Combating Racism (2017 - 2020)

Outlawing racial discrimination – Making practices of comparison illegitimate, 2017-2020

Project B06 of the Collaborative Research Center 1288 Practices of Comparing. Ordering and changing the world

Prof. Dr. Ulrike Davy; RA’in Malika Mansouri

In December 1965, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. When the process of decolonization was at its height, human rights law moved to delegitimize practices of comparing that were deeply rooted in what is called European modernity or the European expansion. We assumed that racial discrimination – outlawed by the convention – was and is intrinsically linked to practices of comparing, in particular comparisons that mark a difference implying less worth and backwardness. Therefore, we investigated: Was there, in the run-up to the convention, a phase where certain practices of comparing came under critique and became unacceptable? We also assumed that the convention, by prohibiting racial discrimination, indeed aims to undercut certain practices of comparing for the time to come. If so, what are the practices of comparing that are meant to be eliminated, because they constitute racial discrimination? Finally, we investigated the methods the committee established under the convention applies when it seeks to identify whether or not an act of racial discrimination has occurred in the particular setting of a case. We assumed that the committee, when doing so, needs to rely on comparisons and that, through relying on making comparisons, the committee creates practices of comparing of its own kind. Hence, we thought that we would eventually face two sets of practices of comparing. For one, practices that ought not be. For another, practices that are necessary to identify the practices that ought not be. The former helps to clarify and structure the notion of racial discrimination, the latter contributes to theorizing judicial review in discrimination cases. In a historical perspective, we will give an account on the rise of a global standard that links post-colonial thinking with present-day human rights discourse.