Here’s Why Calling Ukraine ‘Civilised’ Is A Problem
The word civilised comes with centuries of racist baggage.
It’s hard to believe that Russia declared war on Ukraine less than a month ago.
Ukrainian men have been banned from leaving the country under a conscription decree, others are fleeing the country in droves and violence waged against innocent people is showing no sign of slowing. Meanwhile, people of colour are having a harder time fleeing Ukraine than others, with some even experiencing violence from white nationalists at the Polish border.
But as news media scrambles to cover the crisis, we saw a recurring motif from Western reporters: how could a war break out in Ukraine? A “civilised” country? Is this not Europe?
Take, for example, this tweet from US political commentator Michael Knowles, born in 1990 — since which there have been many wars.
It just occurred to me that this is the first major war between civilized nations in my lifetime.
— Michael Knowles š¤š¼ (@michaeljknowles) February 27, 2022
You may also recall whenĀ CBS News reporter Charlie D’Agata remarked a few weeks ago, reporting from Kyiv: “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilised, relatively European, I have to choose those words carefully too, city, where you wouldn’t expect [war] or hope that it’s going to happen.”
If those are this man’s carefully chosen words, what happens when he just lets rip?
āCivilizedā
pic.twitter.com/AiU7uVmjMr— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) February 26, 2022
And look, perhaps at first glance, this media response doesn’t seem so bad. They’re just saying that we’re not used to seeing wars in European countries, right? True, I guess. But the word ‘civilised’ comes with centuries of racist baggage.
A (Very) Brief History Of The Word ‘Civilised’
That baggage is bound up with the suggestion that humans exist on a spectrum of uncivilised to civilised, with some existing further along the continuum than others. What’s weird is that Europeans have always considered themselves to be the most evolved on that spectrum, with us non-whites historically down at the other end. How extremely convenient for Europeans, who also happened to ideate the concept!
As we know, the idea that certain ‘races’ were civilised than others was used to justify the colonisation of Ā “less civilised” countries, and more recently, military intervention. This rationale was referred to as the “civilising mission“, which was used, in particular, to justify the French invasion of other countries from the 17th century onwards.
But we don’t need to go Martinique to see the legacies of these ideologies: so-called Australia was invaded on the fundamentally racist basis that Aboriginal people weren’t “civilised” like the Europeans who enacted violence on them, which Europeans decided didn’t give them a right to the ownership of their own land.
Similarly, white settlers forcibly removed generations of First Nations children from their parents, putting them into (civilising?) missions and forcing them to convert to Christianity. This practice was carried out until as recently as the 1970s.
Even today, you’ll meet Australians who assert, without irony, that this exercise in mass kidnapping was carried out for theĀ Indigenous peoples’ “own good” — they were being ‘civilised’, were they not?
Remember The South African Farmers?
It’s always interesting to note when the word ‘civilised’ rears its head, and look, it’s usually when someone white is perceived as being under threat. Former Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, known for his draconian immigration policies and efforts to demeanĀ refugees, used it in 2018 after reports that white South African farmers were being subjected to violence.
“I do think, on the information that I’ve seen, people do need help and they need help from a civilised country like ours,” Mr Dutton said at the time, adding that they deserved “special attention”.
Code White: The Immigration Minister takes action pic.twitter.com/9QTr00E5JJ
— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) March 15, 2018
South African activist Tembeka Ngcukaitobi then remarkedĀ that Dutton’s use of the word “civilisation” revived memories of the racism of colonial settlers and the discrimination that took place during South African apartheid.
At the time, the South African Foreign Minister asked Dutton to retract his comments. Dutton’s response to his detractors? “They’re dead to me.”
The Reporters Have A Point
Ghassan Hage, a professor of Social Theory and Anthropology at Melbourne University, remarks that the reporters who bemoan the presence of war in white, western countries are shocked for a reason: white cultures have long fashioned their airs of ‘civility’ through the violent extraction of wealth from non-white, ‘uncivilised’ nations.
“When western reporters in Ukraine say āthis shouldnāt be happening here, this is a western civilised cultureā they know what they are talking about,” Professor Hage tells Junkee, tongue firmly in cheek.
“Among many things, western colonialism involved relegating war, violence and greedy and aggressive exploitation of people and nature to the Third World as to enjoy more civilised conditions in the metropolis,” he continues. “Every peaceful civilised cup of tea in London was dependent on the British wars against, and the violence, meted on colonised people around the world.
“Just as today, every enjoyable cappuccino in Sydney and Melbourne is dependent on the long history of war and violent dispossession of Indigenous people on this continent, [and] every cappuccino in Tel Aviv is dependent the violence of the Israeli army and settlers towards the Palestinians.”
Hage’s words remind me of British-Pakistani rapper Riz Ahmed’s 2016 track ‘Englistan’: “Politeness mixed with violence/This is England/Racist beef, cakes and tea. They all go together like Do-Re-Mi.”
A Final Word
What we’re doing when we’re calling Ukraine ‘civilised’, saying that war should not be happening here, is reviving antiquated ideologies that have been used, for centuries, to brutalise non-white people; to plunder their homelands, to extract wealth from their countries.
By no means am I saying that we shouldn’t be horrified by what is happening in Ukraine. What I am suggesting is people shouldn’t have to experience war and violence, regardless of their ethnicity. And unfortunately, what is implied by the word “civilised” in Western reporting of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is that war is somehow more justified if it’s happening in non-white countries like Afghanistan, Iran, or Palestine.
In 2022, the mere concept of civilised and uncivilised countries should be an anachronism, but recent coverage of Ukraine’s invasion has made one thing abundantly clear: the weird, racist ideologies wrought in the 17th century remain at large; springing into action when the moment calls for it, working hard to keep the dignity of white folks in check.
Reena Gupta is Junkee’s culture writer. Follow her on Twitter.Ā