The White Man's Burden – Pierluigi Mancinelli

Let it be known that the white men have come. Let it be known that we have labored under him intensely, and despise him for subjecting us to grueling drudgery. Alas, let it also be known that I see in the white man reflections of the very essence that lay within you, me, and every other man of our kin present here. I see in his eyes the pain of multitudes of his fellows lost—just as we have lost, and pain for those who we have seen fallen. I see in him the will to smother the earth—as has made itself evident to me when we ourselves laid waste to the dwellings of men nearby that we now happen to consider our equal, but who in other times would prove to be but discontinuations for the toss of our spears, in a struggle against a popular enemy.

But most clearly I see in the white man’s eyes a fire, the nectar of rage that resides in all men, and that transcends all things living by the natural order inherited from creation—from the hue-varied man, to the lion, and the deeds often done by the savage idols wherein we manifest our depths, and which they, as us, have in the past adored, and continue to adore and pray to as if they were not but cold and inanimate thoughts and objects reflecting the abyss of our soul and the compassion often found therein. A compassion that resides along hate, and which brings us to ephemeral highs, and savage lows portrayed as being the influences of nought, instead of our own undertakings.

What I preach to you today brothers is that yes; the white man has brutalized, but let not for an instant your mind make you believe that we have not done similarly in the past. Let not us be like he who sees a man of different complexion as “another man”—but let it be us who embrace the fact that under different circumstances it would be us soaked in the blood of those who have fallen to us; and willingly so would we—as they have—accept that benediction upon the victory or our kind, and in-so-doing the sanguine affirmation of our actions. So my brothers, while indeed the white man’s existence must be brought to an end upon our shores, it must be made again the shores not where we live in the pretentious fantasy of harmony, but the shores where we as men who act by nature bring back savagery upon our own. And so we can be freed and inflict these very pains currently restricted to our palette upon others, as is done and is expected, from the creature known as “Man”.

And let it also be known that today in these colonial times, my reckoning of great pains doomed upon this land—perhaps by prolonged affects of the white man’s havoc—shall be principally pains inflicted by us upon those who carry our very resemblance. And that these shall be carried out not under false-pretext and blame, but under the banner of being Man, and the call that Man emits, which sings vociferously from veiled quarters within psyche: “sorrow through want”.