destruction, the decision that initiated them and the one that terminates them are in fact increasingly informed by the naked question of survival. The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an individual's continued existence. The principle underlying the tactics of battle--that one has to be capable of killing in order to go on living--has become the principle that defines the strategy of states. But the existence in question is no longer the judicial existence of sovereignty; at stake is the biological existence of a population. If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.