Beyond Racial Discrimination

Beyond Racial Discrimination: “Backwardness” and “Indigenous Peoples”

Project E03 of the Collaborative Research Center 1288 Practices of Comparing. Ordering and changing the world

Prof. Dr. Ulrike Davy; Julia Burova

Human rights law promises equality before the law and equal protection by the law. When combating the idea of racial hierarchies, human rights law explicitly prohibits different treatment based on “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin”, in particular, where different treatment impairs the enjoyment of rights on an equal footing with others. However, the emphasis on equal rights notwithstanding, human rights law also allows for “special measures” aimed at the “adequate advancement” of certain racial or ethnic groups, who are deemed ‘backward’ compared to the so-called advanced human races, for instance, the native population of non-European territories in contrast to the ‘civilized’ Europeans. And more recently, human rights law envisions rights tailored to respect and to promote the identity and the lifestyles of people deemed “indigenous”.

Our project explores these varying concepts of equality and of racial discrimination. These concepts obviously draw on varying practices of comparing: What were the tertia that made lawmakers (firmly) believe that some people were ‘backward’ and in need of ‘advancement’, and what did ‘advancement’ entail? What kind of comparisons made lawmakers later replace the political goal of “advancement” by the political goal of “diversity and richness of civilizations and cultures”? How can we reconcile the idea of having special rights (with a view to advancement or with a view to securing diversity) with the general idea of equality before the law, which is often understood to mean having the same rights?

When answering those questions, we want to contribute to the exploration of processes of comparing that make group-related categories emerge and disappear. Outrageous comparisons, so we think, are key to the processes (cooperation with Willibald Steinmetz, E01). We also want to contribute to the doctrinal understanding of what equality before the law exactly means.