# Why Rules-Based Morality Falls Short

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/heretic-hereafter-podcast-7475240/why-rules-based-morality-falls-short
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/heretic-hereafter-podcast-7475240/why-rules-based-morality-falls-short.md
Podcast: [Heretic Hereafter Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/heretic-hereafter-podcast-7475240)
Published: 2026-04-22T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://heretichereafter.substack.com/p/why-rules-base-morality-falls-short
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/194943259/eead9aa71cbaf9bdd851c34db46b298a.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/heretic-hereafter-podcast-7475240/episodes/why-rules-based-morality-falls-short
Duration seconds: 291

## Resource

Several years ago, I was moderating a local online parenting group when a post made me do a double take. It wasn’t any of the usual controversies about sleep training or “rehoming” dogs. Instead, it was an ouroboros of antiracism, which became, incidentally, kinda racist? I’m paraphrasing, but this was the gist: “I need advice on hiring a nanny. My partner and I are white moms committed to antiracism. We don’t have many people of color in our lives, except for a housecleaner who comes weekly. We don’t want our kids to grow up seeing people of color primarily in subservient roles to white people, so we are thinking we should hire a white nanny. However, we are unsure how to explain this in a job listing. Any advice?” Hoo boy. Where to even begin? I stared at my computer, dumbfounded, for a few moments. I was sympathetic to this anxious white mom who wanted to get antiracism “right,” but felt pretty surprised by where her conclusions led. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. While I debated what to say, other commenters were quick to point out that posting a “whites only” job listing was not only immoral but actually illegal . Things got heated, as internet comment sections often do. Eventually, I decided to shut down commenting while sharing a link about state laws against employment discrimination. But long after the comment frenzy, I found myself wondering about this poster. At the time, I was working with an organization teaching parents and teachers about antiracism and I’d seen many other instances of well-meaning white people blundering into racial faux pas. What most of these instances had in common was a failure of empathy: white people thought of what they cou…

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## Transcript

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