Colonial powers opposed universal human rights extending to their own subjects

Evidence

During the drafting of the UDHR, representatives of the colonial powers had fought hard against the inclusion of this guarantee, even arguing that it was discriminatory to mention colonial subjects specifically as subjects of human rights. Back then, delegates representing colonial powers had spoken forcefully against what the UK delegate called the ‘apparent discrimination’ of ‘especially mentioning the trust and non-self-governing territories’. To specify that colonial subjects were subjects of human rights, they argued then, would be to call into question the universality of the category ‘everyone’. Now, faced with drafting a legally binding covenant, delegates of these same states proposed colonial exclusion clauses to prevent the automatic application of the covenants in the territories they controlled. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 268

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to critiques of human rights’ colonial genealogy (e.g. Makau Mutua’s savages-victims-saviors thesis) and to chapters on the racial exclusions embedded in rights discourse. — connects to: Colonialism granted subjecthood to dominated people without granting equality. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 353; The US refused to sign the socioeconomic rights covenant — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 147; Human rights covenants cannot protect peoples who lack the power to enforce them — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 226 (+7 more)
• SEED: Angle: how ‘universalism’ was weaponized by imperial powers to exclude colonial subjects — a rhetorical inversion worth an essay in human-rights ethics historiography.

Broader Connections

• Colonial powers impose a double moral standard demanding restraint only from the colonized #expands (0.85)
• Key human rights drafters combined universalist rhetoric with colonial paternalism #epitomizes (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 269
• Colonial powers justified intervention by portraying colonized subjects as incapable of self-understanding #expands (0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 694
• Colonial origin theories were used to deny Africans land rights #exemplifies (0.80) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 329
• Colonial rulers reject native self-determination as beyond subject capacity #expands (0.80)