The white man's burdenRudyard Kipling
The white man's burden
by Rudyard Kipling · first published 1899
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This is, in fact, quite relevant. The poem "If" is, largely, an endorsement of traditional norms of masculinity, and the same sort of far-right conservatism is the source of the racist prejudices in The White Man's Burden--and in his other famous work, The Jungle Book. In fact, the connection between the poem "If" and colonialism is even more direct: > To take one example, Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If…’ (1895), which acts…
on “If – A Poem by Rudyard Kipling” ↗…well-being depends on their actions and inactions. They are just as race-centred as white (or black) nationalists, they just approach the situation from a different position. They can both use Kipling's The White Man's Burden as a guide, they just view it as an indictment against 'the white man' instead of a proclamation of manifest destiny. They deny agency to 'non-white' people by claiming they can only truly reach their…
on “Twitter engineers replacing racially loaded tech terms like 'master,' 'slave'” ↗…seductive to a certain type of mindset, the paternalistic and ripe for abuse nature of this idea should be self-evident. It is the progressive equivalent of Kipling's (deeply racist and colonialist) "The White Man's Burden", only here the it is the progressive who are being exhorted to bring enlightenment to the benighted ignorant. But let's go further and suppose that it were justified somehow, we'd still be faced with…
on “Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis” ↗…don't like them. It's how we learn and grow (also like a kid would actually understand or conflate them in this modern time). But to answer your question, I assume it's because Rudyard Kipling wrote "The White Man's Burden" (1899). It drives people apoplectic, although anyone with any history knowledge would realize that post wwI the Japanese applied an even stricter interpretation of this philosophy to Micronesia (obviously…
on “Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books” ↗