Human Rights and Critical Whiteness: Whose Humanity?

Abstract

Human rights have been used since the establishment of the United Nations after World War II to prevent violations by formulating an ideal of humanity where respect and dignity are central. While many writers have questioned their validity given the origins of human rights as a Western project, this paper takes the critique further by positing that notions of ‘the human’ used by human rights occurred during the European Enlightenment and could thus not escape their cultural boundaries. However, this paper goes further still by using the notion of racialised privilege from critical whiteness studies to suggest that human rights is also a discourse that proclaims the original knowledges of white privilege, and hence those whose interests it advances. We look to some post-modern thinkers to consider a position that allows other knowledges to emerge ‘from below’.