Rudyard Kipling- The White Man's Burden?

Question

what does this part of the poem reveal about Kiplings attitude toward Africans and Asians?

"Take up the White Man's Burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go blind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half child"

Answer 1

I've always thought this was the most misunderstood of Kipling's poems.  It is often thought (usually by those who've not read them properly) that these verses show him to be a bigot, a racist and a white supremacist.  Whilst this description does undeniably fit many of Kipling's race and generation, it is an unfair jusgment on him.  Certainly, he thought the British Empire was a good thing; and that we were doing the world a favour by spreading the benefits of western civilisation.  Indeed, he thought it our moral duty ("burden") to do so.  But not for our benefit.  One verse has always struck me -

".....the savage wars of peace;

Fill full the mouth of famine, and bid the sickness cease."

If that's not a definition of Oxfam/Band Aid/Medecins sans frontiers, then I don't know what it is.  

Consider also the last line of the poem - in which he plainly declares that the "native people" will be the white man's peers.

Answer 2

Personally, I think he was making fun of the Colonial British, being sarcastic about the 'burden' they had taken upon themselves in order to plunder the riches of those continents.  The British kidded themselves that they were doing the World a favour by colonising and taking over other people's countries.  Kipling, of course, was one of them, but he truly loved India and the Indian people.  This shows clearly in many of the stories he wrote about India.