“When white people say ‘Justice,’ they mean ‘Just us.’ » It is with this popular African-American aphorism that the philosopher Charles W. Mills opens his most important essay, The racial contract. Pronounce “ justice ” And ” just us » in English, the words will regain their flavor.
The work published in 1997 was translated for the first time into French last year, by independent historian and Quebec hip-hop artist Aly Ndiaye, alias Webster, at Mémoire d’encrier. If you need a tool to understand what’s happening in the world this week, I suggest you run to your local bookstore to get a copy.
In his essay, Charles W. Mills returns to the idea of “social contract” evoked in turn by several of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emmanuel Kant. It basically explains how these men thought about ethics and justice while belonging to their era, an era of colonial expansionism and slavery.
Mills explains how, in each of their theories, a distinction is made between the civilized and the savage, the free man and the slave. Superior and inferior humanity, so to speak. In short, we invent the race. The philosophy of the Enlightenment allows the advent of the citizen, of society, of the “social contract”, of the political order based on certain civilizational virtues, including Reason. And, at the same time, these philosophers justify and normalize the subordinate status of non-European peoples – and therefore the institutional violence against them. This is what Mills calls “the racial contract.”
The United Nations came into existence when much of the non-European world was still under European political control: politically, as in Africa, or according to a clear societal hierarchy, as in the Americas. Which means that contemporary international law, our ideas of justice, the rules of war and peace have above all been thought of “just between us”, to use the initial aphorism.
Today, all nations of the world are theoretically equal. But when we look at who has a permanent seat and a right of veto in the Security Council and, above all, who still leads the planet, we can clearly see that there remains a legacy of this current world view during the Second World War. And which has been structured in this way since the Enlightenment.
I see this legacy in action in my own society — and particularly this week — in two ways.
First, I read the headlines like everyone else. I note that the land invasion of a sovereign country by a foreign army is not always called an “invasion”. The Ukrainians were invaded; the Lebanese suffer “localized raids” or a “targeted ground operation”. Very interesting.
We will also notice that, in the declarations of our leaders, the “right to self-defense” is not mentioned in the same way depending on whether we are talking about Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, from Yemen or the United States. We take note of this.
We can even ask ourselves, given blatant examples of the same type, what is the very value of international law which thus operates at two speeds. Because, you see, therein lies the main danger: when the farce becomes too apparent, it is tempting to stop believing in it. All actors involved are encouraged not to bother with war crimes when the very notion of “war crime” is inconsequential, as long as the crime is committed by “just us” or “just our friends”. Double standards end up trivializing all the atrocities of everyone.
Secondly, I see it in the comments made by some of the people who react to the news on social media, but also in society more broadly. Even as I try to focus on the wonderful displays of humanity that also abound in my daily life, I cannot help but notice that a certain part of the population has normalized, in a completely cynical way, a level of incredible suffering, as long as this suffering comes from Haiti, Africa or the Arab world.
“They just had to…”, “This is what happens when…”, “What a naive view of the world to think that…”. The way in which the violent deaths of civilian populations, women, children (and newborns!) provoke pseudo-profound reactions that trivialize violence — right here, in Quebec, in my own society — makes my blood run cold . By seeing them point out what they don’t like in the “other camp” to justify their realpolitik, I note with a heavy heart that some of my neighbors believe that human rights, it’s worth it. Many of these citizens claim to be heirs of the Enlightenment in their political philosophy. You know what? I take their word for it.
In closing, I invite us to put ourselves in the shoes of a Quebecer who frantically calls his family to find out if they are in relative safety while an unprecedented proportion of his loved ones remaining in Lebanon are fleeing their homes or risking bombs. I invite us to ask ourselves what is the effect – on the feeling of belonging to a society, certainly, but also simply on the soul – of “This is what happens when…” and other rationalizations of their distress expressed by fellow citizens.
A little decency, grace.