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October 08, 2002
If I had any sense I guess I'd fear this
At the oddly omnipolitical BlackElectorate.com, there's a link to an article at the well-known antiracist resource, FrontPageMag, titled Leftist Racism:
The British Empire is the best case in point. Britons of that era regarded it as blindingly obvious that they were a superior race especially blessed by God (sound familar?). Yet did they therefore perpetrate pogroms or holocausts against anybody? Far from it. As Christians, they actually saw their superiority as giving them a duty to care for the "lesser" races (Kipling's famous "white man's burden").
Which quote is towards the end of the piece, after the author has assured readers that Hitler was, in fact, Leftist, and anything which says otherwise is part of a Big Lie. In fact, that latter phrase may have been in all caps. I'd rather not re-read the thing to check. Worryingly, the author restricts his attention to racism in Western Europe and the US, and only among white folks in the US at that.
Writing about racism among black people would have meant treating us as subjects rather than objects/victims/martyrs, after all.
The reference to Kipling is. . . confusing.
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.
From The White Man's Burden, by Rudyard Kipling, McClure's Magazine, Feb. 1899.
Except I always read it as mocking the entire notion. Then again, I also don't think Swift was serious about his Modest Proposal.
I'm not a very good American, you see.
The first American to get to grips with the concept of irony!San Francisco: The Daily Telegraph spoke to Jay Fullmer, 38, who became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony.
"It was weird," Fullmer said, "I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and stuff and he said, like, great weather, or something like that. And I thought-wait a minute, it's like, no way is it great weather." said Fullmer.
Fullmer soon realized that the other man's 'mistake' was deliberate. "This guy was pretty cool about it," Fullmer said.
I know that irony doesn't come from elephants.
Want to know more? Make sure you have Java and popups turned off, and visit "The White Man's Burden" and Its Critics.
Posted by Aaron at October 8, 2002 04:07 PM
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