@bwaber @timnitGebru Okay, I'm reading the paper. It's pretty interesting in many ways.
I think, yes, the "these guys hate indigenous people" take is deeply wrong. If there's a bias here, it's one that requires taking several steps back and probably ends up being a bias in entire cultural worldviews and methods, not the authors' views.
One (valid?) interpretation of their results: they found that colonizers set up really awful (extractive) institutions in some places, presumably destroying any preexisting institutions, and non-extractive ones in other places (again, I'm guessing destroying any preexisting institutions). The extractive institutions were very bad for the residents of the nations, and those nations continue to suffer from their effects. The non-extractive institutions are associated with better outcomes then and now.
What I'm reading does not suggest that the institutions established by colonizing nations (even the "good" institutions) were better than what existed when the colonizers arrived, much less what might have developed had they not arrived. That seems firmly beyond anything the authors studied.
The authors seem to only be saying that nations where colonizers set up extractive institutions have done worse, economically, than nations where non-extractive institutions were established.
so: super evil colonialism = worse than not-as-evil colonialism.
Nobody wants to say that colonialism was good, but clearly it can be even worse, sometimes.
I don't see anything where the authors are interpreting any of their data to mean that colonialism was actually good for the nations they colonized. Rather, the authors are essentially saying, "Colonialism happened. Sometimes it had worse outcomes than others. What factors account for those variations?"
I'm (at least for now) not convinced these authors' work whitewashes or justifies colonialism at all.
I suppose a person who insists that there should be no identification of the differential effects of colonialism (presumably because colonialism is wrong therefore every outcome must be painted as equally bad as every other outcome) might have problems with an attempt to identify why some colonized countries have done better, economically, than others.
But I think the authors are actually saying "some did worse because some colonization was super extremely bad instead of just awful."
