{"id":22087,"date":"2026-06-04T19:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=22087"},"modified":"2026-06-04T19:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:48:07","slug":"the-nowak-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=22087","title":{"rendered":"The Nowak test"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Photo credit: Frederick Wallace. Unsplash license.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the many personal characteristics<\/strong> that make me such a bore is that I get almost no pleasure whatever from a job well done. Today I crossed two items off my \u201cto do\u201d list, things I\u2019d been working up to for about a week. In intervals. When I wasn\u2019t coughing or having a lie-down to recoup my strength. (I\u2019m getting better, thanks to antibiotics, but it\u2019s a process.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And not a morsel of satisfaction does my frontal cortex vouchsafe me. I\u2019ve heard of people being gratified by a job well done, but I\u2019ve almost never had the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like most of us<\/strong>, I\u2019ve been thinking about the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton, England recently. Everybody has a lesson to draw from it. Here\u2019s mine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of us have wondered, over the years, how we would have stood up \u2013 morally \u2013 in Nazi Germany. Would we have defied the Nazis? Kept our heads down and our mouths shut? Knuckled under and collaborated?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we can be sure of one thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re okay with a system that treats race as a moral category, you would not have defied the Nazis. If you think you can judge a person by the color of their skin, and that the authorities should too, you would not have defied the Nazis.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the fact that you (or I) can\u2019t accept such a system doesn\u2019t prove that you (or I) would actually be a Bonhoeffer. Things get real quite fast when your life\u2019s on the actual line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you can\u2019t even agree that justice ought to be colorblind, you\u2019re on the Field Gray side of things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the many personal characteristics that make me such a bore is that I get almost no pleasure whatever from a job well done. Today I crossed two items off my \u201cto do\u201d list, things I\u2019d been working up to for about a week. In intervals. When I wasn\u2019t coughing or having a lie-down … Continue reading The Nowak test<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[5971,5972],"class_list":["post-22087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-henry-nowak","tag-nazis"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22090,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22087\/revisions\/22090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}