Machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,--all this, with vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers!
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,--all this…”
Editor's note · Context
This quote starkly critiques the brutal realities of colonial conquest, highlighting the hypocrisy of civilization claims.
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If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.