Institutionalized Racism Behind the Mask of Beneficence

Institutionalized Racism Behind the Mask of Beneficence

      "The systems of representation reflect the histories of domination and power within them." 

(Lyon and Olson, p. 205) 

This particular quote from Arabella Lyon and Lester C. Olson's piece, Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing, resonated with me throughout my reading of both their work and Michel Foucault's piece, What Is an Author. From what I've gathered by reading these articles and various resources, throughout history the U.S. has had the tendency to hide behind this facade of the "protector" of rights, but representation of communities is unequal and often not always positively motivated. This can be reiterated by another quote from Lyon and Olson's piece: 

"Viewed narrowly as legal obligations or frameworks, human rights discourses, at times, are viewed skeptically as tools by which elites manage or control otherwise already disenfranchised or marginalized, ostensibly 'autonomous' individuals and other communities- oftentimes behind a persona or mask of beneficence." (Lyon and Olson, p. 206)

I chose another text to analyze in accordance with my findings. The image that I provided above is a poster promoting the fight against polio for children. This particular poster features 1955 spokes child, James Allen Clark, posing as the African American boy standing with the help of crutches due to being affected by polio. This poster, according to an article found on the Georgia State University Library Website, was a reaction to the African American community being underrepresented in the fight against polio due to medical professionals deeming it a "white disease" by assuring people that African Americans could not contract the disease. Obviously this was proven to be false and medical activists fought for March of Dimes to acknowledge the medical racism that had taken place, to which they responded with this poster. Sure, African Americans are represented on this poster, but upon closer inspection one can see that the two light-complected children on the poster are seen as the ones being given preventative measures and treatments which is exactly what happened. The U.S. controlled who got the medical attention by hiding behind this poster that supposedly acknowledged everyone's equal fight against polio. 

This can be related back to the article we read in class, The Real Meaning of Rhodes Must Fall, in which Amit Chaudhuri tells of the instance in Britain in which a black male student named Stephan Lawrence is murdered at the bus stop. Despite there being five suspects, no one was convicted and the police disregarded racism as a possible motive. Sir William Macpherson spoke out against this and called their actions "institutionally racist." He defined that term as "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.” This idea perplexed me until I read both Lyon's and Olson's and Foucault's pieces in conjunction. 

The history of representation in order to dominate can be seen in how African Americans are represented on the March of Dimes poster and how they were denied the simplest of human rights such as equal medical care and that poster was a mask to hide that institutionalized racism. 

So how can we say that the U.S. is a fighter for human rights when we see examples such as these within our history? How can the U.S. hide behind this facade as a "protector" with so much involvement and, dare I say it, "authorship" in human rights and the UN's Declaration of Human Rights when, according to Lyon and Olson, "the U.S. has been condemned internationally for alleged human-rights violations?" (Lyons and Olson p. 207) I think something that Foucault says in his piece helped me to work through this question of mine. With their involvement, I would consider the U.S. to be, what Foucault calls, an "author" of the Declaration of Human Rights and as an author it has its own "author's name" as the United States. (Foucault, p. 907) When people learn of the human rights violations that the U.S. commits I think, like Foucault said, the function of the author's name changes and the facade that has been built up by the United States as the strong "protector" of human rights fades away. 

 Image from- https://exhibits.library.gsu.edu/exhibits/show/health-is-a-human-right/healthcare-for-all/segregated-treatment-and-resea