The US and Neocolonialism

In the poem "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling, I feel like some of it is talking about racism but most of it is just based on Imperialism. Many powerful nations focused on attempting to conquer other nations, that is how they become bigger and stronger nations. Many of them aimed towards weak nations, and most of the weak nations were not white Europeans. Race obviously played a role on who would try to conquer or help who, but i think most of the decisions was based on quantity, not race or quality.
Nowadays I think most nations are like this, but to a certain extent. Well developed nations like lending a hand out for the developing countries in need, mostly for the alliance it could potentially build. Sometimes I think since the developed nations know they are doing well, they need to help others, just because they feel they need to benefit from other nations. For example, if they help nations with valuable resources they'll somehow have access to it. But I still believe nations, and even ours is still engaged of thinking like this, but not so much focused on race, more on what rewards can come of it.