With apologies to Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man’s burden.
Send forth your sturdy kin,
And load them down with Bibles
And cannon-balls and gin.

Throw in a few diseases
To spread the tropic climes,
For there the healthy niggers
Are quite behind the times.

And don’t forget the factories.
On those benighted shores
They have no cheerful iron mills,
Nor eke department stores.

They never work twelve hours a day
And live in strange content,
Altho they never have to pay
A single sou of rent.

Take up the White Man’s burden,
And teach the Philippines
What interest and taxes are
And what a mortgage means.

Give them electrocution chairs,
And prisons, too, galore,
And if they seem inclined to kick,
Then spill their heathen gore.

They need our labor question, too,
And politics and fraud—
We’ve made a pretty mess at home,
Let’s make a mess abroad.

And let us ever humbly pray
The Lord of Hosts may deign
To stir our feeble memories
Lest we forget—the Maine.

Take up the White’s Man’s burden.
To you who thus succeed
In civilizing savage hordes,
They owe a debt, indeed;

Concessions, pensions, salaries,
And privilege and right—
With outstretched hands you raised to bless
Grab everything in sight.

Take up the White Man’s burden
And if you write in verse,
Flatter your nation’s vices
And strive to make them worse.

Then learn that if with pious words
You ornament each phrase,
In a world of canting hypocrites
This kind of business pays.

Artwork
White Man's Burden 2020
digital drawing
Gavin Bunner @gavinbunner

Poem
The Real White Man's Burden 1899
Ernest Crosby

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Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2020

Presented with Durden and Ray

Exhibition Team
Steven Wolkoff
Alexandra Wiesenfeld
Jenny Hager

Artists
Eugene Ahn, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Carlos Beltran Arechiga, Arezoo Bharthania, Jorin Bossen, Debra Broz, Nancy Buchanan, Gavin Bunner, Ismael de Anda III, Jacci Den Hartog, Yasmine Diaz, Tomory Dodge, Tom Dunn, Roni Feldman, Yrneh Gabon, Bia Gayotto, Mark Steven Greenfield, Kio Griffith, Gronk, Jenny Hager, Katie Herzog, Geraldine Hudson, Phung Huynh, Carmine Iannaccone, Bryan Ida, Ichiro Irie, Ben Jackel, Monica Juarez, Alexander Kroll, David Leapman, Constance Mallinson, Dakota Noot, Sean Noyce, Claudia Parducci, Lara Porzak, Rebecca Ripple, Gabby Rosenberg, Christopher Russell, Liza Ryan, Roland Seto, Theodore Svenningsen, Holly Tempo, Doug Wichert, Alexandra Wiesenfeld, Steven Wolkoff, Torie Zalben

About Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2020