© Global Look Press
Students, who claimed the poem went against what their union stood for, replaced Kipling's 'If' with US civil rights activist Maya Angelou's 'Still I Rise' at Manchester University's student union.
Kipling's poem was put up as part of the union's refurbishment, but Sara Khan, the liberation and access officer, said students should have been consulted beforehand.
"We, as an exec team, believe that Kipling stands for the opposite of liberation, empowerment, and human rights - the things that we, as an SU [student union], stand for," Khan wrote in a Facebook post.
"Well-known as author of the racist poem 'The White Man's Burden', and a plethora of other work that sought to legitimate the British Empire's presence in India and dehumanise people of colour, it is deeply inappropriate to promote the work of Kipling in our SU, which is named after prominent South African anti-Apartheid activist, Steve Biko.
"As a statement on the reclamation of history by those who have been oppressed by the likes of Kipling for so many centuries, and continue to be to this day, we replaced his words with those of the legendary Maya Angelou, a black female poet and civil rights activist."
Manchester University declined to comment saying it was a matter concerning the SU.
A spokesman for Manchester's SU said, according to the Telegraph: "We understand that we made a mistake in our approach to a recent piece of artwork by failing to garner student opinion at the start of a new project. We accept that the result was inappropriate and for that we apologize."
Kipling was popular at the beginning of the 1900s for his children's literature and short stories, becoming the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
His reputation was later mired, however, by claims his literature had racist overtones, with '1984' author George Orwell branding him "morally insensitive" and a "prophet of British imperialism".
Reader Comments
I dunno, I've never kipled.
"Do you like Dickens?"
I dunno, I've never been to one.
"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a poem published by Rudyard Kipling in 1919, which, editor Andrew Rutherford said, contained "age-old, unfashionable wisdom" that Kipling saw as having been forgotten by society and replaced by "habits of wishful thinking."
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
When will they understand the context of the times they are trying to erase? Or is erase the end game?
What next, destroy the pyramids because they resemble like a phallus? Can I still use phallus or have they red flagged that word? to bad phallus, phallus, phallus
R.C.
*I'm aware of my mixed and almost certainly grammatically inaccurate language changes, Also, that neither perfecto nor unique can be 'mui-ed'.
RC
"topple 'racist monster' Kipling, only to replace him with the cloying grandmamma's rockin' chair Afro-kitsch of fricking Maya Angelou. LOL."
Shi' muhth fuh; ain choo got no respect?
Yuh' know? As in R-E-ESPEE-ETC, etc, ect, *
R.C.
Holy Moly!
Look at this list of the studio players for Otis Redding’s version of the song, 'Respect', which I did not know that he wrote:
Musicians
Otis Redding – lead vocals
Booker T. Jones – keyboards, piano
Isaac Hayes – keyboards, piano
Steve Cropper – guitar
Donald Dunn – bass guitar
Al Jackson Jr. – drums
Wayne Jackson – trumpet
Gene Miller – trumpet
Andrew Love – tenor saxophone
Floyd Newman – baritone saxophone
William Bell – backing vocals
Earl Sims – backing vocals
They might have let me clean the ashtrays...nah, not even that.
RC
S.M.O.K.I.N'....[Link]
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken, Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run— Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Why don't we ban the works of Shakespeare and burn all his books because of his highly anti-Semitic play, The Merchant of Venice ? Why don't we demolish his cottage is Stratford-upon -Avon and tear down the Globe Theater? Why don't we destroy the tombs of every English King and Queen in Westminster Abbey, because they were oppressors of the common people? Why don't we tear down Westminster Abbey itself, as a symbol of the corrupt Catholic Church, by whom it was built? Why don't we excavate the whole of the soil of Britain with bulldozers and trucks, and dump it into the Atlantic Ocean, because of 300 years of colonial crimes? Why don't we build a 1-million-megaton nuclear bomb, and blow up the whole Earth, because human beings have walked upon it?
THANK YOU for putting the poem up. (I'd presumed?/ ASSUMEd? that it was the now infamous 'White Man's Burden' yada, yada, yada... and pardon the 'Seinfeldian Yiddish.)
Thus once known, to self I thought:. R.C.
"Sara Khan, the liberation and access office r" Is that a real job title or something they just made up?"
R.C. Notes: Sara Khan-Artist sez: 'sought to' ? how the f*** does she know that?
'sought to legitimate?' howzaboutz "legitimize?" (Or is that another 'Englishism I recently condemned elsewhere? I.e., Is that a legitimate (adjective) usage as a verb?)
Oh, f*** it. The world's off to hell in a handbasket..,. or maybe not? ... I'm glad I can't see the future; that's a certainty.
R.C
We must be getting too old. I know I am.... "Sara Khan, Liberation and Access Officer."
Notice this bumptious "womyn" delights to call herself an "Officer."
Like a policeman. Or a military person whose job it is to kill people. Or any one of a number of functionaries with POWAH!! Yes, POWAHH!!! over Lesser Mortals, worms like you and me.
Why doesn't Madam Khan the OFFICER, go out and liberate a few Snowflakes like herself from their mortal coil so they can access Nirvana, where they can inveigle their way into the job of Gatekeeping Officer for their God, who of course, would be a chocolate-brown-colored womyn with a twat between her legs.
R.C.
1) As, I believe, Forester said: "As to humans/mankind, God is male; " (hopefully no PC BS replies to that); and
2) Unlike my redneck compatriots, I've no problem with chocolate colored ladies, but prefer a non-anthropomorphic God. (I guess like us all, I'll find out soon enough... or not.)
R.C.
My own conception of Creator is beyond gender (which should please The Officer) and color or form (which should please The Officer even more.)
"See this leg, sonny? That's Christmas. See this other leg? That's New Year's. Come see me between the holidays."
"Keep a diary, and some day, it'll keep you."
"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
I generally avoid temptation, unless I can't resist it."
"When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better."
"Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."
"Love conquers all things, except poverty and toothache."
"Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often."
"I'll try anything once. Twice if I like it, three times to make sure."
Like I said, RC, I'm getting too old, and these Snowflakes like Officer Sara Khan are such insufferably dull people, they make me long to go and be wherever Mae West is.
-LG
R.C.