Humanitarian Aid: The Western World’s ego stroking savior complex in action

Some will call it white guilt, some will call it “making a difference,” and some will call it a White-Savior Complex in action. My personal belief, to throw it out there before you keep reading and get mad for some reason, very much so parallels the reaction that Teju Cole had in his tweets responding to the Kony2012 video. He noted that “the white savior industrial complex is not about justice, It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege” and I know this tweet stroke a nerve or two within the realm of middle to upper-class white people (probably the type that have a picture of some African kid in their kitchen that they donate 25 cents a month to) (Cole, 2012). Think about the number of pictures you have seen of people going on ‘mission trips’ to Haiti, or South America, or Africa, busting out those selfie sticks to capture in a photo that they “care” and are doing their part to “improve the lives of those in a developing country” when in actuality what they really care about is the photo-op.

Yeah.. this.

The role of empathy is an interesting one because I believe this feeds into that white guilt once again. Donating used t-shirts and paying upwards of a thousand dollars to go lay eyes on swollen-belly children just to feel that their money is being well spent feels forced and artificial to me. Coming from the perspective of someone who worked for an NGO that has been attempting to recover from problematic strategies, mini-mission trips do much more for the people taking them than those in the communities in which they are working. When exploring their rebranded website, under their “Our Work” section they seem to have described a much more culturally relative approach to mission work but still with this mirage of aid glossed over. Their new approach is:

“THE VILLAGE APPROACH
Our model looks at a village as a whole, working with the local leaders and churches to distinguish their assets as well as their greatest challenges. Our process heavily involves indigenous leadership for assessing the village as well as providing solutions to needs. Together we transform impoverished villages into sustainable ones.”

This approach seems heavily based on saving face and boosting ego, creating the illusion of support and communication within communities when I (as someone who worked behind the scenes) know that this does not truly occur. Please do more digging for me, I would love your perspective on Mission: Hope (formerly ROW) (https://www.missionhope.org/ourwork).
Empathy can be powerful but not if you are stuck looking at culture through a western lens. Cultural relativism is the idea of walking in other culture’s shoes, in a sense, and rather than interpreting one’s customs through a lens based on one’s own culture, taking the time to get to understand them. The old saying goes “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime” but what if fish holds a spiritual or other significance in their culture? For example, looking at poverty in India, many people are struggling with famine but if you look at their rural farming communities, they are full of cows. Looking through a western lens it makes no sense to us why they are hungry when there is meat roaming all around them but the Cow is the most sacred animal in their culture. The cow is also used in farm work that could not be completed without the use of this animal, so there’s always perspective to consider.
When addressing bias within Humanitarian Aid, “The language of ‘belief’ seems appropriate here. Humanitarianism is a creed, a belief system that can be framed with equal conviction in secular or religious terms, but which is necessarily couched in the language of moral values” as stated in James Darcy’s ‘Acts of faith? Thoughts on the effectiveness of humanitarian action’ paper (Darcy, 2005, p. 1). Faith and religion in itself are biased, racist, sexist, classist, etc. so what would make us think that their aid efforts would be any different? My mind goes directly to conversion work, mission trips that build schools but only teach biblical stories and Christian values rather than upholding the previously existing religion in a culture. What kind of moral compass is this? That forces people to change their beliefs just to receive aid?

The biggest determinate in Humanitarian Aid, the line between selfish and selfless is where your heart is. Is it to take pictures and show people you’re ‘woke’? Or is it learning another culture and seeing how you can use your privilege to truly provide assistance to these communities that will aid them? This is a question every mission trip group should ask themselves before they go. What are your intentions and motivation?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/
https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/4850.pdf
https://www.missionhope.org/ourwork