War, murder, slavery, extermination, and debauchery,—this has again and again been the result of carrying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and the heathen without the law.
This passage from his influential work critiques the violent and destructive outcomes often masked by claims of civilizing and evangelizing non-European peoples.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.