Dehumanization and Testimonial Justice
Taking the words of victims and perpetrators seriously
It is tempting for many scholars to reject the reality of dehumanization. Even though I reject that view, I understand where it comes from. Often, people refer to others as subhuman while knowing full well that they are human beings. And anyway, dehumanization seems very strange. How can any sane person regard other members of our species as subhuman creatures? The whole idea seems to defy common sense.
It’s true. People often use animalistic slurs to denigrate others even though they think of them as fully human. And it’s also true that dehumanization is very strange. But neither of these concerns is fatal to the reality of dehumanization. The fact that people refer to other people as subhuman in order to hurt them has no bearing on the question of whether people can also regard other people as less than human. And the fact that dehumanization is strange, by commonsensical standards, is not a substantial objection. Bertrand Russell reminded us that common sense is “the logic of the Stone Age.” The history of science shows us that the more we understand the true fabric of reality—including the nature of mental states—the more we depart from commonsensical notions.
Perpetrators have gone on record that they have regarded their victims as subhuman. And victims have told us that they were aware that perpetrators regard them as subhuman. I think that we should take their testimony seriously, rather than simply reject it. That’s not to say that such testimony is always true. People make mistakes—and sometimes willfully make mistakes. But rejecting such testimony out of hand is an act of injustice. It’s an example of what the philosopher Miranda Fricker calls testimonial injustice. There is a long-standing tendency to not give the testimony of marginalized people, who are victims of dehumanization, the credibility that is due to them. More surprisingly, perhaps, is the fat that perpetrators’ testimony is also not given its due—because perpetrators are assumed to be monstrous, deranged, or seeking exculpation when they state that they did not regard their victims as human beings.
Let’s start with perpetrators. Wilhelm Bayer was a pediatrician who was part of the Nazi “euthanasia” program that began with the murder—by gassing, lethal injection, or starvation—of cognitively disabled children. After the defeat of Germany, Bayer was charged with crimes against humanity for killing fifty-six children. Johann Chapoutot describes what happened in his superb book The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi:
Dr. Wilhelm Bayer objected strenuously to the charge of a ‘crime against humanity.’ ‘Such a crime,’ he asserted, ‘can only be committed against people, whereas the living creatures that we were required to treat could not be qualified as ‘human beings.
Maybe Bayer said this just to avoid being convicted. It’s possible, but, implausible. Cognitively disabled children were described as subhuman long before the twentieth century, and this was commonplace among Nazi doctors.
Werner Catel was another German doctor that took part in the murder of diabled infants. He was interviewed in 1964 in Der Spiegel, where he is on record as saying “It is definitely possible to distinguish these soulless beings from developing humans,” “This being…will never become a human being,” and “We are not talking about humans here, but rather about beings who were merely procreated by humans and that will never themselves become humans endowed with reason and a soul.”
Now consider examples of testimony about the dehumanization of racialized people. The Anglican cleric Morgan Godwyn reported in 1680, that he was told clandestinely that “the Negros, though in their Figure they carry some resemblances of Manhood, yet are indeed no Men” and that enslaved Africans are “Creatures destitute of Souls, to be ranked among Brute Beasts, and treated accordingly.” Closer to the present, Elie Ngarambe, a genocidaire in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, told his interlocutor “We did not know that the [Tutsi] were human beings….”. Daniel Goldhagen, who interviewed him, adds “Ngarambe is emphatic that this was the common view and common knowledge.”
Now let’s turn to testimony from victims. Mia Bay’s book The White Image in the Black Mind, is based on interviews with formerly enslaved people. She writes, ‘Indeed, the highest compliment ex-slaves had for former owners who had been good to them was often simply that these owners had recognized that their black bondspeople were humans, not animals.’
When state representative Henry McNeal Turner told the Georgia legislature saying, “A certain gentleman has argued that the Negro was a mere development similar to an orangoutang [sic] or chimpanzee….” his words should be given full credence. And when Frederick Douglass wrote that “The manhood of the Negro is fiercely opposed” and that, although Whites are granted the inalienable right to life and the pursuit of happiness, “the Negro has no such right—BECAUSE HE IS NOT A MAN!” he knew what he was talking about.
A recent study by Alexander Landry and his collaborators found that a significant number of interviewees stated that when they described members of a target group as subhumans, they meant this literally.
It’s long past time we take such testimony seriously, accept that dehumanization is real, and get to work developing strategies to combat it.
That’s my life’s work. Come join me.