“Black Man’s Burden”
This phrase is not just the title of the poem, but appears in the very first line, “Pile on the Black Man’s Burden” and that phrase will be repeated three more times as the opening line of each new stanza. This omnipresence should be viewed as a very strong hint that it is significant. It significance lies firstly in that is used in opposite to the title of the work which inspired this poem and to which it is a direct address, Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden.”
That title is a metaphor for the job white supremacists have assigned themselves of civilizing the savagery of nations populated by those with darker skin, so it only makes sense that Johnson intends for his title to also work as metaphor. Although complicated by historical context and the particularities addressed with each recurrence, ultimately everything comes down to one very simple metaphorical interpretation: the black man’s burden is the oppression that inevitably results from the carrying out of the white man’s burden.
Genocide
The speaker does not just reserve his outrage for the idea of civilizing black man, but uses that outrage at what has been done to indigenous tribes in North America as evidence that “civilizing” may have an entirely different meaning to white people. The phrase “You’ve sealed the Red Man’s problem” is a deeply ironic, profoundly understated metaphor that covers the entirety of the abominations committed against Native Americans in their efforts to civilize an entire savage continent or two.
“honor’s holy breath”
The second stanza directly addresses the geopolitical situation at the time, referencing the Spanish-American War which had been fought and won by the U.S. the previous year. The speaker characterizes this military engagement as imperialist rather than defensive in describing the natives of Cuba and Philippines as those who will now become the next focus of the White Man’s Burden. The war had been sold to the public as a matter of honorable retaliation for an attack which blew up a U.S. Navy cruiser. “Remember the Maine!” was the rallying call for this defense of honor, but right from the beginning there was very serious doubt about the actual circumstances of that explosion and thus the metaphor of fighting a defensive war for “honor’s holy breath” becomes another example of the relentlessly corrosive ironic tone of the poem.
Institutional Racism
Institutional racism in American is addressed explicitly in the third stanza with a direct mention of Jim-crow laws. The slavery which preceded that particular type of racist oppression is framed in metaphorical imagery rather than explicit terminology:
“What though the weight oppress him,
He’s borne the like before.”
“fiendish midnight deeds”
Stanza 3 also engages metaphor to allude to more violent acts of racism which could not be addressed in a poem published in any respectable periodical at the time due to its sensitive subject matter. The final lines of the stanza suggest part of the white man’s burden of being the caretakers of black society involves secret recognition of acts among them that are also too sensitive in nature to actually be spoken about but which, nevertheless, is common knowledge. The specifics of this metaphorical imagery are not made clear, of course, but the language of the metaphor itself—abominable acts taking place under cover of darkness---are very suggestive with rape, cross-burning and lynching being just the most omnipresent.
