Paste your essay in here…Essay B is the story of the Magnificent Seven, a group of African American students, who during the 1960s and 1970s, were integrated into all-white private boarding school that was located in Virginia. The seven African American young men integrated into the Virginia Episcopal School, located in Lynchburg, with the first pair of them beginning in 1967. The seven were supposed to be admitted into elite schools which they otherwise wouldn’t have been admitted given the racial relations at the time. The whole scheme was an experimentation referred to as the quiet but strategic study conducted by the private organization, Stouffer Foundation. The privately financed project, initiated by the organization, also placed other young African American males in elite boarding schools located in Atlanta, Asheville, Boca Raton, and Fla. The essence of this essay is to evaluate the actions taken by the Stouffer Foundation in regards to the seven young men using either John Stuart Mill’s ethical theory or the ethical theory proposed by Immanuel Kant. The analysis will focus on depicting whether the action was morally good or bad according to the Utilitarian theory by J.S Mill, the ethical theory chosen for the evaluation.
Foundations of the Utilitarianism Theory
Within the realm of normative ethics, a tradition that stems from the 18th and 19th century, economists and philosophers J. Bentham and John Stuart Mill underline that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness for the parties involved; contrariwise, it is wrong if it promotes a reverse reaction to the parties involved. According to this theory, it is not the happiness of the performer of the action alone that should be put into account, but rather the happiness of those who will ultimately be affected by it (Mill 200).
The utilitarianism approach is a normative theory that places the central focus of what is considered as right and what is considered as wrong solely on the consequences or outcomes of choosing a particular policy or action. As such, this theory progresses past the scope of a person’s own interest and considers the interest that others have and the consequences they face due to the actions of the perpetrator. In a nutshell, the nature of utilitarianism is the effort to provide the best unbiased answer to the question: what should a man not do? The answer to this question is that he should not act in a manner that the consequences produced are not the best as possible (Mill 205).
Analyzing the Story of the Magnificent Seven
The Stouffer Foundation project began with the first two students, Bill Alexander and Marvin Barnard, who started schooling during the fall of 1967. They navigated the challenging climate at mostly white high school and become stars in various disciplines and co-curricular areas (Secret). Most importantly, the boys ended up finishing at position one and two overall after the completion of the four years of the project, which were the same positions they maintained across all years they were present at the school. Additionally, they were elected as head counselors within their dormitories, joined and excelled in the football team, which won the state prep-championship, becoming the first integrated team to do so. This was a year before the public school made popular the term “remember the Titans”. The rest of the other members of the Magnificent Seven joined in later years after the first two had set and excellent phase at different private schools in different states. On their own levels, they did surprisingly well.
From the utilitarian point of view, the actions of the Stouffer Foundation in regards to the actions they took on the Magnificent Seven can be evaluated to be morally right on the basis of the outcomes of the project conducted both for the white and black community, the magnificent seven, and the civil rights movement, which was fighting for racial integration at the time.
First of all, the muted experiment had several main objections. In addition to beginning a shift in high school education and ultimately education as a whole and also the life in the south, the effort was also mainly aimed at instilling within the white elites of the south a compelling and visceral belief on the societal and racial benefits of integration. Additionally, the project was aimed at testing how much a student of color could possibly achieve within an all-white environment.
Based on the utilitarian concept about the consequences of actions being to the best to the people involved, the project on the Magnificent Seven was a success and the actions of Stouffer Foundation were not wrong at all, based on the outcomes and their implications on the parties involved. On the white and black community, the result was positive, because the two races could see how integration would be beneficial in America.
The first act of Essay B is titled How to Win Friends and Influence White People. It should be noted that the time that the first two members of the Magnificent Seven joined the private school in 1967, the country was going through a racially trying period. At this time, Gov. George Wallace, who was the Governor for Alabama, was running for president and this was coupled by a time when confederate battle flags were being displayed. The two bet this adversity and were able to fully integrate within a majority white environment even becoming leaders both inside and outside of the classroom (Secret).
As such, for both the black and white community, who set the standard for integration benefits for the rest of America, and for the Magnificent Seven, the ultimate outcome was positive. This project set the chosen seven on a path of success both career wise and in life in general. One of the first two students, Barnard, was allowed to deliver the valedictorian address during their graduation, which came 4 years after they started school. He was chosen to this role because his grade point average was slightly higher than that of the second student, Bill Alexander (Secret).
The Stouffer Foundation also gained success in this project because their experiment attracted attention and hence the whites could learn a thing or two about integration. The experiment started the movement to ending the systematically generated segregation based on racial lines. In addition to ensuring these boundaries are broken through desegregation, integration also focuses on leveling the barriers established in regard to association, creation of equal opportunity out of the realms of race, and then the development of culture that draws on differentiated traditions, as opposed to brining a racial minority into the larger culture. It is a positive social outcome that benefited the American community through the Stouffer foundation experiment on the Magnificent Seven. According to J.S. Mill, it is not the quantity of pleasure but rather the quantity of happiness, which is the central idea to the concept of the theory of utilitarian theory (Susan 420). It is the greatest happiness principle and seeks to promote the capability of being able to achieve a state of happiness for the most people, and the Stouffer foundation project surely did with the Magnificent Seven Project.
In a nutshell, this evaluation concludes that the actions of the Stouffer Foundation towards the seven boys, famously referred to as the Magnificent Seven, were good because it adhered to the utilitarian theory principles. The utilitarianism approach is a normative theory that places the central focus of what is considered as right and what is considered as wrong solely on the consequences or outcomes of choosing a particular policy or action (Susan 426). The outcomes of the project can be access by the benefits and state of happiness from both for the white and black community, the magnificent seven, and the civil rights movement which was fighting for racial integration at the time. Based on this analysis, the experiment had a best overall outcome for all the parties mentioned because the Magnificent Seven led a successful life academically and socially, and the American community borrowed a leaf from the project on the benefits of integration.