white man's burden

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025

white′ man's′ bur′den, 

1. the alleged duty of the white race to care for subject peoples of other races in its colonial possessions.

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

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::

White man's burden noun

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