Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Belgium racism
In Belgium there is little to no self-reflection when it comes to essentializing players. In a recent column in quality newspaper, De Standaard, its editor Steven de Foer compared Vincent Kompany to a chocolate, “black on the outside but white on the inside” when discussing to his leadership skills and intelligence. De Foer also included this: “[Kompany is] still African when it comes to being late to practice”. De Foer’s article was supposed to be an in-depth analyses to figure out why this diverse team of players worked so well together as a team. Instead of saying something interesting about the diversity in Belgium’s national team or doing some real analyses about the skills of the players, he went the route of a 19th century anthropologist. Comparing a black player to a candy bar, deciding that another star, Eden Hazard, is kind of African because he likes a joke or making it the mixed players’ job to be a “bridge between cultures.”
