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White man's burden

Posted by Pivvy on May 12, 2002

In Reply to: White man's burden posted by Word Camel on May 11, 2002

: : Where did the phrase "the white man's burden" come from? What lays behind it in terms of history and philosophy? Why did "white men" feel this sense of burden? Was it guilt for something done in the past, or something else? (By the way, I'm a white man and I don't know at all what this feeling is.)

: It's from Rudyard Kipling's 1865 poem The White Man's Burden (see below)

: Basically it's a sort of lament on the part of the Imperialists bemoaning the burden of being racially superior.

Okay. But now that I have read the poem (if this really does give the philosophy in a nutshell), there is also a sense of duty in it. The whole idea od thankless tasks and all that. I mean, colonization and the system was bad in a lot of ways, but these people must have felt there was a noble purpose, some help to be given.

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