white man's burden

noun

1. the alleged duty of white colonizers to care for nonwhite Indigenous subjects in their colonial possessions.

White man's burden

noun

1. the supposed duty of the White race to bring education and Western culture to the non-White inhabitants of their colonies

white man's burden

1. A phrase used to justify European imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The phrase implies that imperialism was motivated by a high-minded desire of whites to uplift people of color.

Word History and Origins

Origin of white man's burden¹

After a poem of the same title by Rudyard Kipling (1899)