Liberal human-rights rhetoric racializes by infantilizing those it claims to help

Evidence

Thus, liberalism and human rights discourse effectively masked imperial objectives and imperial violence. “Benevolent hegemony” is a reworking of the white man’s burden and is based on the notion that the United States knows best what is in the interests of developing nations. While the rhetoric is no longer blatantly racist in neocon and realist/liberal circles, its assumptions that people in developing nations are incapable of self-rule or of change from within minus imperial intervention has been part of a bipartisan consensus for a while. Such an attitude still infantilizes and therefore racializes those who disagree with the imperial agenda. In the aftermath of World War II it was about the adoption of modernization programs; in the neoliberal era it is about structural adjustment programs and the neoliberalization of the economy. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 483

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the chapter 8 claims about imperial feminism and childhood metaphor unifying British justifications for denying colonized peoples rights. — connects to: British liberals infantilized Indians to justify denying them democratic rights; Liberal humanitarian rhetoric masks imperial violence and infantilizes its targets — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 471; British liberal thinkers racialized Indians through infantilization without using the word race (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Human rights rhetoric masks imperial assumptions that racialize colonized peoples #expands (0.90)
• Liberal rhetoric can mask imperial racism as benevolence #corroborates (0.80)
• Liberal criticism of overt anti-Muslim hearings masks liberalism’s own racializing policies #exemplifies (0.75)