European tolerance narratives erase colonization and the material underwriting of generosity.

Evidence

The first omission in Wikan’s narrative is of course colonization itself. In one fell swoop, Europeans move from being colonizers to becoming people intent on being honourable towards their former subjects. Importantly, the material relationship between colony and metropole is nowhere in this picture, and we could not guess that European generosity might in fact have been underwritten by decolonization itself and the demands of ‘restless’ natives themselves for recognition. European tolerance arises out of the European character itself, a misplaced tolerance given the natives’ failure to be reborn. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 280

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to Canadian elision of its own colonial past that Razack flags elsewhere—same national-innocence structure as Norway.

Related

• Anti-forced-marriage narratives erase colonization from the story (similarity 0.89)