Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy
at N.Y.U. His books include ‘‘Cosmopolitanism,’’
‘‘The Honor Code’’ and ‘‘The Lies That Bind:
Rethinking Identity.’’students who share any of Audre Lorde’s
many identities — queer, Black, woman,
outsider — to use the same freedoms
your legislators espouse to speak up for
themselves. In ‘‘Sister Outsider,’’ Lorde
wrote, ‘‘Your silence will not protect
you.’’ When bigotry speaks, we should
learn to speak back.
My sibling is brilliant and hard-working
and a devoted partner who has, at times,
been abusive to me (leveling baseless
allegations) and neglectful of our mother,
who died of cancer midpandemic (declining
to visit her near the end and refusing to
take the calls she made to say goodbye). My
sibling has a mental-health disorder but is,
I believe, unmedicated and no longer under
the regular care of a physician. My sibling
may dislike me but reserves white-hot hate
for our father, who abandoned our mother
some time ago, after a lifetime of infi delity.
My father would like to ‘‘make peace’’
with my sibling and has asked that I write
a letter he can sign his name to; he has
medical conditions that make reading and
writing diffi cult. I have declined, stating that
it should be his words and that someone else
could take the dictation. He has indicated
he would visit my sibling, demanding
an audience, although my sibling has said
that any visit would be unwelcome.
Knowing my sibling’s mental illness,
am I ethically responsible for giving
warning of my father’s possible visit?
Name Withheld
It’s not your responsibility to warn your
sibling of a possible visit from your father,
unless there’s a serious risk of harm asso-
ciated with not doing so. But neither are
you obliged to keep quiet about your
father’s plan (unless, again, revealing it
would risk harm). You need to decide
not what you must do but what it would
be best to do. If you think the chances
of the visit going well are increased by
forewarning your sibling, you have a
good reason to do so. And of course, if
you think the visit is a terrible idea, you
should try to talk your father out of it.
But let me pose two questions you
didn’t ask: Would it be good to assist your
father in writing a letter to your sibling? Is
there any chance that it would be helpful
to one or the other or both? You’ll be in
the best position to judge. If it could make
things better, rather than worse, you may
Some things
people say have
the effect of
interfering with
the learning
of others.
It’s very hard to
think clearly
when you feel
categorically
derogated.want to pitch in after all. Were you to do
so, I see no reason to conceal your assis-
tance. You can write that he has asked you
to help him compose a letter, because he
can’t do it himself, and then work out with
your father what he wants to say.Recently a woman contacted my adult
children to tell them that, using results from
andMe and other information, she
traced her paternity to their father, my
late ex-husband. He conceived this
child several years before we met but
apparently never knew she existed.
(At least he never told me about her.) Her
birth mother gave her up for adoption
when she was an infant, and she has
spent many years trying to fi nd her roots.
She has initiated relationships with my
children and their families and expressed
an interest in meeting me, presumably to
learn more about her biological father.
While I am close to my children and try
to follow what goes on in their lives,I have no desire to get to know this woman.
Do I have a moral obligation to meet her?Name WithheldThe usual way a mother gets to know her
stepchildren is through her spouse, but
that connection doesn’t exist here. And
this woman has already learned about her
biological father from her half-siblings;
you’re not the only one who can provide
that information. All this means that you’re
off the hook. Still, her biological ancestry is
obviously important to her, and I imagine
she thinks she can learn things about her
progenitor through you that she can’t learn
from anyone else. So while you don’t have
an obligation to answer her questions, it
would surely be a kindness to do so.