Manifest destiny deployed civilization-savagery metaphors tying racism to anthropocentrism

Evidence

One common justification was a classic example of valuehierarchized thinking: the concept of “manifest destiny”—the ideology that it was the destiny of whites to spread over the whole continent, because white culture was inherently superior to that of the tribal peoples. As historian David Wallace Adams notes, “the basic idea was that all societies could be classified on a scale marking the various stages of evolution from savagism to civilization” (Adams, 1995, p. 13). As we have pointed out, the language used is crucial: “Civilized” and “Savage” are part of the metaphoric system within racism, indicating the merging of anthropocentric assumptions woven into the process of inferiorization. Native Americans (along with Africans), of course, were placed on the savage end of the scale and eventually defined as biologically closer to animals. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1194

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the savagism-to-civilization scale as a concrete instance of the book’s value-hierarchy concept applied to settler-colonial land taking.
• XREF: Pays off ch10/ch12 claims that racism depends on devaluing animals and nature; ties to ch25’s Great Chain of Being. — connects to: Racism depends logically on the prior devaluation of animals. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 576; A ranked thinking about beings underlies racism, sexism, and anthropocentrism alike — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 412; Manifest Destiny persists as a living imperial ideology applied against Muslim populations — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 228

Broader Connections

• A ranked thinking about beings underlies racism, sexism, and anthropocentrism alike #expands (0.85) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 412
• Manifest Destiny persists as a living imperial ideology applied against Muslim populations #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 228