Dehumanizing contempt can blind observers to the causes of squalor

Evidence

The effect of such dehumanization was clear at Srebrenica, where before the Dutch UN battalion handed over the town to the Serb army, a Dutch soldier expressed contempt for Muslims because they were “smelly.” It evidently did not occur to him that people living in concentration-camp conditions are not able, as part of a deliberate policy, to practice normal hygiene. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 544

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The twist — that dehumanization itself erases awareness of the policy producing the squalor — is a dense, counterintuitive mechanism worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Intellectual sophistication can blind people to real political threats — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 259; Proximity and intimacy to a place can blind observers to its disturbance history — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 7