°Statistics, demography, utilitarianism
An excerpt from Marcel Ophüls’ 1969 documentary, Le Chagrin et la pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity).
It’s no small matter, I think, that the speaker - when confronted with a set of statistics that is not circumscribed by the demos - seeks to reinstitute that same border by reference to the ostensibly spontaneous obviousness of utilitarian precepts. Ones that, supposedly a function of neutral measures, evade the charge of racism.
Or, listening to the person interviewed here, perhaps it’s better to say that it rationalises racism. Bentham’s calculus, of course, was bounded by the nation-state and its determinations of membership - the ‘greatest number’ referring to citizens.
In any case, this would step into the debate about whether racism is a form of irrationality or, conversely, the eminent raison d’etat. And much as I sometimes enjoy relegating racism to derangement, I think the latter explains so very much more. A system of rationality, then. Of ratios, measures and the weighing of values.
