This moment of racial reckoning is long overdue. The Black Lives Matter and other anti-racism protests across the United States and beyond have brought with them a renewed and intense focus on deeply ingrained historic and systemic racist attitudes and discrimination against black people and people of color – including in the humanitarian sector and in our own organizations.
A broadened understanding of the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence in humanitarian action (NIIHA) can guide humanitarians in the drive for dignity in the treatment of all people, ‘those whom we serve and those who serve with us’. For example, the principle of impartiality, arguably the driving force towards genuine inclusion and diversity in the humanitarian sector, demands that humanitarians make ‘no discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions’. It also stresses that they endeavor ‘to relieve the suffering of individuals, being guided solely by their needs’.
A principled interpretation of impartiality entails fostering more equity, over equality, in providing protection and assistance to affected people. For humanitarian action to be equitable and anti-racist, it is necessary to acknowledge that neo-colonial issues of racism and compounded inequities gripping communities all over the world extend to the humanitarian sector as well. Without this understanding, we are building on quicksand, trying to transition to being anti-racist, for example, whilst clinging to structures that can be perceived as racist. Instead, we must forge a new path towards ‘power with’ humanitarian action, working with people affected by conflict and violence and elevating work focusing on diversity, inclusion and accountability.
What do equity and anti-racism mean for humanitarian action?
To define equity, we must first differentiate it from equality. As outlined in the IFRC’s ‘Minimum Standards for Protection, Gender and Inclusion in Emergencies’, equality is based on the assumption that ‘everyone will benefit from the same support’. Thus, providing the same service (equally) to affected people will render the same outcomes across the board. Equity, however, accounts for how ‘individuals may need different types of support and approaches’ in varying degrees in order to benefit from equal outcomes. An equity-based understanding of humanitarian action advocates for ‘adapting humanitarian work to each individual’s needs and background [to ensure] those affected are being treated equitably’. In this respect, ‘equity leads to equality’; for example, when we talk about ‘equal rights of men and women’ within a human rights-based approach, we need to take equitable measures to ensure those equal rights can be met.
Focusing on fostering more equity in the humanitarian sector starts with the understanding that manifestations of oppression, such as racism, are rooted in power hierarchies that often do not operate alone. They intersect with gender, religion, socio-economic status, geography, sexual orientation and numerous other social markers[2], creating layers of oppression that are inextricably intertwined. Thus, addressing one facet of inequity is not enough. Effective action requires an intersectional, operationally-rooted approach to humanitarian action.
Often, affected people facing one form of inequity face compounded pressures from multiple, other intersecting factors. We see this, for example, in the way the COVID-19 pandemic has directly affected different populations. In this case, relatively higher fatality rates for men and older people are also compounded by race, ethnicity and socio-economic status, illustrating the intersectional way by which multiple systemic factors compound inequity and require targeted anti-racist measures addressing the unique needs of a subset of affected people.
This means that providing humanitarian assistance ‘equally’ often helps those facing fewer drivers of oppression more than those who face multiple drivers. Addressing this requires comprehensive, ethical and disaggregated monitoring and evaluation frameworks that identify these ‘hidden’ subsets of affected people, who are otherwise the most excluded and yet the least engaged with by the humanitarian sector.
The concept of acting equitably applies to the difference between being ‘non-racist’ and ‘anti-racist’. Being ‘non-racist’ means not directly engaging in racist behaviors; it is a passive stance, whereby differences are not acknowledged and systems of oppression are not actively addressed. It is like seeing a crime happen and not contributing to it, but not stopping it either. This is not enough. Organizations and people must fight actively against racism and other forms of inequity leading to systemic oppression and subordination. To be anti-racist involves proactively taking steps to address systemic racism at an individual as well as an organizational operational level. Being anti-racist falls under the umbrella of acting for equity, by accounting for the specific needs of people facing multiple intersecting forms of oppression.
When a passive and inactive approach to equity and, as part and parcel of it, racism, is institutionalized, it yields what Joan Acker terms ‘inequality regimes’. These are ‘loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender, and racial inequalities within particular organizations’. In the framework of structural intersectionality, systems and structures are created in organizations that ‘maintain privilege for some groups or individuals while restricting the rights and privileges of others’. This means that the disadvantages and or disabilities faced within an organization are compounded by and negatively spill over to how the mandate of the organization is carried out. For example, if a humanitarian organization is facing issues of discrimination and racism within its own ranks, these inequitable treatments of staff based on their social markers can carry over to how the institution’s staff then treat affected people who are also from different backgrounds, impacting how well the NIIHA principles are carried out.
For the humanitarian sector, this effect is two-fold: not only are staff within the organization impacted by such unequal power dynamics, the affected people humanitarians serve can also be impacted. The hierarchies and systems of oppression at work within humanitarian organizations affect external perceptions, including the level of trust bestowed by affected populations and vice versa. The question can then arise: why should we trust you, when you cannot even treat your local employees equitably and provide them with the same rights and privileges as staff ‘imported’ from New York, Geneva and London? Why should we trust you, when the black, indigenous and people of color in your organization, and others standing at the intersections, are not treated equitably?
Neo-colonial legacies: who are we listening to?
There’s no question that humanitarian organizations have saved millions of lives, operating on the frontlines of the world’s most dangerous places. However, some aspects of humanitarian action remain rooted in neo-colonial legacies, weighing down efforts of fostering genuine progress. In order to create more equitable and anti-racist institutions, the humanitarian sector must first acknowledge the role neo-colonial legacies continue to play in humanitarian assistance and protection activities and within humanitarian organizations, which are most at need of equity-driven systemic changes.
In this respect, neo-colonial legacies refer to laws, policies and actions instituted in humanitarian organizations which re-enforce the colonial power dynamics of people and institutions from the global North systemically oppressing and exercising domination over those from the global South.
A vivid example of this was flagged in a statement last year, appropriately titled ‘We must listen and act, not impose’, by the President of the ICRC, Peter Maurer, who noted that ‘we must change the way we, the ICRC and the humanitarian sector, engage with people affected by armed conflict and violence’. As Maurer outlined, ‘surveys from Afghanistan, Lebanon and Haiti showed that overall affected people feel they have little say in the assistance that reaches them. While, broadly speaking, those surveyed felt relatively safe and respected by aid providers, they consistently gave low rankings to the relevance and fairness of aid’. In Haiti, for instance, over 70% of the respondents said they didn’t know how to make suggestions or complaints to aid providers, and 90% reported that they didn’t feel that their opinions were taken into account.
The neo-colonial legacies influencing humanitarian assistance and protection activities are one of the major structural reasons why affected people feel that the services provided for them are not programmed with them, with their input and according to their needs. This type of feedback indicates a problem with how affected people tend to be treated, and described, in essentialized monolithic terms. Every time an affected community or person is described as ‘vulnerable’, ‘powerless’, ‘helpless’, ‘disempowered’, or ‘victim’, it ascribes a certain level of dependency and lack of agency to them.
This grammatology – the study of the relationship between written and spoken language on society – along with the analysis of the concomitant modes of behavior that come with the use of language, enforce what VeneKlasen and Miller term ‘power over’ dynamics, rather than fostering ‘power with’ dynamics of operating. As Hugo Slim notes, ‘In humanitarian grammar, the preposition “with” must be our moral guide. We should always prefer a practice that does things “with people,” and avoid a practice that does things “to people,” decides “for people” or acts “on people”.’ The great strap line from the global disability movement (via sixteenth century Polish constitutionalism) is evidently right: “nothing about us without us.” Wherever possible, people should be the subjects of humanitarian action and not just the objects of its aid.
Much like how affected people feel the humanitarian sector is not listening to or working ‘with’ them, third world feminists have written about how subaltern women have been ‘muted’ by their colonial/neo-colonial counterparts. This muting process has the negative spillover effect of one party, standing at fewer intersections of inequity, ‘speaking for’ the ‘oppressed’ subject, such that the subject undergoes a ‘re-presentation’. This means the subject is not presented as they are, but rather presented again through the colonial/neo-colonial gaze of another. As such, the reality of the subject and their views is not adequately reflected in how they are presented by their counterpart.
This is sometimes witnessed, for example, in humanitarian reporting, when we read entire reports or articles about specific humanitarian actions or initiatives, but the only voice carried through is that of the humanitarian ‘reporter’ or organization, perhaps with one or two de-contextualized, short pull quotes from affected people themselves, often focusing on their victimization and/or their gratitude for the provided support. As such, the humanitarian report is not reflecting what an affected person said; it is what the humanitarian(s) took away from the interaction. The initial voice is muted, and the humanitarian speaks for the affected person.
In turn, such narratives and views, which mute the voices of affected people, can re-enforce neo-colonial legacies of the ‘white saviors’ going in to provide help without engaging much with the people they are helping, speaking on their behalf, and making certain assumptions about their needs and priorities.
Systemic inequalities, manifested in intersectional forms of ‘difference’ from the Western norm, often lead to a hierarchy of knowledge and experience that is exported from the global North to ‘the field’ and rewarded more, and more consistently, than local knowledge and experience. This is often exacerbated in the humanitarian sector by other systemic inequalities, such as differential levels of access to internal reports between resident local and non-resident international staff, opportunities for advancement, access to trainings, and myriads of intersecting institutional barriers that elevate non-resident colleagues, often from the global North, over resident ones from the global South.
As the ICRC’s President Maurer stresses, we must change how we engage with affected people. For example, we can further draw from knowledge of local cultures, and reduce top-down assistance and protection efforts. This entails addressing the biases that come with what we consider ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’. As Spivak notes, when patriarchal/colonial practices reign, there ends up being ‘a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their tasks or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity’.
Yet, without accepting local knowledge, and respecting the expertise of resident colleagues, the account by the humanitarian from the global North becomes the account, continuing the process of how ‘one explanation and narrative of reality [is] established as the normative one’. This is particularly problematic when we consider that while most of the funding for humanitarian operations is geared at the Muslim world, the composition of the humanitarian sector – particularly those in leadership positions – remain dominated by people from OECD countries. To remedy this, we can monitor and evaluate whether proposals to include affected populations do in effect involve ‘communities in every step of humanitarian action’.
Given the humanitarian sector, especially the leadership of international humanitarian organizations, is predominantly comprised of staff from the global North, we can also take steps to systemically analyze the social factors affecting vulnerability in order to avoid inherent bias by humanitarian workers. These biases can even be unconscious, and yet present themselves systemically and routinely both through the lack of diversity in profiles of humanitarians, as well as the lack of diversity in recruiters and hiring managers, who then can engage in affinity bias, and recruit ‘more of the same’ humanitarians from the global North, with very similar educational and professional experiences.
These factors all point to why it is vitally important to work toward more accountability and reduce the hierarchies of power that discriminate against those standing at the intersections. This hinges on including an understanding of equity into how we interpret and operationalize the fundamental humanitarian principles.
The path to ‘power with’ humanitarian action
When the argument is put forward that we must account for the religion, gender, race and other social markers of affected people in order to tailor humanitarian action, the most common reply is that this approach can interfere with the humanitarian principles. When it comes to impartiality, for example, this analysis has unpacked how not discriminating on the basis of race, gender and other social markers is not the same, and should not be the same, as not ‘seeing’ race, gender and other social markers. An equity-based interpretation of the humanitarian principles allows us to account for how differences between affected people create levels of inequity, which require us to tailor how we provide assistance and protection.
In terms of the way forward, for the most part, the critical next step is complementing organizational press releases of solidarity and ally-ship with concrete and measurable actions for how the institution aims to operate in an anti-racist and equitable manner, in keeping with the humanitarian principles. The resources and answers are, for the most part, already in place but do require systemic backing and support by each humanitarian organization.
First, we need to elevate and fund work focusing on diversity and inclusion and accountability to affected people. If the humanitarian sector is genuine about being people-centred and equitable, this means allocating the funding and human resources necessary to elevate the parts of the house working on organizational diversity and inclusion, operational accountability to affected people, and operational diversity and inclusion. It is necessary to acknowledge that diversity and inclusion is important, but the critical step is allocating the resources for implementation and ensuring those tasked with such portfolios are not ‘overstretched’, with too many competing priorities.
Within humanitarian institutions, it is necessary to fund organizational diversity and inclusion, which would tackle the lack of diversity in both recruiters and staff in leadership positions, both in the field and in headquarters.
In parallel, the work of teams focused on operational diversity and inclusion and accountability to affected needs to be elevated and prioritized across the board in each humanitarian organization, so that the recommendations they make as to how we can truly be accountable to diverse groups of people in affected communities is operationalized. At the ICRC, for example, the work of being accountable to affected people is being carried out by the Accountability to Affected People and Community Engagement teams of the organization. Together with the Operations Diversity Inclusion team, they operationalize the organization’s commitments to a people-centered approach in the 2019-2022 ICRC Institutional Strategy. The ICRC has commissioned an assessment of diversity inclusion in its operations, due to be completed by the end of 2020. It will guide us in deepening our understanding of the why and the how of an intersectional approach and in developing a cross-organization collaboration that recognizes the synergies between being an inclusive organization and really doing people-centred inclusive programming. It will also help mobilize and equip leaders and managers to address diversity, equity and inclusion across policies and practices on local and global level.
Second, we need to actively engage in systems change management. If we want to be anti-racist humanitarian organizations, we need to put in the work. There is a wealth of knowledge and expertise on how we can systemically change our organizations; let us draw from that and dedicate human resources precisely for such tasks, over trusting that the change will happen naturally if we put out the right press releases.
Third, we need to engage in equity-driven ethical and disaggregated monitoring and evaluation work that actively seeks out the subsets of affected people standing at multiple intersection of inequity. Being people-centered can only be carried out through actively and quantitatively analyzing who and where the most marginalized affected people are and working with them in formulating and planning our operational and assistance activities. This requires a capacity and a reflex to collect, analyze and use sex-, age- and disability-disaggregated data.
Fourth, we must let affected people speak for themselves and depart from neo-colonial practices of reporting on and speaking for affected people. We can start by at least featuring the direct voices of affected populations, over short, curated and de-contextualized quotes. As well, let us use language that is inclusive and step away from neocolonial language that describes affected people monolithically as ‘vulnerable’, ‘powerless’, ‘helpless’, ‘disempowered’, or ‘victim’.
And fifth, we need to broaden our understanding of what we consider knowledge and whose expertise we value. This means adopting an equity-based approach in humanitarian operations and assistance work that includes and values local knowledge and the contributions of resident staff. It also means promoting a view of diversity that is not just hiring and promoting more BIPOC staff, but harnessing more diverse views that drive innovation. This includes diversity in the profiles, backgrounds and knowledge bases of both recruiters and staff. Whilst this process is undergoing, we can start by making sure current staff, especially those managing teams, are aware of their biases and undertake mandatory anti-bias training.
As with all other times in the history of the humanitarian sector where changes were necessary, the most critical step comes in making the words on paper a reality. In so doing, we can mark a more accountable path forward, where we actively seek out the affected people we are not currently reaching, we amplify their voices, we collaborate with them and the communities to which they belong, and we chart a new chapter of ‘power with’ humanitarian action.
[1] The ICRC’s Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Committee is an informal staff and Associate network working for increased gender equity, diversity and inclusion.
[2] These other intersecting social markers include, but are certainly not limited to: age, class, ethnicity, caste, race, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
See also
- Elizabeth McGuinness & Saman Rejali, Beyond binaries: An intersectional approach to humanitarian action, October 8, 2019
- Dr Ayesha Ahmad & Professor Lisa Eckenwiler, Identities, intersectionalities and vulnerabilities in humanitarian operations: A response to Slim, March 1, 2018
- Hugo Slim, Impartiality and Intersectionality, January 16, 2018
Again, a succession of trendy theoretical and academical clichés, based on hypotheses at best speculative, at worst false, without any convincing demonstration, roughly applied to the humanitarian sector, by someone in her office in Geneva who probably never did much fieldwork (am I wrong ?), but very confident in professing her “miracle” recommendations, already in every good bureaucratic pipes for years. And no, I am not a white supremacist enjoying my neo-colonial power but a “person of color” from a middle-income country who simply enjoys to do her humanitairan work with profesionalism, common sense, affected-people focused and driven, without the burden of the current inept newspeak, while being uncompromising with real and concrete racisms in daily life.
Thanks for writing this, Saman. Many parts bear questions that beg to be asked again and again.
I think it’s great that President Maurer says that we must change how we engage affected people. What I’d like to add to that is that we must also question the why behind how we currently engage. Doing this would be true to the methods of your second recommendation for systems change: deconstructing the mental models that influence our actions – or how we engage (or not) with affected people.
As a Community Engagement Adviser (full disclosure), I can also say from what I have seen and experienced is that this kind of work – being accountable to affected people – is carried out by many teams and not just those mentioned. Credit where due. However, across the board, can things be done more systematically – so much so that this is no longer an activity, but the background or the culture? Yes. Is there room for improvement? Certainly, possibly massively. Does it need resources to do this? Yes, but let’s not ignore that there many resources exist that can be reoriented and optimized for the delivery of accountability. With transparency, in my role, I’m often reminded of what Sarah Ahmed has written in her book On Inclusion,”If institutionalizing diversity is a goal for diversity workers, it does not necessarily mean it is the institution’s goal.” Replace ‘diversity’ with ‘engaging with and accountability to affected people’, and it’s more or less the same coin.
I find that in these discussions, balance walks on a tightrope when acknowledging how far we’ve come, and acknowledging how far we still have to go. I hope that we don’t get stuck in the intellectualization of this discourse, and instead act and make things happen.
I love that you’ve brought up (and in very solid form) the issue of subalternity as it relates to the understanding of subjective humanitarian needs. The fact that the majority of our understanding of world affairs and cultures is predominantly informed by European or American political thought, translates into an exclusion of autonomous narratives on how inequality is subjectively experienced. Knowledge-creation in the previous century was neither as accessible nor as egalitatian as it is now (with exceptions on censorship and dissemination restrictions in subjective contexts).
In such a situation, the intentions of the humanitarian entity become suspect when it does not engage with these systems of knowledge. On the other hand, by acknowledging and endorsing knowledge-systems that reflect the values and intent of the humanitarian project, the organization or individual initiates the first step in building trust. Acceptance, after all, is a two-way street. It is not enough to maintain a physical or infrastructural presence within a geography, one must also engage with the environment in order to better inform how to synergize solutions in the process of localization. How can one ensure the impartiality in a service we intend to deliver, when we haven’t yet explored the depth and richness of existent knowledge?
Another point that is very important to emphasize (and this article has managed to do that so eloquently), is the need to elevate the subaltern not by lending our voices, but our ears and our trust. And we can only listen when we understand.
Thank you for putting the time and effort into putting these thoughts down and sharing with the world. It is pertinent in this climate of reflective recourse, to look inward and affect and enable change there, before anywhere else.
I’m concerned, and want to help. What does an older Irish American woman do ? Is being against racism and doing what I can enough. I want to be part of this movement but can’t rectify the reality that my skin burns . Worried. Because while I agree with equality and equity there seems to me enough injustice and other work to be done ( for example, climate and environmental issues) that good people everywhere whether north or south, Muslim or Christian should be engaged and participating in solutions for peace.
Chely,
Thank you so much for your feedback, and your catalytic engagements surrounding issues of race and equity.
You make a great point that just because certain parts of the house are “tasked” with community engagement and accountability to affected people, it does not mean they are the only parts of the house doing this work. Indeed, if we’re doing our work well, this means every team has instituted D&I best practices into their work and has a mandate for how to best engage with affected people. I also couldn’t agree more that as you note, this also means “we must also question the why behind how we currently engage”, and in this respect, the Sara Ahmed quote perfectly captures the need for institutional will that backs the operational and organisational D&I proposals that would allow us to better engage and be accountable to affected people.
Last but not least, I also affirm your view that the most important part is acting. I really hope that the paths forward outlined in this piece not only are thought-provoking but nudge us into full-on action mode as a sector. I am always so amazed by how impressively and quickly humanitarian institutions like the ICRC manage to respond to new conflicts and OSVs. We are able to change our way of operating and allocating resources to meet the demands of an ever-changing conflict and crisis landscape. This gives me hope that if we were to put even a fraction of those type of best practices into instituting more equity, how fast and effective we would be in bridging a lot of the discrimination gaps the sector faces. But, as you note, in the end the most important factor is acting and making things happen, which is why blog pieces like this are only part of the start of a longer journey for equity driven change within the humanitarian sector.
Hajira,
Thank you so much for so eloquently writing about subalternity as it relates to the humanitarian sector. I completely agree with everything you’ve noted, and am a big fan of and put emphasis on “the need to elevate the subaltern not by lending our voices, but our ears and our trust. And we can only listen when we understand.” Thank you for taking the time to really enrich this discussion and provide a more in-depth view into this subject.
Mary,
I think being actively anti-racist and working every day to infuse more equity into our work and surroundings is a great way to start and help. Thank you for exploring the question of how you can do more given your understanding. I also see your point about there being numerous issues to focus on and in my opinion, focusing on one, does not take away from the others. In fact, I see these as interconnected issues, whereby there is a positive spill over effect from one to the other; the most important part is to go beyond talking about solutions and implementing them; I really hope that this blog piece triggers and nudges us in that direction to some part.
Person A,
Thanks for sharing your feedback; it’s great to engage with critical views on what I’m writing in this blog piece. My main message here is that by interpreting the NIIHA principles, particularly the impartiality principle, with a view towards instituting more equity in the humanitarian sector, we can address some of the diversity and inclusion gaps in the sector, for example when it comes to discrimination and racism; this equity-driven interpretation of our mandate would also allow us to engage on a more equal footing with affected people as part of the “power with” humanitarian action framework that’s detailed. This is a view that is supported by a wealth of research that is linked to throughout the article- these aren’t mere hypotheses
As I note in the blog, what I’m writing in terms of paths forward are well acknowledged needs, but ones that have not yet been fully implemented across the sector. For example, we know that if we don’t dedicate resources to systems change management and D&I – both on an organisational and operational level – we will not manage to institute the necessary systemic equity-rooted changes proposed, but then the next step is acting on this acknowledge. This is why I think these are long overdue best practices, rather than miracle recommendations, which we can undertake more actively across the humanitarian sector.
Dear Saman,
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts on what reflections current conversations on racism should trigger at the ICRC; this is an important discussion.
All organisations are complex constructions that are built not just on the values they subscribe to but also their geography, history and culture. All these elements influence the systems and processes that an organisation creates and these tend in turn to reinforce the culture. This means that if we realise some things need to change, we need to target both culture and systems / processes.
We hopefully all will become increasingly aware that we all do function with a vast number of unconscious (cognitive) biases (check for example this study from ACAPS) and while it is not easy to free ourselves from them, we can at least acknowledge their existence and how they tend to influence us.
When you talk about the fundamental principles, I find it important to restate what the hierarchy is within those principles. For good reasons, humanity and impartiality rather than neutrality and independence sit at the top of the pyramid. This is because I believe they are the guiding values that fuel and guide our work. While important, neutrality and independence need to be informed by humanity and impartiality. Otherwise, when we talk about equality and equity, we might be tempted, for example, to provide the same response to everyone for fear or not being neutral. As it is clear to most of us though, if we were to take this path, neutrality would end up reinforcing the status quo – which in and of itself is taking a position, therefore not being truly neutral. This is why impartiality can actually challenge us to be somehow more “activist” (but also more effective) in how we target our response. Together with humanity, impartiality, this is our moral Compas.
I fully agree with you that if we want to rethink the way we work and the way we relate to each other, we cannot separate the way we interact with people affected by conflicts from the way we relate to each other as colleagues. It would be illusory to think we can expect staff to be inclusive, to enable the participation of populations in decisions that affect their lives, to work towards sustainable response or to provide them with the information they need if those principles are not also reflected in the way we function as an organisation.
We have made significant efforts in the past years to evolve as an organisation and we are making progress but we also need to acknowledge all the work that is still ahead of us. We probably also should accept that it is likely that if we move towards the vision set in the ICRC strategy, we may end up quite a different organisation from what we are today. We will need to find the time (or the evolution of society will force us to) to take a hard look in the mirror but also find out what the actions we can take individually and collectively to change the narrative are. This could be working on language (more powerful than some might think) but also on the systems (and incentives) that will enable us to be more truly in line with our principles of impartiality and humanity.
As Chely did, full disclosure, I work on Accountability to Affected People, so I have my own biases!
The Matrix
As an undergraduate at Stanford University, I had the chance to study from a breakthrough professor named Sylvia Wynter. Her central thesis is that human consciousness is not biologically programmed but rather programmed by narrative, or story. Our society and all of its educational disciplines are based on the idea that essentially biology determines consciousness—i.e. the story of Evolution. Wynter challenges that definition of the human as a purely biological being by putting forward the idea that we program our consciousness with narrative and that the purely biological definition is, itself, a story. Genes are able to tell you whether you are predisposed to certain diseases and what you will look like, but they do not determine what type of consciousness you will have.
Needless to say, the validity of her thesis has huge ramifications. Story, in her thesis, is the factor in determining what type of world humans are to live in. From small tribes up to but not including our present society, the centrality of story has not been too downplayed. Here, the assumption the West makes about itself, is that it is reality, meaning outside of story. But what if we, our present “modern” order is as much based on story, in this case, the story of Evolution, as was the first one that emerged out of Africa and all others to follow it. Truly we would live in a radically different world as our entire body of knowledge would have to be rewritten.
Most people assume that the mind has evolved out of Africa and “improved” over time, which has created a paradigm of racism and a “Bell Curve” mentality when it comes to “intelligence.” When Wynter’s thesis is put forward, the idea that the mind evolved beyond having the capacity for language and symbolic thought and the ability to constitute its own consciousness through myth and narrative, is debunked. She puts forward the thesis that once the human entered into symbolic thought it was a complete rupture from all other forms of biological life. For once it developed the capacity for language and symbolic thought the human was, unlike all other species, constituting its consciousness through narrative and outside of evolution in a new and distinct way.
Presently, Evolution acts as the story that holds our social order in place. It is the origin narrative account of what we are–i.e from a relationship of pure continuity with the primates, (rather than being a new type of entity that constitutes its own consciousness through myth and narrative)-and of how we are to behave-i.e. Evolution puts forward that humans, like animals are biologically programmed to compete amongst ourselves in a free market for resources that are “naturally scarce.” Our entire educational system, including all the disciplines in academia (not just economics), is based on the idea that genes have determined consciousness. Wynter’s challenge to the foundational paradigm of Evolution (in its self-conception as the Agent of history and, specifically, that the mind still evolves) is tantamount to the challenges made to Genesis as the origin narrative for the medieval order. When Genesis was challenged by a new narrative (as in The Great Chain of Being as put forward by Pico della Mirandola during the Renaissance) a new social order emerged where the State and Laity could then assert hegemony over the Church. The State and Laity (the Monarchy and the landed gentry) were then to be challenged during the “Enlightenment” by the bourgeoisie and their narrative of evolution as the story which puts in place the “free market” (and, obviously, race). From these two examples one can get a blueprint as to how narrative changes bring in new consciousness, new behaviors, new hierarchies, and therefore, a new social order.
In addition, her analysis transforms the “nature” versus “nurture” debate into a “nature” versus “culture” debate. This means that for the matrix identities of “white” and “black,” for instance, to even exist, a story had to be put in place–the story of evolution. Clearly, we are socialized in the context of that story, as identity has so much to do with the way in which we accept that narrative and its racism, or fight against it.
Against the mainstream of academia, therefore, Wynter puts forward the thesis that Evolution is not the author of the social order, any more than gods, God, ancestors, the spirits of nature had been for other peoples. It is the belief in the story of Evolution, and its manifestation through the disciplines of academia, that brings our social order into being and makes “reality,” “race” and “class,” for instance, in our case, experienceable as true.
In sum, the Western body of knowledge is based on a Two Event thesis. These two unexplainable Events are the creation of the universe in time and the emergence of biological life (from the so-called lightning bolt that hit the swamp). What Wynter puts forward is that there was a “Third Event” to be taken account of: the emergence of the human as a pure rupture with purely biological life. If she is correct, we are headed towards a radically new world.
And still racism exists in ICRC,articles about racism will be published again 😏. It will be forever!