Violence against racial others functions to convince perpetrators of their own superiority

Evidence

As I have argued, the violence committed by Canadian peacekeepers against Somalis must be understood as a colonial violence, born of the conviction that it is the white man’s burden to civilize and keep in line through force racial others awaiting assistance into modernity. The acts of violence committed against Somalis convinced the soldiers of their own masculine, racial, and national superiority. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 144

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that violence is productive — not expressive but identity-constituting — for the perpetrator reverses the usual framing of abuse as catharsis or breakdown.
• XREF: connects to: False heroism measures superiority through the harm it inflicts on others — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 495; Physical training to fight can forge bonds that resist racial thinking — Amit Singh, “Carnal conviviality” and the end of…, 17; Racial self-sanctification operates as paranoid group self-defense against imagined impurities. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1386 (+5 more)