I get why you’d say that, but some context might help. It’s an MLK quote, who is using that in a theological sense. I’m sure he was well aware that progress does not just happen, but that people have to make it happen, but was appealing to the religious side of white America, to help them understand the need for progressive change… He was, after all, a preacher in one of the most progressive church traditions in America (the Black church). And I sometimes say it, but qualified - that the arc of history must BE bent to justice.
Very true.
Lots of people are deeply invested in connecting the classical world with modern Europe, which was certainly a major part of the project of the rise of the modern European university system (which of course, both American and Canadian systems are modeled on). The Romans and the Greeks would not have thought of themselves as Europeans in the modern sense, but most certainly would have been orienting themselves towards the Mediterranean, because that’s where civilization was - Europeans were merely barbarians to be conquered.
Many modern historians have certainly made the argument that the most “advanced” civilization for much of history was China (scholars in China, of course, make this argument, but western historians, too). But then again, there is that teleologial language creeping in again… “advanced”…
