[1] Posing as low-caste itinerant smiths selling wares, the all-black fieldworkers of the Reunited Nations team led by sociologist Dr. Homer Crawford travel the Sahara subtly subverting the culture of its nomad tribes by disseminating "progressive" Western propaganda such as the right to equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with the long-term objective of leading North Africa into the modern age.

Knowing the peoples they encounter may label their teachings as blasphemous, the fieldworkers attribute them to El Hassan, an imaginary leader who has incorporated the wisdom of all the sages and prophets of the world.

There, Crawford makes a case for cooperation across teams regardless of political or national background based on the fact that all the fieldworkers are of African descent and so are deeply invested in helping to advance Africa.

Some fieldworkers, including Isobel Cunningham, Jake Armstrong, and Cliff Jackson of the Africa for Africans Association (AFAA) and the British agent Rex Donaldson are in favor of such coordination.

On the way, Homer and Isobel are perturbed by the realization that what the fieldwork of foreign aid organizations is equivalent to the white man's destruction of indigenous cultures in North America.

Black Man's Burden and its sequels are considered exceptional for their direct treatment of "politically pertinent" racial issues "virtually untouched in sf" before, during, and after the 1960s.

[1] At the same time, by portraying the "ritual-taboo tribal societies" of North Africa as "backward" [9] Black Man's Burden reproduces racial stereotypes of Africans as primitive [10] and barbaric.

[8][12] Reynolds himself regarded the objective of his science-fiction writing as leading his readers to consider the diverse sociopolitical systems that may lead to “a more rational world.” [13] In Black Man's Burden, the "cultural inertia" [1] that relegates Africa to the status of a have-not region is explained as the product of two situations: the fractured dynamics of African society, which is composed of micro-cultures at different stages of socio-economic development ranging from savagery and barbarism (as defined by Lewis H. Morgan's theory of social evolution in his Ancient Society) [14] through feudalism to capitalism;[15] the conflicting interests of the United States, the Soviet Complex, and the Arab Union in dominating the region.

[8] As in other Reynolds' works, to be capable of effecting these changes, the hero must represent the best and brightest of the human [16] (see, for example, the novella Frigid Fracas); in Black Man's Burden, Homer Crawford is chosen to become El Hassan specifically because he is intelligent, highly educated, progressive, altruistic, and has no cultural or political affiliations.