Exclusion : de l'aveuglement à la clairvoyance

Exclusion: From Blindness to Clairvoyance, Xavier Godinot
This text by Xavier Godinot is not future-oriented, although poverty does seem to be on the rise, even if the means to eradicate it quickly may be conceivable (dixit Muhammad Yunus). The more worrisome element is an invariance in attitudes toward the phenomenon.
Xavier Godinot starts with a series of facts which have been kept hidden for a long time. They reveal that richer countries which are held up as models of humans’ rights, entire populations have been exterminated, deported, sterilized or interned. He gives some examples to illustrate and denounce the denial and hiding, both individual and collective, which are the core subject of this article.
He attempts to understand and explain the sources of our blindness to social phenomena which bother us and our tendency to hide them. This possibly unconscious behavior calls for a deliberate attitude of vigilance to the feelings and processes of social exclusion, the instinctive urge to eliminate individuals or entire populations which for some reason do not fit our norms, frighten us, and are therefore rejected.
The same discomfort we feel in the presence of personal handicaps feeds our attitudes toward victims of social inequalities, and Godinot warns us against the progressive but irreversible processes of exclusion. Beyond a call to human charity, he underlines the constant danger of an apartheid and the essential role of solidarity in development.