Public humanitarian language masked private economic motives in imperial expansion

Evidence

While US leaders publicly debated the colonial peoples’ capacity for civilization and assimilation, they privately debated military bases, puppet politics, natural resources, foreign markets, and war costs. This public humanitarian debate, which was also a private political-economic debate, became a twentieth-century staple as the American Empire publicly and privately warred to extend its sphere of influence. At home and abroad, a profound political racism cast non-Whites as incapable of self-rule, or capable of self-rule one day—in order to justify both their subjection and the resulting socioeconomic disparities. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 751

Categorization

• XREF: This directly instantiates Kendi’s core inversion: policy (subjection, economic extraction) precedes the racist ideas (incapacity for self-rule) that justify it. Also echoes the reader’s existing discomfort that well-meaning assimilationist language masks material motives. — connects to: Nazi imperialist expansion reconciled the Mittelstand to big business rather than challenging it — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 503; Early geopoliticians rationalized imperial expansion through national destiny ideologies — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1741; Free trade rhetoric concealed British imperial violence and famine causation — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 260 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Kendi frames ‘capable of self-rule one day’ as itself racist (assimilationist). Worth checking how this maps to the ignorance→hate→discrimination model being tested.