An actual argument I recently saw:
Person B: “Any site which contains slurs against trans people in its sign up process is unreliable” (was referring to k!wifarms)
Person A: “Slurs aren’t considered bad in most countries”
Person B: “That doesn’t justify their usage. For example, conversion therapy isn’t considered bad or banned in most countries, that doesn’t mean conversion therapy is justified or good.”
Person A: “What are you talking about? Conversion therapy is banned in most countries”
Person B: “Shows a diagram showing that conversion therapy is only banned in a handful of countries”
Person A: “I mean in most civilized countries”
I’ve seen lots of other people refer to countries as civilized or uncivilized in similar contexts. Is this generally considered to be racist?
Debatable what “civilized” is, but I imagine most westerns consider themselves “civilized” and developing countries to be “uncivilized”. It has colonialist vibes and is not necessarily racist, but can be quite ignorant and prejudiced.
Christians invaded many countries and pretend to make them “civilized” but instead enslaved their people and treated them like animals. Pretty far from civil if you ask me. The US considers itself civilized yet it has a death penalty, just like Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and a bunch of other countries. Greece introduced a 6-day work-week which hasn’t been a thing in Europe since the industrial revolution, a time we would now consider quite uncivilized. Israel is currently committing genocide under the guise of self-protection and will not listen to reason, yet they probably consider themselves quite civilized.
It seems to me like “civilized” is a form elitism that can be quite close to racism, depending on who you talk to.