Paired Texts > The White Man's Burden

Reverend H.T. Johnson wrote this poem in response to Kipling's "The White Man's Burden."

Upon arriving to the island "Juana"--present-day Cuba--Italian explorer Christopher Columbus wrote this letter to the benefactor of his voyage about the rich landscape and curious people he encountered in this promising new territory.

In "If," the speaker sets out a list of rules by which he thinks his son should live.

In Mark Twain's "The War Prayer," a stranger visits a congregation praying for victory in war. In front of the entire congregation, this stranger outlines the cost on human life that this victory would entail. "The War Prayer" is Twain's scathing indictment on war and blind patriotism. 

In "Those Kids Never Got to Go Home," the article discusses recent pleas from the Rosebud Sioux nation to reclaim the remains of former students of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

In "The Wounded Knee Massacre," a variety of personal accounts shed light on the violent conflict between the Sioux and American soldiers on December 29, 1890.

This informational text about the history of South Africa explains how apartheid was used to separate and discriminate against non-white South Africans.

The Royal Museum of Central Africa still contains artifacts that celebrate, rather than condemn, the history of colonization and planners are trying to figure out how to renovate the museum.

In "Endless Summer Job," a successful author recounts a formative experience from her youth and reveals that even great personal success cannot shield us from the scars of racism.

In these excerpts from Frederick Douglass' autobiography, African American hero and champion for the Freedmen of America tells audiences how he learned to read. 

In Excerpt from Pedro's Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land, Marcos Gonsalez explores a new way of belonging in the world through the lens of his experiences as a "tourist." Pair “The White Man’s Burden” with Excerpt from Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land and ask students to discuss the modern legacy of colonialism and its foundational racial stereotypes. In “The White Man’s Burden,” who is the speaker’s audience, and what is the speaker calling upon them to do? In stanza 5 of the poem, what is the speaker’s attitude toward the unspecified indigenous people to be colonized? In paragraphs 4 and 5 of Excerpt from Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land, the author notes that tourists in Mexico “want a landscape that is fit to be consumed with little or no resistance,” and that their “quest to experience and know mimics far too closely the conquerors of yesterday” and the “power dynamics which gave shape to this unequal, this suffering, Americas.” Explain the connection between the narrator’s observations about modern tourism in Mexico and the earlier belief system represented in the poem. How would the narrator in Excerpt from Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land respond to the speaker in “White Man’s Burden” and vice versa?