Despite being politically conservative and despite the casual racism that occasionally pops up in his fiction (mostly the early work), Edgar Rice Burroughs was no friend of colonialism or of white supremacy. That is evinced by the somewhat savage satire on Kipling's famed 'Burden' poem, published before ERB wrote the Tarzan and Barsoom books that made his name.
The Black Man’s Burden
Take
up the white man’s burden,
The yoke ye sought to spurn;
And
spurn your father's customs;
Your father’s temples burn.
O
learn to love and honor
The white God's favored sons.
Forget
the white-haired fathers
Fast lashed to mouths of guns.
Take
up the white man’s burden,
Your own was not enough;
He’ll
burden you with taxes;
But though the road be rough,
“To
him who waits,” remember,
“All things in time shall come;”
The white man’s culture brings you
The white man’s
God, and rum.
Take
up the white man’s burden;
’Tis called “protectorate,”
And lift your voice in thanks to
The God ye well might
hate.
Forget your exiled brothers;
Forget your boundless
lands;
In acres that they gave for
The blood upon their
hands.
Take
up the white man’s burden;
Poor simple folk and free;
Abandon nature’s freedom,
Embrace his “Liberty;”
The goddess of the white man
Who makes you free in name;
But in her heart your color
Will brand you “slave”
the same.
Take
up the white man’s burden;
And learn by what you’ve lost
That white men called as counsel
Means black mean pays
the cost.
Your right to fertile acres
Their priests will
teach you well
Have gained your fathers only
A desert
claim in hell.
Take
up the white man’s burden;
Take it because you must;
Burden
of making money;
Burden of greed and lust;
Burden of
points strategic,
Burden of harbors deep,
Burden of
greatest burdens;
Burden, these burdens to keep.
Take
up the white man’s burden;
His papers take, and read;
’Tis
all for your salvation;
The white man knows not greed.
For
you he’s spending millions—
To him, more than his God—
To
make you learned, and happy,
Enlightened, cultured, broad.
Take
up the white man’s burden
While he makes laws for you,
That
show your fathers taught you
The things you should not do.
Cast off your foolish feathers,
Your necklace, beads, and
paint;
Buy raiment for your mother,
Lest fairer sisters
faint.
Take
up the white man’s burden;
Go learn to wear his clothes;
You
may look like the devil;
But nobody cares who knows.
Peruse
a work of Darwin—
Thank gods that you're alive—
And
learn the reason clearly:
The fittest alone survive.
Edgar
Rice Burroughs (c.1898)
It may be noted that interracial marriage appears and is condoned right from the start in Burroughs's fiction. Or maybe inter-species marriage in the books set on Mars?
