Page 423 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Ender walked in silence for a few moments, trying to make sense of this. The piggies killed Libo immediately after he saved them from starvation? Unthinkable, and yet it happened. How could such a society evolve, killing those who contributed most to its survival? They should do the opposite-- they should reward the valuable ones by enhancing their opportunity to reproduce. That's how communities improve their chances of surviving as a group. How could the piggies possibly survive, murdering those who contribute most to their survival?
And yet there were human precedents. These children, Miro and Ouanda, with the Questionable Activities-- they were better and wiser, in the long run, than the Starways committee that made the rules. But if they were caught, they would be taken from their homes to another world-- already a death sentence, in a way, since everyone they knew would be dead before they could ever return-- and they would be tried and punished, probably imprisoned. Neither their ideas nor their genes would propagate, and society would be impoverished by it.
Still, just because humans did it, too, did not make it sensible. Besides, the arrest and imprisonment of Miro and Ouanda, if it ever happened, would make sense if you viewed humans as a single community, and the piggies as their enemies; if you thought that anything that helped the piggies survive was somehow a menace to humanity. Then the punishment of people who enhanced the piggies' culture would be designed, not to protect the piggies, but to keep the piggies from developing.
At that moment Ender saw clearly that the rules governing human contact with the piggies did not really function to protect the piggies at all. They functioned to guarantee human superiority and power. From that point of view, by performing their Questionable Activities, Miro and Ouanda were traitors to the self-interest of their own species.
"Renegades," he said aloud.
"What?" said Miro. "What did you say?"
"Renegades. Those who have denied their own people, and claimed the enemy as their own." "Ah," said Miro.
"We're not," said Ouanda.
"Yes we are," said Miro.
"I haven't denied my humanity!"
"The way Bishop Peregrino defines it, we denied our humanity long ago," said Miro.
"But the way I define it--" she began.
"The way you define it," said Ender, "the piggies are also human. That's why you're a renegade."