Relativism and Children Buried Alive

Racism is often attributed solely to the political right. Sure, there’s a lot of right-wing racists. But there’s a lot of racism on the left too. Yes it’s usually more subtle. But I wouldn’t assume that the left has a much lower percentage of racists than the right. One form of leftist racism is moral relativism. This is the end-point on a scale that seeks to avoid imposing “our” values on other cultures.

It’s not a bad sentiment, to a point. But when it stops you from helping the victimised in other cultures, then you are a racist. Why? Because the end result of your worldview is that someone from a different race (or culture) deserves less protection because of the culture he/she was born in. And you don’t even need to be a full-fledged relativist. More moderate versions are racist if “anti-imperialism” is a codeword for not doing anything.

A few months ago a story was doing the media rounds about a new film that exposes Amazon tribal customs of burying children alive if they’re considered weak (or are twins — the tribes dislike twins). Here’s a disturbing clip (NOTE: it is of course a re-enactment). The film follows the tale of Hakani, a girl who survived such a burial. Brazilian authorities have done nothing about these cases out of a sense of “respect” for the tribal cultures.

There used to be a perfect example of relativism’s evil: Germaine Greer’s appalling defence of female genital mutilation as a cultural artifact. But the burial of children is an even better example. In Hakani’s tribe, tradition had parents kill their kid. Hakani’s parents committed suicide rather than do it. Because of our shared biological nature, this practice is cruel even from the standpoint of the tribe. Most people don’t want to do it but are coerced by the inertia of tradition (and people not related to the child for whom the decision’s much easier). So, helping doesn’t mean killing/imprisoning the entire tribe (that would obviously be an atrocity in itseld). It means providing social services, education etc. to provide momentum for an already-existing anti-burial movement within the tribes. But the god-of-relativism says no; all cultures are worthy in their entirety; all are static; any change that’s a result of contact with the satanic west must be a change for the worse, must be imperialism.

The racism of relativism is supporting genocide. It’s one of the reasons the west has refused to deploy forces to, say, Darfur. You may say it’s just an excuse. But I think there are plenty of people (probably a fringe subset of the anti-Iraq-war movement) who genuinely believe such an intervention would be imperialist. To them I say yes — it would be grand if there was no genocide (wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice?). But when members of a culture are committing mass-murder and don’t want to stop or negotiate, then the only way to stop it WOULD be to practice some imposition. We should never be gung-ho about it or take conflict lightly — but relativists/pacifists have the blood of many a genocide on their hands.