Any ladies in the house? Good—now you can just sit back down and rest your delicate tootsies—this poem isn't for you. "White" may be the most incendiary part of the "The White Man's Burden" title, but "Man" comes in a close second. Actually, it's more like 1 and 1a. That's because our speaker seems to think that men—and men alone—are capable of the difficult work and hardship that he's arguing for. It's more than that, though. This work—going overseas and forcing local people to act like Americans and Europeans—is designed to help "sons" discover their "manhood." Just as the poem makes a whole host of assumptions about race, it does the same about gender.
Questions About Men and Masculinity
- What effect does the word "sons" in line 3 have on the poem?
- What does it take to be a man, according to the speaker?
- Why do you think there is so much judgment—of the locals and of their peers—directed toward the men in this poem?
Chew on This
We didn't think it was possible, but this poem is as sexist as it is racist.
The concept of manliness is more important to this poem than the concept of race is.