GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Civil Rights K Index INC2-3 Links/Implications4-6 Alternative Solves.

7-9 Discourse Solves10-11 Aff Perm Solves12 Perm Solves/Courts13 Action Good14 Co-option.15 Human Rights Bad.16 Alternative Fails.17 Discourse Fails18

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K

INC

A. The notion of civil rights was created and thus controlled by the oppressor- Action within this framework will doom any social change and cause increase likelihood of furthur violation of rights Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) Civil rights are derived from the national legal order. Their scope, availability, and continued existence depend upon political and judicial forces within a nation-state. n165 Successive political majorities may modify the reach of civil rights by expanding or contracting the categories of the people entitled to these rights. If civil rights are subject to judicial interpretation, judges may expand or constrict the availability of these rights. This ephemeral nature of civil rights does not make the national legal order a dependable source for either defining oppression or providing permanent relief from it. The reality is that the oppressor in control of the legal means is also in charge of the civil rights. There are many ways in which the oppressor may recognize civil rights in law but deny them in practice. If the system is under the command of the oppressor, the legislature may distort the rights recognized in the constitution; the judge may [*126] diminish the rights granted in the statutes; and the police may simply breach with impunity even the most basic rights entrenched in law. "This is the trickery" by which the oppressor grants rights with one hand and takes them away with the other. n166 Malcolm characterizes the civil rights movement as "a hopeless battle." n167 The problem with a civil rights struggle is that the oppressed can only go forward to the degree that the oppressors will allow. n168 Seeking civil rights as a relief from oppression may be a tragic admission by the oppressed that the oppressor alone has the authority to come to their rescue and lift the siege of oppression. n169 For these reasons, Malcolm had no faith in a civil rights struggle waged within the jurisdiction of an oppressive system. As long as the oppressed carry on their struggle in a manner that involves only the goodwill of internal forces of an oppressive system, Malcolm argued, no real changes will be made because there is no guarantee that those who possess the legal authority to grant and protect civil rights are on the side of the oppressed. n170 In fact, Malcolm would suggest that as long as the oppressed are engaged in a civil rights struggle they are asking for rights at a level where the so-called benefactor is actually the powerful oppressor

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K

INC

B. Instead of Civil Rights, we must adopt a framework of human rights to force the state to acknowledge the moral duty to respect all humans and expose the oppressors Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) Instead of civil rights, Malcolm's philosophy invokes the concept of human rights both to define oppression as well as to seek relief from the oppressors. n173 "Human rights! Respect as human beings!" Malcolm would argue that this is the true problem. n174 The oppressed do not want to "be walled up in slums, in the ghettoes like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men, and women." n175 Malcolm proposed that the oppressed look for help beyond the boundaries of oppression so that their story could be told to the world and to similarly situated people who understand the nature of oppression. The oppressed should change the nature of moral discourse and "take it away from the civil rights label, and put in the human rights label." [*128] The two types of rights have distinctive normative assumptions. Civil rights flow from the values of those in power; human rights originate in the universal values of the peoples of the world. n176 Civil rights are derived from a national statute or a constitution over which the oppressors might have full control; human rights are rooted in the inherent dignity of all members of the human family. Civil rights are administered within the jurisdiction of a nation-state; human rights are monitored in global forums. n177 Those in power may manipulate the interpretation and enforcement of civil rights, but violations of human rights will expose the oppressors. By granting civil rights, those in power assert their own moral virtuousness as if they were under no prior obligation to extend these rights to all; by recognizing human rights, those in power must acknowledge their legal and moral duty to have respect for every human being. n178 The oppressors must further admit that "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind," n179 and that they have been morally insincere and uncivilized in their treatment of other human beings.

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Links/Implications

Allowing the system to grant civil rights places the state on a pedestal of moral superiority portraying an image of goodness and power Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) Furthermore, Malcolm points out that the oppressor wants to feel noble by throwing crumbs to the oppressed. n171 Because a civil rights struggle is waged within the national legal system, the oppressed are forced to ask for a change from those who control the legal means. They appeal to the goodness of the oppressor, making moral arguments that the oppressor must change and allow the oppressed to ben- [*127] efit from the same system that the oppressors have put in place for their own kind. n172 This approach is similar to the one where the poor solicit charity from the rich by praising their abundance of fortune, their nobility of character, and their generosity to share a part of their riches with those who have nothing to eat. The act of charity ennobles the rich, making them feel good about themselves and reminding the poor at the same time that the rich were under no obligation to be beneficent. Similarly, in a civil rights movement any concessions given by the oppressor are portrayed to the public as deeds of virtue signifying the inherent goodness of the people in power. The oppressed wage a civil rights movement to demand the rights and liberties that they deserve. Yet, underlying such a movement is the cruel irony that by conceding these rights to the oppressed, the oppressors do not admit fault but congratulate themselves for being good and morally upright.

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Links/Implications

Giving the government the ability to dictate the law is giving power to the oppressor and completing the state of oppression Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) When the oppressor controls the legal means, law is a direct source of oppression. n57 A legal system may formally embrace princi- [*92] ples of justice such as the equal protection of laws, due process, and fundamental civil rights and liberties, yet these formal notions of justice, do not assure that oppression against disfavored groups will cease to exist. If legal means remain in the oppressor's hands, particularly one with a historical record for perpetuating oppression, the formal legal system may not tell the whole story of oppression. Hence, in every situation, the critical question will be: who controls the legal means? This simple question may unravel the secrets of oppression. Most systems of government have three branches all of which are involved in the law making process to some extent. These branches comprise the legal means. If the oppressor is in charge of the legislature, the judiciary, and the enforcement agencies, the oppressor has absolute control over the legal means. n58 In other words, any legal challenge to oppression can be preempted since the oppressor is the one who makes the law when the law is needed, interprets the law when the law is challenged, and enforces the law when the law is breached. From the viewpoint of the oppressed, the state of oppression is complete when the oppressed have no access to the legislature, no influence with the judiciary, and no bond with the enforcement agencies. For example, in South Africa, the white minority opposed the inclusion of the majority into the legal system because the white minority feared that it would lose control over the legal means by which apartheid was created and maintained. Likewise, years ago when the slave owner's control over the legal means to maintain slavery was challenged in the United States, the slave-owners took up arms to resist change.

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Links/Implications

Laws of equality are masks to worsen the system and chain the minds of the oppressed Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) In fact, Malcolm went further and asserted that oppressors use subtle, deceptive, and deceitful methods to create an impression that things are getting better. n159 This observation is accurate to the extent the oppressors may enact laws that appear to imply to the rest of the world that everyone receives equal respect and treatment in their system. In reality, however, the system remains the same or sometimes even gets worse. n160 The amendments in the law may remove the physical chains from the ankles of the oppressed. Malcolm warned, however, that there is no need to celebrate this change in law if the oppressors have already chained the minds of the oppressed.

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Alternative Solves

The human rights movement can break down the notion of national sovereignty of the oppressor and work internationally to bring social change Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) One might argue that human rights would not provide any relief to the oppressed unless the laws within an oppressive system change and protect these rights. The human rights movement, however, pressures national systems to incorporate human rights into their national laws and to actively protect them. Thus, the human rights movement has weakened the notion of national sovereignty that the oppressors may invoke to repel external criticism and to defend their actions within the boundaries of the nation-state. The oppressors can deny and cover up abuses of human rights, but no longer can they argue that they are beyond the reach of global scrutiny, nor can they take an insupportable moral high ground that their system is better than others. They must show compliance with human rights, otherwise the world will lose respect for them. This moral revolution in human civilization has subordinated civil rights to human rights. Even though [*129] the human rights movement gathered its current momentum long after Malcolm's assassination, one must recognize that Malcolm made a prophetic and sound distinction between the two types of rights. A framework of human rights is key to internationalization of oppression to break down national sovereignty Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) The oppressors may refuse to acknowledge the international regime of human rights. They may attack the conceptual roots of human rights, arguing that there exists no universal basis to formulate [*131] human rights for all. They may invoke their unique culture or religion to contest the nature and scope of human rights. They may accept human rights covenants with reservations. They may mythologize their constitutions to argue their internal normative order is superior to the global regime of human rights. n183 They may refuse to cooperate with international agencies to monitor human rights violations within their jurisdictions. They may adopt a jurisprudence of oppression under which the domestic law, no matter how unjust, is superior to the provision of a human rights obligation. All these political and legal barriers to the recognition of human rights, however, cannot shield the oppressor from global scrutiny. National sovereignty is no longer an acceptable legal basis to defend the perpetration of oppression. n184 A group whose human rights are systematically abused often seek, and may even obtain, the attention of the global community. Malcolm repeatedly argued that the case of oppression against blacks in the United States should be internationalized. n185 Oppressed groups in South Africa, Israel, and Afghanistan actively pursued their cases in the United Nations and other international bodies. Internationalization of an oppressive situation provides an opportunity for the global community to objectively determine the nature of the oppression. If the global community supports the oppressed group, the oppressor can no longer argue that the oppressed are just a group criminals or terrorists. n186

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Alternative Solves- Biopower

Human rights are the ideal way to constrain bad biopower. Any power must legitimize itself under human rights culture Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) In contrast, the post-Holocaust and post-Hiroshima angst registers a normative horror at human violation. The "contemporary" human rights movement is rooted in the illegitimacy of all forms of cruelty politics. No doubt what counts as cruelty varies enormously even from one human rights context/instrument to another. n38 Even so, there now are in place firm jus cogens norms of international human rights and humanitarian law which de-legitimate and forbid barbaric practices of power in state as well as civil society. From the standpoint of those violated, this is no small gain; the community of perpetrators remains incrementally vulnerable to human rights cultures, howsoever variably, and this matters enormously for the violated. In a non-ideal world, human rights discursivity appears to offer an "ideal" even if "second best" option. No matter how many contested fields may be provided by the rhetoric of the universality, indivisibility, interdependence, and inalienability of human rights, contemporary human rights cultures have constructed new criteria relative to the legitimation of power. These criteria increasingly discredit any attempt to base power and rule on the inherent violence institutionalized in imperialism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. "Contemporary" human rights make possible, in most remarkable ways, discourse on human suffering. No longer may practices of power, abetted by grand social theory, justify beliefs that sustain willful infliction of harm as an attribute of sovereignty or of a good society. Central to "contemporary" human rights discourse are visions and ways of constructing the ethic of power which prevent the imposition of repression and human suffering beyond the needs of regime-survival no matter how extravagantly determined. The illegitimacy of the languages of immiseration becomes the very grammar of international politics. Thus, the distinction between "modern" and "contemporary" forms of human rights is focused on taking suffering seriously. n39 Outside the domain of the laws of war among and between the "civilized" nations, "modern" human rights regarded large-scale imposition of human suffering as just and right in pursuit of a Eurocentric notion of human progress. It silenced the discourses of human suffering. In contrast, "contemporary" human rights are animated by a politics of international desire to render problematic the very notion of the politics of cruelty.

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Alternative Solves

Alternative solves- UN proves Nier 1997 (Charles Lewis III, Guilty as Charged: Malcolm X and His Vision of Racial Justice for African Americans Through Utilization of the United Nations International Human Rights Provisions and Institutions 16 Dick. J. Int'l L. 149, Copyright (c) 1997 Dickinson School of Law, Carlisle, PA) Despite Malcolm X's failure to accomplish his United Nations plan, his efforts established an ideological framework for African Americans to pursue human rights violations in the context of Pan-African internationalism. In the years following Malcolm X's death, the United Nation's drafted numerous human rights instruments and developed elaborate institutional mechanisms for redressing violations of the human rights instruments. n216 As a consequence, based on the precedent Malcolm X established, African Americans have utilized the United Nations as a viable alternative to a domestic civil rights agenda in seeking racial justice within the United States. n217 In addition, the effectiveness of the[*187] United Nations as an alternative forum for racial justice will increase with the United States' ratification of additional human rights instruments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. n218 [*188] [*189]

Human rights can extend to any constituency and are flexible in their application Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) The "contemporary" production of human rights is exuberant. n32 This is a virtue compared with the lean and mean articulations of human rights in the "modern" period. In the "modern" era, the authorship of human rights was both statecentric and Eurocentric; in contrast, the formulations of "contemporary" human rights are increasingly inclusive and often marked by intense negotiation between NGOs and governments. The authorship of contemporary human rights is multitudinous, and so are the auspices provided by the United Nations and regional human rights networks. As a result, human rights enunciations proliferate, becoming as specific as the networks from which they arise and, in turn, sustain. The "modern" notion of human rights forbade such dispersal, the only major movement having been in the incremental affirmation of the rights of labor and minority rights. The way collectivities are now in human rights enunciations is radically different. They do not merely reach out to "discrete" and "insular" minorities; n33 they extend also to wholly new, hitherto unthought of, justice constituencies. n34

GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Discourse Solves

Human rights discourse is the only way that we can interrogate the barbarism of power, and human rights discourse and rhetoric is key to emancipatory politics Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) Much of the Twentieth Century, especially its later half, will be recalled as an "Age of Human Rights." No preceding century of human history n1 has been privileged to witness a profusion of human rights enunciations on a global scale. Never before have the languages of human rights sought to supplant all other ethical languages. No preceding century has witnessed the proliferation of human rights norms and standards as a core aspect of what may be called "the politics of intergovernmental desire." Never before has this been a discourse so varied and diverse that it becomes necessary to publish and update regularly, through the unique discursive instrumentality of the United Nations system, in ever exploding volumes of fine print, the various texts of instruments relating to human rights. n2 The Secretary-General of the United Nations was perhaps right to observe (in his inaugural remarks at the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights) that human rights constitute a "common language of humanity." n3 Indeed, it would be true to say that, in some ways, a human rights sociolect has emerged, in this era of the end of ideology, as the only universal ideology in the making, enabling both the legitimation of power and the praxis of emancipatory politics. n4 At the same time, the Twentieth Century has been tormented by its own innovations in the politics of cruelty. The echoes of Holocaust and Hiroshima-Nagasaki suffering vibrate in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights n5 as well as in the millennial dream of turning swords into ploughshares. But the politics of cruelty continue even as sonorous declarations on human rights proliferate. A distinctively European contribution to recent history, the politics of organized intolerance and ethnic cleansing, has been universalized in the "killing fields" of post-colonial experience. The early, middle, and late phases of the Cold War n6 orchestrated prodigious human suffering as well as an exponential growth of human rights enunciations. And if Cold War practices were deeply violative of basic human rights, postCold War practices--for example, "ethnic wars"--are no less so. n7 Still, though not radically ameliorative of here-and-now suffering, international human rights standards and norms empower peoples' movements and conscientious policy-makers everywhere to question political practices. That, to my mind, is an inestimable potential of human rights languages, not readily available in previous centuries. Human rights languages are all that we have to interrogate the barbarism of power, even when these remain inadequate to humanize fully the barbaric practices of politics.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Alternative Solves- Discourse

Rights discourse is key to self-determination. It inists that every person has a right to bear witness to violations and opens up sites of resistance to hegemonic oppression Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) The languages of human rights often are integral to tasks and practices of governance, as exemplified by the constitutive elements of the "modern" paradigm of human rights--namely, the collective human right of the colonizer to subjugate "inferior" peoples and the absolutist right to property. The manifold though complex justifications offered for these "human rights" ensured that the "modern" European nation-state was able to marshal the right to property, as a right to imperium and dominium. The construction of a collective human right to colonial/imperial governance is made sensible by the co-optation of languages of human rights into those of governance abroad and class and patriarchal domination at home. The hegemonic function of rights languages, in the service of governance at home and abroad, consisted in making whole groups of people socially and politically invisible. Their suffering was denied any authentic voice, since it was not constitutive of human suffering. "Modern" human rights, in their original narrative, entombed masses of human beings in shrouds of necrophilic silence. In contrast, the "contemporary" human rights paradigm is based on the premise of radical self-determination, as we shall see shortly. Selfdetermination insists that every person has a right to a voice, the right to bear witness to violation, and a right to immunity against "disarticulation" by concentrations of economic, social, and political formations. Rights languages, no longer exclusively at the service of the ends of governance, thus open up sites of resistance.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Perm Solves

Must participate in the legal system to begin to break it down Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) Malcolm's concept of any means necessary rejects the oppressor's normative system because historical hindsight convinced him that the oppressor is morally unteachable. Instead of putting their faith in civil rights granted within the oppressive legal system, the oppressed should invoke universally accepted human rights to fight oppression. This normative shift from civil rights to human rights creates a new psychology of freedom. No longer would the oppressed depend upon the national legal system to derive their human dignity. Realizing that legal means constitute the source of power, the oppressed must participate in the legal system to obtain some control over the legal means. They must take charge of their communities by exercising the principle of self-help, establishing businesses, and building cultural, and social institutions. The oppressed must eradicate social evils such as drugs, violence, and other artifacts of powerlessness and lack of self-respect. Furthermore, they must adopt a militant attitude toward the oppressor and refuse to be subjugated on a permanent basis. The legal system can bring about active change to help the oppressed Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) In an ordered society, changes in the economic, political, moral, or social aspects of life may be brought about by the legal means. n61 The legal means by which these laws are made and modified acquire critical significance in the removal of oppression. Legislation can be made to outlaw slavery, segregation, discrimination, and other forms of oppression. Judges can play an active role in shaping rules of law that meet high standards of justice and fairness. Enforcement agencies can fight oppression by protecting the life, liberty, and property of the oppressed. If all the legal means within a system are coordinated to eradicate public and private oppression, then law approximates justice. In such a system, there is no defensible basis to argue that the oppressed must rebel and use force to change the system.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Perm Solves/Courts

The courts can provide the space needed for change Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) Although courts at all levels participate in social engineering, the United States Supreme Court, the highest court of judicial review, has the most respected institutional authority in dealing with questions of oppression and injustice. Despite political and philosophical attacks on the concept of judicial review, the Court over the last two hundred years has provided a powerful legal vehicle to initiate profound social change which would have been difficult to secure through legislative [*103] institutions. The Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education to reject its own "separate but equal" doctrine opened the way for the dismantling of segregation in public places. n90 In Loving v. Virginia, the Court further spurned racial separateness by invalidating a law which made it illegal for any white person in Virginia to marry a non-white person. n91 Many in the dominant group viewed desegregation as the end of oppression. Most among the oppressed considered it no more than just a beginning. Integration per se did not solve the real questions of oppression. n92 Many decades after the judicial dismantling of racial separateness, de facto segregation of races still exists, and the condition of oppression for many in the ghettos has not changed. n93 Nonetheless, judicial decisions such as Brown and Loving have at least altered the legal landscape of American society, opening up the theoretical possibility of racial intermingling, marriage, and a voluntary fusion of the races. n94

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Action Good

Not intervening and inaction puts us in the role of co-conspirator causing more oppression Khan 1994 (Ali, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary 38 How. L.J. 79, Copyright (c) 1994 Howard University) Furthermore, it is important to examine how oppression is perpetrated without the use of legal means. This occurs when the legal [*96] means are not used to intervene in private oppression perpetrated by members of the dominant group. The legal means may not require ordinary citizens to practice slavery, apartheid, caste-system, lynching, and hate-speech, n64 but such conduct may not be prohibited either. This lack of intervention by the legal means results in oppression. n65 The legal means assume the role of a co-conspirator who either by his moral indifference or deliberate inaction advances the commission of a crime. Therefore, one must examine what the legal means can do to play an active role in abolishing oppression where it exists.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Co-option

Turn States co-opt human rights logic to justify imperialism and colonialism on the basis that the Other needs to be protected, and that the elites have the right to subjugate inferiors Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) The languages of human rights often are integral to tasks and practices of governance, as exemplified by the constitutive elements of the "modern" paradigm of human rights--namely, the collective human right of the colonizer to subjugate "inferior" peoples and the absolutist right to property. The manifold though complex justifications offered for these "human rights" ensured that the "modern" European nation-state was able to marshal the right to property, as a right to imperium and dominium. The construction of a collective human right to colonial/imperial governance is made sensible by the co-optation of languages of human rights into those of governance abroad and class and patriarchal domination at home. The hegemonic function of rights languages, in the service of governance at home and abroad, consisted in making whole groups of people socially and politically invisible. Their suffering was denied any authentic voice, since it was not constitutive of human suffering. "Modern" human rights, in their original narrative, entombed masses of human beings in shrouds of necrophilic silence. In contrast, the "contemporary" human rights paradigm is based on the premise of radical self-determination, as we shall see shortly. Selfdetermination insists that every person has a right to a voice, the right to bear witness to violation, and a right to immunity against "disarticulation" by concentrations of economic, social, and political formations. Rights languages, no longer exclusively at the service of the ends of governance, thus open up sites of resistance.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Human Rights Bad

Human rights ideology is based on the concept of exclusion. Exclusionary human rights are the justification for colonialism and imperialism. Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering nd the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) The notion of human rights--historically the rights of men--is confronted with two perplexities. The first concerns the nature of human nature (the is question). The second concerns the question: who is to count as human or fully human (the ought question). While the first question continues to be debated in both theistic and secular terms, n25 the second--"Who should count as 'human'?"--occupies the center stage of the "modern" enunciation of human rights. The criteria of individuation in the European liberal traditions of thought n26 furnished some of the most powerful ideas in constructing a model of human rights. Only those beings were to be regarded as "human" who were possessed of the capacity for reason and autonomous moral will, although what counted as reason and will varied in the long development of European liberal tradition. In its major phases of development, "slaves," "heathens," "barbarians," colonized peoples, indigenous populations, women, children, the impoverished, and the "insane" have been, at various times and in various ways, thought unworthy of being bearers of human rights. In other words, these discursive devices of Enlightenment rationality were devices of exclusion. The "Rights of Man" were human rights of all men capable of autonomous reason and will. While by no means the exclusive prerogative of "modernity," n27 the large number of human beings were excluded by this peculiar ontological construction. n28 Exclusionary criteria are central to the "modern" conception of human rights. The foremost historical role performed by them was to accomplish the justification of the unjustifiable, namely, colonialism and imperialism. n29 That justification was inherently racist; colonial powers claimed a collective human right of superior races to dominate the inferior ones ("the Other"). The Other in many cases ceased to exist before imperial law formulations such as the doctrine of terra nullius, following Blackstone's scandalous distinction between the inhabited and uninhabited colonies. n30 Since the Other of European imperialism was by definition not human or fully human, it was not worthy of human rights; at the very most, Christian compassion and charity fashioned some devices of legal or jural paternalism. That Other, not being human or fully human, also was liable to being merchandised in the slave market or to being the "raw material" of exploitative labor within and across the colonies. Not being entitled to a right to be and remain a human being, the Other was made a stranger and an exile to the language and logic of human rights being fashioned, slowly but surely, in (and for) the West. The classical liberal theory and practice of human rights, in its formative era, was thus innocent of the notion of universality of rights though certainly no stranger to its rhetoric. The only juristic justification for colonialism/imperialism, if any is possible, is the claim that there is a natural collective human right of the superior races to rule the inferior ones, and the justification comes in many shapes and forms. One has but to read the "classic" texts of Locke or Mill to appreciate the range of talents that are devoted to the justification of colonialism. n31 The related but different logics combined to instill belief in the collective human right of the well-ordered societies to govern the wild and "savage" races. All the well known devices of the formative era of classical liberal thought were deployed: the logics of rights to property and progress; the state of nature and civil society; and social Darwinism, combining the infantalization and maturity of "races" and stages of civilization. The collective human right to colonize the less well-ordered peoples and societies for the collective "good" of both as well as of humankind was by definition indefeasible as well, and not in the least weakened in the curious logical reasoning and contradictions of evolving liberalism.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Alternative Fails

Turn the alternative forcloses the ability of human rights discourse to be liberatory Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) By the use of the notion of "paralogics," I conflate the notions of logic and rhetoric. Paradigmatic logic follows a "causal" chain of signification to a "conclusion" directed by major and minor premises. Rhetorical logic does not regard argument as "links in the chain," but rather, as legs to a chair. n14 What matters in rhetorical logic is the choice of topoi, literary conventions that define sites from which the processes of suasion begin. These sites are rarely governed by any pre-given topoi or ways of reasoning; rather, they dwell in that which one thinks one ought to argue about. n15 "Human rights" logic or paralogics are all about how one may or should construct "techniques of persuasion as a means of creating awareness." n16 The human rights "we-ness" that enacts and enhances these techniques of suasion is multifarious, contingent, and continually fragmented. That "we-ness" is both an artifact of power as well as of resistance. Human rights discourse is intensely partisan; it cannot exist or endure outside the webs of impassioned commitment and networks of contingent solidarities, whether on behalf and at the behest of dominant or subaltern ideological practice. Both claim the ownership of a transformative vision of politics, of anticipation of possible human futures. The historic significance of human rights (no matter what we perform with this potter's clay) lies in the denial of administered regimes of disarticulation, even when this amounts only to the perforation of the escutcheon of dispersed sovereignty and state power.

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GDI Scholars 05 Civil Rights K Aff- Discourse Bad

Rights-talk undermines statist discourse and is able to subvert reality. No one is able to escape the effects of this discourse Baxi, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Fall 1998 (Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of human rights, 8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 125) By "discursivity" I refer to both erudite and ordinary practices of "rights-talk." Rights-talk (or discursive practice) occurs within traditions (discursive formations). n11 Traditions, themselves codes for power and hierarchy, allocate competences (who may speak), construct forms (how one may speak, what forms of discourse are proper), determine boundaries (what may not be named or conversed about), and structure exclusion (denial of voice). What I call "modern" human rights offers powerful examples of the power of the rights-talk tradition. What I call "contemporary" human rights discursivity illustrates the power of the subaltern discourse. When that discourse acquires the intensity of a discursive insurrection, its management becomes a prime task of human rights diplomacy. Dominant or hegemonic rights-talk does not ever fully supress subaltern rights-talk. Human rights discursivity, to invoke a Filipino template, is marked by complexity and contradiction between the statist discourse of the educated (illustrados) and the subversive discourse of the indigenous (indio). n12 Discourse theorists often maintain that discursive practice constitutes social reality; there are no violators, violated, and violations outside discourse.

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