What is the White Man's Burden? Does it still exist in the 21st Century?

“The White Man’s Burden” is a concept rooted in the belief that it was the duty and responsibility of white colonizers to “civilize” and uplift non-white, indigenous, or colonized peoples. Coined by Rudyard Kipling in his poem of the same name, published in 1899, it was used to justify European colonial expansion and imperialism. The idea suggested that it was the moral obligation of the white race to bring education, Christianity, and Western civilization to supposedly “uncivilized” or “inferior” societies. However, it was often a guise for exploitation, oppression, and the imposition of Western values and systems onto other cultures. The concept has been widely criticized for its paternalistic and racist undertones and for perpetuating colonialist ideologies.