Ethics & Norms?

An idea for ethics

Thelathia Nikki Young discusses black queer ethics as dirsuptive and irruptive of familial norms...meaning black queer experience tends to critique notions of family through deconstruction, and then provides more just notions of family. They disrupt old norms, and irrupt with new norms.

At first I was resistant to this idea of making new norms. But I think I might have an interesting ethical model that works well with this.

Norms are expressions of the virtues of a community.
Virtues are both the rewards received from being in a specific community & the glue that keeps together the community, that drives it to keep being community. Thus virtue is based on experience/reality and not on abstractions.

However, this also means that virtue is beyond the individual. Virtue is about the "being-together"-ness of a specific community.
This presents the possibility that if one person does not sufficiently present virtues, then it can be ethical for a community connection to be dissolved. (I am thinking of situations of abuse)

This definition of norms also then is not an exclusive definition. Take family for instance. There are multiple models of family that can express/represent/make-visible the virtues of family.

Norms are understood not on the level of statistical commonality, such that the non-normative is the different. Rather,...

One example could be weddings. They express the reward of joy that comes from a marriage, and the fellowship that is both the glue & reward of a marriage relationship.

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I think about this in the context of oppression, liberation, inclusion, and sovereignty.

On the one level, there can be oppression because one is not included in the "norms".
Then one can respond by demanding to be included in "norms".
But this would mean parroting the given "virtues" of the community.
The problem is that then those who are also oppressed, but do not affirm said "virtues" are still left outside of the norms.

This is just a rewording of the basic queer theory critique of "inclusion". (think Jasbir Puar)

It is a way of saying "We are virtuously like you!" (think homonationalism)

Queer theory usually then goes on to maintain the necessity of being antinormative.

That is where I am presenting native studies.
THE alternative to "Native American inclusion", which is not really desired, is "Indigenous Sovereignty".

What is desired is not for Native peoples to become a part of American norms.
Rather what is desired is that indigenous communities are not prevented from living out the norms of those specific communities.

Of course norms can express multiple virtues, and virtues can be shared by communities.

I also think this framework provides a different way to think about identity more provisionally. If a community/identity is defined by virtues as rewards/glue, then a community/identity can be strategic or even temporary and flexible.

For instance, the identity of "Native American" as a racial community comes specifically from the context of oppression. What if such specific oppression eventually ceases? Then such an identity/community might be allowed to fade. Or the community might find different rewards and drives keeping us together. The identity is not some eternal essential part of the self.