How is this Utilitarianism?

[zainah_islam]

When reading Mills' justification of the British colonization of India, I couldn't help but think that what he is describing is inconsistent with the practice of utilitarianism. I first heard of utilitarianism in a Philosophy course in my first year at McGill. As Google describes it, utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and opposes actions that cause unhappiness or harm; a definition that is consistent with what I learned in my Philosophy course.

Ahmed writes of the colonizer's view of happiness. Happiness is the social glue and their mission is to add this glue to societies they think need happiness. Obviously, there are many issues with this motive that stem from racism. For one, this assumes that these societies lacked happiness before colonization. But even if we look at the colonization of India from the British point of view, I don't think you can apply the framework of utilitarianism to this. Mills admits that the colonization of India brought about immense amounts of suffering, but he claims that the happiness it brought outweighs the suffering. In my understanding, utilitarianism involves a repulsion of suffering; taking the path of least resistance. So to go ahead with actions that bring suffering even if it results in happiness seems antithetical to utilitarianism itself. I think Eric Stone's term "secular evangelicism" is a much more accurate term for this motive.

I also thought the concept of white nostalgia was very interesting. Ahmed writes of white nostalgia as a nostalgia for a community of white people happily living with other white people. So there is a yearning for when our societies were not integrated. As Eswaran highlights in her analysis of Mississippi Masala, this avoidance of integration is present in POC communities as well. The nostalgia applies to all communities I think. Our regret to mix with other communities that we share spaces with further perpetuates racial hierarchies set in place by white supremacism. As Ahmed implies unhappiness is not caused simply by diversity but by the failure of people to interact.