Teddy Roosevelt, reporting on his voyage to Africa, described a continent of “ape-like savages” whose brightest lights had only “advanced to the upper stages of barbarism” and had thus developed “a very primitive kind of semi-civilization.” It was not narrow prejudice that Roosevelt wielded but something broader, a story that would make his reader understand that “progress and development in this particular kind of new land depend exclusively upon the masterful leadership of the whites.” And from this foundational notion of “ape-like men,” “half-civilized Africans,” and “tropical barbarians,”
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