"The White Man's Burden"

The "White Man's Burden" is the idea that it is the responsibility of a country to share their advanced civilization with the rest of the world by force because they are the best civilization in the world. This is a very racist way of thinking and there is no doubt that the author of this poem was a imperialist. This justified imperialism by saying it was their responsibility to "help" other countries by forcing them to change their entire culture. The actual taking over of the country and forcing them to do labor and take their natural resources is not a burden at all. The only "Burden" according to the author is to make them realize how much better his race is to their race and that they should do things the way his civilization does and forget everything about their own. This racist attitude was common among people of this era and they truly felt that to make the world better, they had to share their ways of doing things with the world even if it was done by force.