The colonizer’s civilizing narrative turned lethal exploitation into an ethical obligation

Evidence

A dichotomy of us versus them was established in which the European self was assumed to be a complete individual and the non-European other an incomplete one. The colonizer thus assumed the “obligation”—the “burden,” even—of exploiting the colonized in the name of civilizing them. In the eyes of the colonizer, the violent cost of the enterprise to “modernize” the “primitives” was inevitable yet necessary, even if this meant working individuals to death. Indeed, the most inhuman treatment was not seen as unethical because it was not believed to be inflicted on full human beings; violence was merely a feature of the economic mode of production. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 248

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The last sentence - that inhumanity was acceptable because its victims were not deemed full humans - is the book’s moral core and anticipates the claim that data processing treats people as mere resources.
• XREF: Directly foreshadows the frame the reader is charting: if data is the ‘resource’ and users are the ‘primitives’ seen as incomplete, then platform profiling recapitulates this logic. — connects to: Celebrating colonized culture can mask complicity with material exploitation — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 139; Colonial reformers’ ethical indignation coexisted with colonial privilege; Colonial officials justified coercion as a legitimate corollary of the civilizing mission (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial officials justified coercion as a legitimate corollary of the civilizing mission #corroborates (0.92)
• The white man’s burden myth framed colonial exploitation as a noble sacrifice. #corroborates (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 77
• Colonial emergency violence was framed as moral education of the colonized #corroborates (0.85)
• Celebrating colonized culture can mask complicity with material exploitation #corroborates (0.82) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 139
• Colonial reformers’ ethical indignation coexisted with colonial privilege #qualifies (0.75)