Euphemistic labeling historically legitimized dispossession of native peoples.

Evidence

These euphemisms operate in exactly the same way as those found on the earliest maps of the North American continent, in which whole regions were labeled with terms such as “heathens,” “infidels,” “idolaters,” “primitives,” “vassals,” and “rebels.” On the strength of those euphemisms, native peoples—their places and claims—were deleted from the invaders’ moral and legal equations, legitimating the acts of taking and breaking that paved the way for church and monarchy. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ADDENDUM article on complaints about immodesty — both treat labels/rhetoric as instruments of class or political erasure. Also parallels the reader’s existing work on deferential language as power. — connects to: Cultural-erasure denial licensed apartheid and Native American dispossession — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and…, 385; Colonial moral epithets encoded specific class and racial transgressions; Humanist defenses of native rights legitimized imperial acquisition (+7 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The parallel between cartographic euphemism and digital-era euphemism (‘targeted’) as a mechanism that deletes people from moral/legal equations is a genuinely paradigm-shifting analogy.

Broader Connections

• Cultural-erasure denial licensed apartheid and Native American dispossession #corroborates (0.85) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 385
• Cartographic naming or omitting names legitimizes colonial claims to inhabited land #exemplifies (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1405
• Humanist defenses of native rights legitimized imperial acquisition #contradicts (0.80)
• The “cannibal” label classified which natives would submit to colonial rule #expands (0.80)
• Colonial moral epithets encoded specific class and racial transgressions #expands (0.78)
• Vedic texts coined stigmatising terms for indigenous non-Aryan populations #exemplifies (0.75)
• Colonial ethnic labels measured threat level rather than actual ethnicity #qualifies (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1100