Paternalistic racism might as well be a central tenet of certain political movements — whose entire ideology is that certain humans are not fully equal as thinking moral agents in the world.
The new “scientific racism”.
Developed countries are rich after centuries of extracting natural resources, to the point that Europe is nearly deforested, American rivers in the rust belt used to catch on fire from chemical pollution, and we destroyed a pacific atoll with over 20 nuclear bombs.
A little rich for us to suddenly care about the coral so much that we can lecture developing countries about it. In this case, it doesn’t seem these are the acts of desperate people, but the arrogance of someone who will probably never face hardship beyond “ramen profitability” saying desperation is no excuse is astounding.
I am calling out exactly that sentiment, because it removes the intelligence, agency, and morality from the people you’re discussing by reducing them to animals. You call them lessers and stop holding them to the same standard — and that so many did so here, despite poverty being unrelated, is precisely the evidence their motivation for doing so was racial stereotypes and not facts.
You see the same with, eg, excusing gangland violence as “poverty”, despite areas with much higher poverty (including foreign nations) not experiencing the same anti-social behavior.