# The White Man's Burden - A revelation **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 22, 2006, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682 "2006-08-22T01:04:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/1 "2006-08-22T01:04:05Z")
I’m a reasonably well informed individual, and yet until a few minutes ago referencing off a thread in GD, I no idea exactly where this term "[The White Man’s Burden"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden) came from. > [@](#): > > The White Man’s Burden is a poem by the British poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure’s in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands.[1] “The White Man’s Burden” may be read as supporting the U.S. colonization of the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies [2] or, alternatively, as a warning to the United States of the cost of imperialism.[3] Although Kipling’s poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase “white man’s burden” as a euphemism for imperialism that seemed to justify the policy as a noble enterprise.[4] > > The poem is written in seven verses, following an ABCBDEFE rhyme scheme. At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule people of other nations (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the “burden” of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocentrism. A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives. It’s apparently from a Rudyard Kipling poem that very succiently captures expresses the British Imperialist VIctorian zeitgeist. Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man’s burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain, To seek another’s profit And work another’s gain. Take up the White Man’s burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought. Take up the White Man’s burden— No iron rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper— The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living And mark them with your dead. Take up the White Man’s burden, And reap his old reward— The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard— The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:— “Why brought ye us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?” Take up the White Man’s burden— Ye dare not stoop to less— Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples Shall weigh your God and you. Take up the White Man’s burden! Have done with childish days— The lightly-proffered laurel, The easy ungrudged praise: Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/2 "2006-08-22T01:13:36Z")
Henry Labouchère’s response, 1899: Pile on the brown man’s burden To gratify your greed; Go, clear away the “niggers” Who progress would impede; Be very stern, for truly 'Tis useless to be mild With new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Pile on the brown man’s burden; And, if ye rouse his hate, Meet his old-fashioned reasons With Maxims up to date. With shells and dumdum bullets A hundred times made plain The brown man’s loss must ever Imply the white man’s gain. Pile on the brown man’s burden, compel him to be free; Let all your manifestoes Reek with philanthropy. And if with heathen folly He dares your will dispute, Then, in the name of freedom, Don’t hesitate to shoot. Pile on the brown man’s burden, And if his cry be sore, That surely need not irk you– Ye’ve driven slaves before. Seize on his ports and pastures, The fields his people tread; Go make from them your living, And mark them with his dead. Pile on the brown man’s burden, And through the world proclaim That ye are Freedom’s agent– There’s no more paying game! And, should your own past history Straight in your teeth be thrown, Retort that independence Is good for whites alone. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/3 "2006-08-22T01:39:08Z")
Pile on the Black Man’s Burden. 'Tis nearest at your door; Why heed long bleeding Cuba, or dark Hawaii’s shore? Hail ye your fearless armies, Which menace feeble folks Who fight with clubs and arrows and brook your rifle’s smoke. Pile on the Black Man’s Burden His wail with laughter drown You’ve sealed the Red Man’s problem, And will take up the Brown, In vain ye seek to end it, With bullets, blood or death Better by far defend it With honor’s holy breath. Source: H.T. Johnson, “The Black Man’s Burden,” Voice of Missions, VII (Atlanta: April 1899), 1. Reprinted in Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 1975, 183–184. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/4 "2006-08-22T02:16:29Z")
There once was a honkey from Nantucket… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/5 "2006-08-22T02:26:57Z")
I recall from one of Isaac Asimov’s popular histories (words from memory): > [@](#): > > Kipling made it sound almost as if the Americans were going to the Philippines to pull rickshaws for Filipino riders and polish shoes on Filipino feet. It was the other way around, of course, and Kipling knew it. The Filipinos knew it too. From George Orwell’s classic [essay on Kipling:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part17) > [@](#): > > Kipling spent the later part of his life in sulking, and no doubt it was political disappointment rather than literary vanity that account for this. Somehow history had not gone according to plan. After the greatest victory she had ever known, Britain was a lesser world power than before, and Kipling was quite acute enough to see this. The virtue had gone out of the classes he idealized, the young were hedonistic or disaffected, the desire to paint the map red had evaporated. He could not understand what was happening, because he had never had any grasp of the economic forces underlying imperial expansion. It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed ‘natives’, and then you establish ‘the Law’, which includes roads, railways and a court-house. He could not foresee, therefore, that the same motives which brought the Empire into existence would end by destroying it. It was the same motive, for example, that caused the Malayan jungles to be cleared for rubber estates, and which now causes those estates to be handed over intact to the Japanese. The modern totalitarians know what they are doing, and the nineteenth-century English did not know what they were doing. Both attitudes have their advantages, but Kipling was never able to move forward from one into the other. His outlook, allowing for the fact that after all he was an artist, was that of the salaried bureaucrat who despises the ‘box-wallah’ and often lives a lifetime without realizing that the ‘box-wallah’ calls the tune. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/6 "2006-08-22T04:12:34Z")
Could there be a thread on any board anywhere with three more stunning, iconic pieces of writing in the first 5 posts? Thanks folks, you have enriched my day. My life, actually. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/7 "2006-08-30T23:07:15Z")
BTW, **astro,** here’s another classic Kipling apologetic for imperialism: [“A Song of the White Men”.](http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/whitemen.html) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/8 "2006-08-30T23:40:14Z")
I don’t agree with it myself, but there’s a school of thought that says Kipling was actually satirizing imperialism with the poem, not lauding it. I don’t know a lot about Kipling’s life or views, but the idea should probably be noted. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/9 "2006-08-30T23:46:50Z")
And now I see that I got too caught up in reading the poems to realize that the OP’s _other_ quote acknowledged that perspective. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![elelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@elelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elelle)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2006, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/10 "2006-08-31T00:01:54Z")
All aptly posted in the wake of the New Orleans devastation, the most glaring example of this country not doing the right thing by the most vulnerable citizens. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2006, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/11 "2006-08-31T00:29:06Z")
Right. Let’s colonialize New Orleans! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2006, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-white-mans-burden-a-revelation/369682/12 "2006-08-31T04:49:30Z")
If by “colonialize,” you mean “gentrify,” that may be in the cards.