EUSEBIUS McKAISER | Should I care about Ukraine? Don’t take a cue from white supremacy

Whether we like it or not there is a hierarchy of suffering in the world. Some suffering gets more attention. Some bodies get more sympathy. Some of us do not even qualify for the Olympics of suffering because we are seen as incapable of undergoing it. You can only be at the suffering Olympics if the gatekeepers recognise you as fully human.

The global history of white supremacy and anti-black racism can be articulated in mutually reinforcing ways that help us get the strongest possible grip on the nature and scope of racism. One feature of anti-black racism is to ignore black suffering because black lives do not matter. But what does it mean to have to insist on being seen while others are hyper-visible, despite our long-standing suffering going unnoticed and unacknowledged, or seen, but not taken due cognisance of? How should we feel about those who suddenly command the world’s attention because they have racialised identities similar to those of the hegemonic powers? What should be our response if some of those who are suffering are racist? These complex moral questions are raised by Russia’s war on Ukraine. While there are no easy answers, I want to explore some thoughts in the direction of possible answers.

I am constantly haunted by the horrid possibility of us reproducing white supremacist tropes in our very attempt to fight white supremacy. Sometimes one can try so hard to defeat the legacy of oppression as a survivor thereof that one ends up performing bits and pieces of the moral psychology of oppressors despite knowing better. I am, for that reason, genuinely puzzled that some commentators wonder aloud whether Ukraine deserves our empathy and moral support. Isn’t this aspect of the war a matter of moral black and white?

The nexus facts are straightforward. Russian leader Vladimir Putin unlawfully and immorally attacks Ukraine, unprovoked. He murders innocent citizens, quite apart from trampling on international law. He appears driven by rampant political mania. The endgame is unclear, but a direct and intentional immediate aim is to cause maximum suffering there. Hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings flee Ukraine in the process and many die or are maimed. How can anyone wonder aloud whether to be outraged by Putin? How can anyone wonder aloud whether to care for the rights to life and dignity being obliterated? At a moral psychological level I am perplexed by anyone who is unmoved by the plight of thousands of innocent people being killed or maimed. And this is where the legacy of white supremacy reinscribes itself onto our moral landscape.

Think of it this way. I don’t have sympathy for homophobes, but I am not about to laugh if I see a homophobe being murdered or maimed. Other people’s suffering requires us to think long and hard about what to do or feel.

One of its greatest victories is when black humanity implodes as a response to white supremacy, such as when we refuse to show empathy for those who suffer because they do not look like us. Being unmoved by the suffering of Ukrainian refugees is not an exemplar of black radicalism, but a rehearsal of white supremacist thinking. Just as white supremacists do not see us as fully human, so some of us refuse to see the full humanity of Ukrainians. That refusal to empathise with them is identical to white supremacists’ refusal to recognise black personhood. It is therefore tragic that anyone laughing at Ukrainians is no different to an apartheid-era cop laughing at black pain. In other words, it is a victory for anti-black racism if we take the templates of white supremacy and work off them.

I am alive to why we may respond with uncertainty to the plight of Ukraine. Suffering that is ongoing in other parts of the world, especially the Global South, is off the radar of the West. When suffering black bodies trying to escape war drown in the ocean on their way to Europe, for example, we do not see the world moved to act. We do not see an outpouring of intense and global concern. We do not see domestic politics put on ice everywhere to pay attention to the slaughter and suffering of black bodies. Because the institutions of the world entrusted with safeguarding international human rights operate on the basis of a hierarchy of suffering. We are justified to be outraged by such moral hypocrisy. It is legally, politically and ethically an abomination that in 2022 we still live in a world in which people are not guaranteed intrinsic value. This moral crisis is what accounts for the understandable difficulty many people have in responding with maximum empathy to Ukraine, while carrying in our blood self-knowledge of not being seen by the world. But I don’t want racists to win in how we deal with black pain. I don’t want white supremacy to frame my response to the moral inconsistencies of the West. I do not want to become the supremacist, while trying to eliminate that footprint in the world. So in the end, what should our posture be?

It is a difficult question. We can and should skewer the moral inconsistencies of the Global North, while not allowing global anti-blackness to make us extinguish our capacity to set our own moral normative frameworks without being haunted by white supremacy. Yet at the same time, it is tiring to have to be the standard bearers of a better universe when that universe does not recognise our humanity fully. But we do not want to lose or reduce our humanity just because white supremacy remains ubiquitous. Our political tools and praxis must aim to eliminate it, while showing our inherent complexity that the same supremacists refuse to see.

As for some Ukrainians being racist, I would not show sympathy for an individual racist anywhere. But there is an important moral difference between not actively assisting an individual racist who is being bullied or attacked and having Schadenfreude that a nation is invaded, unprovoked, by Putin. The latter response indicts me ethically. Think of it this way. I don’t have sympathy for homophobes, but I am not about to laugh if I see a homophobe being murdered or maimed. Other people’s suffering requires us to think long and hard about what to do or feel. It is not obligatory to rush off to Ukraine and take up arms. It is obligatory, I think, to not diminish your humanity by enjoying seeing white people experiencing what is very familiar to us black people.

Don’t take your moral cue from white supremacy.