Paternalism

Paternalism is the premise that the government or the church must make decisions for people on the basis that those people don't know their own best interests or can't be trusted to act in their own best interests. The history of colonialism is a history of paternalism. It was just better public relations to say that you were going to these countries not to rob and enslave them but to bring them the gift of civilization.

Civilizing Influence

Of course, in order for the "bringing civilization" excuse to hold any water, any existing civilization they encountered would have to be swept under the rug. That was easily done though, because the only people writing books about the colonizing of the southern hemisphere were Europeans, the people doing the colonization. They wrote flatteringly of their efforts and their exasperation with the natives and how beloved they were by their new subjects. The natives wanted them there, according to the colonizers. Besides, the colonizers felt a responsibility to these backwards, benighted people. When it was suggested, for example that running a colony like India was too expensive and complicated to be sustainable, the excuse for not leaving was that it would leave India to descend into chaos and disorder. "They need us. We tried making them more like us, but they're hopeless. They can't be trusted to run their own country. If we left it would be a disaster." etc.

Never mind that the natives had their own civilizations and cities and governments before the colonizers got there. They had their own literature and cultures even older than the European cultures that colonized them. No, to the colonizing powers they were children in need of fatherly guidance, sometimes stern and sometimes indulgent but always ostensibly acting in the best interest of their newly conquered subjects. If you ask the Chinese or the Indians, they were writing poetry and inventing the printing press back when Europeans were still banging rocks together. I'm sure they viewed the patronizing approach with some consternation. "Excuse me? Whose culture is less advanced?"

Missionary Zeal

But it wasn't the colonizers who started it. It was the missionaries. Maybe more precisely, it was Spain. When they conquered the Americas they justified it with the excuse of bringing Christianity to the ignorant savages so that they could get into heaven. They believed that they were doing the native inhabitants a favor, even if it was being done with a gun to their heads. Religion was furthermore thought of as a civilizing influence. It was a short jump from saying "We're bringing them salvation" to "We're bringing them civilization". Catholicism, the brand of religion they were bringing, was rife with paternal self-reference. The priests are addressed as "father" for this reason. Their efforts in bringing Catholicism to their colonies was a great success. Most of the countries the Spanish colonized are still majority Catholic countries.

This was also the beginning of racism as a concept because most of the people below the equator are varying shades of brown, and in order to set yourself up as being there to civilize them, they had to be made into savages and children in need of civilizing. The paternalistic narrative required them to be like children. Once that ball was set in motion the scientific European minds at the time set about justifying that natural inferiority with scientific-sounding reasons and classifications. It was the beginning of scientific racism. Much of their assumption of superiority was achieved by applying their own European values to the cultures they were colonizing. They objected to customs they deemed "barbaric" simply because they were not like their customs and were therefore wrong.

Death by Burning in History

Acceptance of homosexuality is one example. Many of the cultures the Europeans colonized had no problem with same-sex relationships before the Europeans got there. But the Europeans got to call them barbaric even while the Europeans were hanging and burning each other at the stake for crimes such as homosexuality and witchcraft. Sometimes back home in Europe and sometimes right in front of their new subjects in the colonies. Needless to say, the example of "civilization" that the colonizers and missionaries set for them made the natives somewhat skeptical toward them and their intentions. There was a Taino chief named Hatuey who was burned alive at the stake by the Spaniards. They offered him conversion before they lit the pile of wood under him. They told him it was to save his soul, so that he would go straight to heaven. They were still going to burn him, but they were going to give him one last chance to die a Christian. Hatuey asked if Spaniards all went to heaven too. When the priest told him that they did, Hatuey said he would rather go to hell than spend eternity surrounded by such cruel people. I think the prospect of not being able to get away from the Spanish even in heaven was just too much for him.

Manifest Destiny

What the Europeans started, the Americans took up. They called their founding group "The Founding Fathers". When they signed treaties with the natives (and then promptly broke them), it was in the name of the "Great Father", which was what they called the US government when dealing with the tribal leaders. They shot all of the buffalo and herded the tribes onto reservations for "protection" saying that the tribes would be safe there, we promise. All of it served to make the tribes dependent on the government for everything. Then the government decided to team up with the missionaries. Their policy was called "Manifest Destiny", and what that meant was that God had told them that the world belonged to them and they had a responsibility to take it and make it over in their own image.

Response to Learning About the Indigenous Residential School System

The US government began taking native children from their parents in the name of civilizing them. The children were put in "boarding schools" and forbidden from speaking their native language. Their culture was stripped from them. They were put in western clothes and given European names and instructed in Christianity. If they resisted they were severely punished and sometimes they died of abuse. America only stopped doing this in 2007, by which time most of the schools had been closed down and instead of being called "boarding schools" or "Indian schools" they were renamed "group homes" and instead of being exclusively for Native American children they accepted poor white children too. Native children still make up the majority of the children in them. It has had a devastating effect on both native families and native culture. It was billed as being "for their own good", but its real purpose was to break their spirits and destroy their identification with their culture. Unsurprisingly they grew up into broken adults disconnected from their culture and family attachments. This was done in other places like Canada and Australia, but nowhere was it so explicit and systematic as it was in the United States. At this time Native American families are protesting the child removals as inhumane and unnecessary, and they're making progress toward stopping the practice to save their culture.

Slavery

Paternalism was also used as moral justification for slavery. "They don't know what's good for them. They're like children. They can't govern themselves. They'd never survive without us, poor things. They're happier under slavery than they would be free. We take such good care of them after all." This was the belief that slave-holding states used to rationalize holding other people in captivity and profiting from their unpaid labor. It's also what they used to justify their cruelty toward them, because when children were bad, they needed to be punished. Every effort was made to prevent the enslaved from learning to read or become in any way educated. If they did, then the paternalistic argument would fall apart. Even after the abolition of slavery the newly freed people were prevented from getting higher education or holding office or voting, because they might prove that they were in no way mentally inferior to their former captors. If they proved their equality then it would be awkward because it would show that the paternalistic excuse that had been used to justify holding people in bondage had been a big lie.

Even after many years had passed since the abolition of slavery, efforts were made to cut off the children and grandchildren of the freed people from education or any chance of bettering themselves. Any attempt to assert their equality was met with aggression. Whole black communities were burned to the ground if they happened to be in the way or were showing signs of becoming more successful than their white neighbors. All because their white neighbors had internalized the ideas of paternalism and race, and they found the idea of people they thought of as their inferiors becoming more successful than them offensive. It went against everything they believed. It shattered their illusions about themselves.

Sexism and Paternalism

Women have also been infantalized and treated as children in need of guidance by men. According to the paternalist rationale, women are too emotional and don't know their own minds. Women are like children and need a firm hand making the decisions for them. Women need protection. (But protection from whom?). The laws began early on in America to restrict the legal rights of women and their role to that of wife and mother. Women were not allowed to vote on any of the laws concerning them until 1919, and part of that was only because the recently freed slaves had challenged laws disenfranchising them. The US was put in the position of giving black women the vote before white women could vote. This was awkward, but the political pressure to give women suffrage was great enough that they were grudgingly allowed to take part in their own governing. 

Anti-Suffragism

The arguments against women voting were many. Among them was the argument that married men would gain an extra vote on the assumption that wives would naturally vote as their husbands voted. It was viewed as an unfair advantage for married men. Then there was the assumption that women didn't know their own minds and would vote against their own interests and everybody else's in their foolishness. Worse, they might expect to take part in leadership or run for election themselves! "What an absurd idea", said the men of the time. Religion at this time had gone to a lot of trouble making women's role subordinate to men. To have one in authority over men was just unthinkable. And anyway, how would she carry out her wifely and motherly duties and the responsibilities of an elected office or a management position, etc? Women didn't have the minds for politics or government or higher education. Women were frail and childlike and had neither the intellect or temperament to be given equal rights with men according to opponents of suffrage.

There were women who opposed getting the vote for themselves. They were the women who had internalized the paternalistic narrative they'd been brought up with and believed that a woman's place was in the home and that women should restrict themselves to their own sphere, the traditional one. The vote opened the door to women breaking out of that role. It also represented a huge demographic change in the voting population. There was even one lone voice in the form of anarchist Emma Goldman who objected on the grounds that women were more likely to try to legislate morality. When the anti-suffragists were defeated and women were extended the vote and theoretically the full rights of citizenship, they formed the Women's National Republican Club and used their vote to try to sabotage any advances in women's rights because they thought women getting the vote was a terrible idea. Ironically they had themselves done exactly what they prophesied that women would do if they got the vote. They voted against their own interests. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by them being willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. Interestingly, they also brought about what Emma Goldman had feared would happen and used their vote to legislate morality along paternalistic lines. They're still doing it, essentially making themselves collaborators in their own oppression. 

In closing, I would posit that treating another adult as a child is one of the deepest forms of disrespect. It has caused untold suffering in the world in the name of "civilization". What makes it even more damaging is that it precludes the possibility of the people it's done to to ever grow up and make their own decisions. It holds us back and prevents us from growing as a society. Maybe it's time we re-evaluated our policies and removed the paternalistic laws in order to allow for progress forward. When a policy does more harm than good to the recipients and shows this to be consistent over multiple centuries, perhaps it's time to admit that it doesn't work and try something new. Paternalism isn't paternal so much as it is patronizing.