Power Structures and Human Rights

Power Structures and Human Rights

"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 2016). 

Lyon and Olson in their writing, Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric, point out that human rights does not always have one hundred percent pure motivations from its enactors. However: Foucault, in his work What is an Author?, argues that the author of a text or work shouldn't really matter in a general sense- that arguments of authenticity and authorship are inconsequential compared to the content within the work and the discourse that arises from it. 

"The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning" (Foucault 913). 

Foucault also mentions the need for an "Author" in the sense of the law: that accountability for crimes must be acknowledged. I think Lyon and Olson would vehemently agree with this statement, as do I. The image provided above is an "advertisement" for a soap company founded in 1875. The image depicts white child offering a child of color soap, asking, "Why doesn't your mama wash you with Fairy Soap?" implying that the child of color is dirty because of the color of their skin. Here and in many other places, the role of "author" not only has extreme impact, but responsibility. The author or authors of this advertisement obviously harbor at least a fair amount of racial prejudice, and used their positions in their careers to perpetuate this prejudice through a massively circulated kind of media. This specific kind of rhetoric, in relation to soap, has been perpetuated throughout history, and even permeates our advertisements today. The recent scandal with the Dove commercial (a woman shedding her black skin to become white,) only serves to prove this. 

A despicable advertisement from a 1920's soap company, Pears' Soap, showing a child of color being "cleaned" to look like a white child.

The recent, hotly debated ad from Dove.

In the times since Africa was colonized, various justifications have flown about as to why Europeans imposed their cultures, rule, and religions unto them. The popular justification was that Europeans brought "civilization" to the "primitive," that they were simply "saving" them in the name of their God, and only trying to "help" them, presumably advancing their "well-being" and "rights". In contemporary conversation and literature we can see that this primarily was not the case, that European countries quickly scrambled to claim and divide land and resources, even if that resource was human labour and ownership. So when Lyon, Olson, and Foucault talk of accountability in their writings about human rights, I wholeheartedly agree. Who is writing these human rights, and to who do the writings benefit? Are all experiences and perspectives taken into account? What kind of privileges and motives might these writers have? Certainly, great things have come from talks of human rights and the writing of policy: but I believe Lyon, Olson, and Foucault would ask us to take a closer and more focused look on how that comes to be.





Dalal, Isha. “Was Doves Recent Advertisement Racist?” The Politic, The Politic - http://Thepolitic.org, 8 Nov. 2017, thepolitic.org/was-doves-recent-advertisement-racist/.
Montford, Christina. “10 of the Most Racist Ads of All Time In American History.” Atlanta Black Star, 16 Dec. 2014, atlantablackstar.com/2014/12/16/10-of-the-most-racist-ads-of-all-time-in-american-history/.