White Savior Industrial Complex

The ‘White Savior Industrial Complex’ has been on my mind a lot lately. If you haven’t read it yet, I would certainly recommend Teju Cole’s piece in the Atlantic. In it, he criticizes the "let's go solve Africa's problems" approach taken up by many citizens of the US, and he puts the issue of race right out there by putting 'white' up front in the name. I agree with almost everything Cole has to say, but as a white American for whom world poverty is frequently at the front of my mind and a motivation for my actions, I also feel somewhat indicted by his position. Personally, this has been weighing on me. There are two parts to this indictment, however, and reading and re-reading Cole's piece has helped me to parse out the ways that I am guilty of participation in the 'White Savior Industrial Complex' and the ways that I am not.

The idea of the 'White Savior Industrial Complex' is, well, complex. It has many parts. For one, it refers to the profitability of the problems of the world for privileged people who are not negatively affected by them. This is one of the main critiques brought against Jason Russell (the Kony 2012 video creator): his work does not maximize effective action against his proposed target, his work maximizes profitability for his 'brand'. Similar critiques are also often rightly made against organizations that we might otherwise think of as doing more good: rather than directing funds to the causes in question, revenues are spent on swag with organizational decals, publicity and more fundraising. Individual donors are guilty of this as well: we are each inclined to give in ways that satisfy our own needs, rather than aiming to do the most good in the world. This is the basis for the models of organizations like Children International and Save the Children, this is the reason that so many choices of donor gifts abound on public radio pledge drives. They appeal to our desire to do good, but also to our need to get something out of it (be it a feeling of self-satisfaction or a totebag). (I'm not suggesting that these organizations don't do important work, but they certainly are confronted with the daily trade-off between palatability and effectiveness.) In addition, every nonprofit that aims to solve a societal problem ultimately faces a conflict of interest between its stated goals and its existence as an organization (if it solves the problem, it removes the reason for its existence). Of course the matter of degree here is of the utmost importance: some organizations spend 98% of their revenue on program expenses and legitimately aim to cause change in the world, while others spend upwards of 50% on fundraising, as though making more money itself were the goal.

That's all I'll say about the 'industrial complex' part of things for now. It's the 'savior' part of things that has been getting the most attention lately. The white savior sees her or himself as taking up the mantle of responsibility and driving out Africa's problems. This is problematic for multiple reasons. First, because these 'saviors' don't respect the autonomy of the people who they are supposed to be saving. They view the impoverished as 'other', as unable to help themselves, as needing a guiding hand from our educated and enlightened selves. This is racialized as well. The world has a long history of 'white saviors' going and 'helping' the 'needy'. Frequently this is nothing more than code for imperialism, as the US and others decide that other parts of the world need to be more like us and that we need to show them how, by force if necessary. If someone asks for your help, then help them; if they look like they need your help but don't ask, consider offering it; if they tell you they don't want your help, listen. Forcing programs onto another nation's people is not aid.

The main reason that the idea of the white savior is problematic is closely tied to my previous points, but stands out from them in a significant way. You may or may not have noticed that the language I've been using up to this point is geared toward the idea that there are people out there who need our help, and it would be good of us to offer it. I've reproduced this sort of language because it describes how many of us think of our relation to world poverty: that we could do more to help and that would be good. This obviously ties into the whole 'savior complex' idea: we think of ourselves as being in a position of providing a great boon to the needy. It's a point of Cole's, and a point that I've made in this blog many times, that this is a wildly inaccurate description of our relationships to the worst off. They are not impoverished because we have yet to offer our help, they are impoverished because we continually act so as to reinforce their poverty. As Cole says, we should 'first do no harm.' Rather than harboring delusions of grandeur featuring ourselves as potential saviors, we need to start thinking of ourselves as the villains. The most heroic we can get at this point would be to stop standing on the backs of the worst off. The US has a long and nefarious history of interfering in harmful ways with the lives of those in other countries. Once we stop doing harm, we can start to talk about the possibility of helping.

This ties back into the 'industrial complex' side of things as well: as long as we and others are keeping others in poverty, it will remain a profitable business (both economically and emotionally) to try to 'help them'. If our foreign policy and consumption habits bind them to their lives on the edge, then no matter how much money we funnel into 'aid' programs, the problems they face will persist. Again, this is not because they lack some fundamental ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it's because we never reach out to help without following up by pushing them back to the ground.

Returning to my own indictment in all of this. I am not indicted by the 'white savior industrial complex' insofar as I do not think of myself as a potential savior, I do not think that I am capable of 'helping these people to overcome their own limitations,' because I recognize that I am the reason for these limitations, that I am guilty for their position, that I benefit from their suffering, and that no matter how hard I try not to participate in systems that impoverish others and reinforce poverty, I still rely on those harmful structures. I owe it to the severely impoverished to work toward ending poverty because I am guilty of creating that poverty.

That being said, and as I indicated at the beginning of this post, I am still indicted. I do rely on these systems and as such I am a cog in the machine of the charity industrial complex. I am a person born into privilege. Not the 1%, not the upper class, but still a white male citizen of the US. That privilege is real, and there are strong forces of oppression and discrimination faced by those on the other side of it. There is little doubt that I would not be where I am today without the benefits that have been bestowed upon me by that systemic privilege. The least I can do is try to use the rewards of that privilege to undermine the harms that it is causing those who lack it.