Colonial ‘civilizing mission’ was itself the savagery it projected.

Evidence

Central Africa, cannibalistic and savage, the inversion of a European colonialism as necessary in its civilizing mission as it supposed itself necessarily brutish in the implementation of its forced labor system. Men protecting women from their men, only to make the saved women “theirs” in one sense of domestication or another. The scientific study of Africa reveals in the first instance nothing more than the barbarity, cruelty, primitivism it supposed to exist when it set out upon its civilizing mission. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 887 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial officials framed economic exploitation as a form of civilizing mission — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 174; Colonial ‘civilizing mission’ ideology negated African morality and rationality — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 665; Colonial ‘scientific study’ projected the very savagery it claimed to find — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 887 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial ‘scientific study’ projected the very savagery it claimed to find #exemplifies (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 887