White Man's Burden

The “White Man’s Burden” written by Rudyard Kipling was a satirical poem regarding imperialism in the 19th century after the United States won the Spanish-American War and planned to colonialize the Philippines. The white man’s burden is the duty of the white man that comes out of their superiority over other types of people who are not white and male. That duty is to civilize or help these people who are incapable of taking care of themselves because they are less evolved than they are.

When Kipling demanded the white man to “bind your [his] sons to exile to serve your captive’s need”, he purposely exaggerated the burden of the white man as a satirical note that what the white man has to do to “serve” the inferior races is such an oppressive task. The non-white people are called “sullen peoples” and described to be “to wait in heavy harness on flutter folk and wild” as if they were wild beasts needed to be captured. This sentiment of the non-white folk was clearly illustrated by this stanza; as in the 19th century, white people saw them as almost not completely evolved as the human beings that they were.

“To veil the threat of terror” represented how the white people felt of the other races. They were considered to be so inhumane that they were terrifying and that people who were white should “check the show of pride” as they were real, civilized humans. “To seek another’s profit, and work another’s gain” characterized how the white man forcefully took away the resources of a territory they colonized but at the same time, mockingly stated that they worked on that gain. He also unveiled the way that these explorers would conquer a colony by giving an “open speech and simple”, which was simply having them illegally sign treaties that they would take over their land.

Kipling succeeded in this poem to also mention how the white men died of the diseases as well as the famine that struck the colonies at the time. The wretched standard of...