Question

1. In what ways can Kipling's poem be interpreted as being ethnocentric and racist?

Answer 1

First of all, it should be mentioned that Rudyard Kipling was a renowned author of short stories and books, among them the famous The Jungle Book, which tells the story of Mogli. In this sense, it is also worth mentioning the advent of Neocolonialism, which used the notion of race domination to justify the capitalist expansion it wished to undertake. Kipling was one of the minds harnessed by Neocolonialism, and his works, which preached the inferiority of non-white people and, consequently, white supremacy, can be considered racist because they aimed at the reduction of individuals based on racial criteria, at the same time time that can be considered ethnocentric because they place the Caucasian European man as the center of the world, superior to the others, and who, therefore, would have legitimacy to govern everything and everyone.