Further to the point while many of Kipling s poems contain blatantly racist statements those are often put in the mouths of people like ordinary British soldiers and represents the kinds of things they d actually say Kipling also wrote poems celebrating non whites as the equals or sometimes superiors of whites The most famous one is Gunga Din narrated by a racist British soldier who finally has to admit that an Indian water carrier is a better person than he is Another example is The Ballad of East and West which has no blatantly racist overtones and presents British officers and colonial resistance fighters explicitly as equals