The white saviour complex

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

https://medium.com/race-class/b84d4011d17e

Saw the above blog entry posted, highlighting the damaging effect of rich white people going to 'do aid work' that they don't have the skills for. Interesting read.

[Os Cangaceiros]

People going to a place to do something when they have absolutely no idea how to do that thing is counter-productive, imagine that.

[BIXX]

The best part is I know a bunch of missionaries who did this shit in the Dominican Republic while I was there (my aunt took me there to try and convert me- didn't work) and they guilt tripped me into doing essentially the same bullshit, saying that the "natives" needed my help and shit. At the time I felt in the way but I thought I was just being a dick. Now I know I was probably right.

[Sea]

White savior (saviour? really?!) complex isn't anything new, before we just referred to it as "that stupid white man's burden" but it's just as idiotic as ever as these "civilized" people make asses of themselves and their victims.

[sosolo]

White savior (saviour? really?!) .

The OP is from Great Britain. That is how savior is spelled there.

[Sea]

The OP is from Great Britain. That is how savior is spelled there.I'm aware of that, but it doesn't make it right. :glare:

[L.A.P.]

its an equally valid way to spell it

[Alexios]

i'm also reminded of white college kids/grads posturing online and in universities about how they're the experts on the problems of minorities. always rubbed me the wrong way.

[Ned Kelly]

I'm aware of that, but it doesn't make it right. :glare:

Well it is the English language

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Yeah, I was tabling yesterday (I work for a campus-based social and ecological justice organization), and ended up next to a weird white-Canadians-go-to-rural-Latin-America-to-show-kids-how-to-properly-brush-their-teeth organization of med students' bake sale.

What I always wonder about is how to meet people in those cases where they're at and have a productive discussion, "Well, y'know, underlying causes . . ." without coming off as a mansplaining 'better-do-nothing-than-do-something-that-isn't-perfect" proselytizer.

Anyone's thoughts are welcome.


Also, with regards to removing the "u" from words - Yankee go home!

[Os Cangaceiros]

^ I don't see what's complicated about it. If some one has, say, engineering experience and can contribute in a productive manner towards getting clean drinking water to some remote village, then that's a good thing for obvious reasons. It doesn't contribute towards the considerably more broad and ambitious goals of the far-left, but there are a lot of things that don't contribute towards the goals of the far-left but are, none-the-less, "good things".

[blake 3:17]

Thanks VIL for the link. It's a thoughtful piece. I liked this bit:
Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.

Ouch!

@OC -- yeah, it's also silly to get all wigged out & try to pretend that any kind of aid or support from the Global North is some kind of "imperialism" or nonsense like that. Maybe it's just a question of being honest.

[Leftsolidarity]

Trashed off-topic posts.

Dragging your disagreements about past users and topics into a different thread and de-railing it is not okay.

[Five Year Plan]

Trashed off-topic posts.

Dragging your disagreements about past users and topics into a different thread and de-railing it is not okay.

I dispute your claim, and view your trashing of my post as censorship of a revolutionary leftist viewpoint you disagree with but haven't the firepower to dispute in rational argument. My disagreement with the user in question evinced, I argue, the very same mentality that is the topic of the article and lends its name to the title of this thread. If you disagree that that is what my disagreement revolved around, and that the disagreement is directly relevant to the topic of this thread, present your argument. I'm willing to listen. I just find it highly coincidental that you were exhibiting the same pandering, condescending white-savior mentality toward RealYehuda that I was criticizing in the post you trashed.

In the meantime, if anybody wants a reproduction of the exchange in question, they can private message me, and I will gladly provide it. They can judge for themselves whether it was off topic.

Edit: And since when is it okay for moderators to jump into forums they are not in charge of moderating in order to alter discussions in whose outcome they have a direct personal stake?

[Derendscools]

I dispute your claim, and view your trashing of my post as censorship of a revolutionary leftist viewpoint you disagree with but haven't the firepower to dispute in rational argument. My disagreement with the user in question evinced, I argue, the very same mentality that is the topic of the article and lends its name to the title of this thread. If you disagree that that is what my disagreement revolved around, and that the disagreement is directly relevant to the topic of this thread, present your argument. I'm willing to listen.

I agree.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The White Power "Left" hates Black Nationalism because Black Nationalism is a threat to their Labor Aristocratic imperialist superwages.
Do you have something to add to this topic other than obvious trolling?

[Sabot Cat]

I didn't take "this is why white people shouldn't do these kind of jobs" from this author's experiences, but "this is white people should make sure they'd actually be helpful in doing these jobs".

[Os Cangaceiros]

Do you have something to add to this topic other than obvious trolling?

No, they probably don't. :rolleyes:

[Os Cangaceiros]

I dispute your claim, and view your trashing of my post as censorship of a revolutionary leftist viewpoint you disagree with but haven't the firepower to dispute in rational argument. My disagreement with the user in question evinced, I argue, the very same mentality that is the topic of the article and lends its name to the title of this thread. If you disagree that that is what my disagreement revolved around, and that the disagreement is directly relevant to the topic of this thread, present your argument. I'm willing to listen. I just find it highly coincidental that you were exhibiting the same pandering, condescending white-savior mentality toward RealYehuda that I was criticizing in the post you trashed.

In the meantime, if anybody wants a reproduction of the exchange in question, they can private message me, and I will gladly provide it. They can judge for themselves whether it was off topic.

Edit: And since when is it okay for moderators to jump into forums they are not in charge of moderating in order to alter discussions in whose outcome they have a direct personal stake?

I don't have a horse in this race, but I took a look at the trashed posts in question and I pretty much agree with LS. Those posts were not really related to the topic at hand, that being NGO's and the often naïve beliefs of people in said NGO's...instead it was a very peripheral argument about your disagreements with people on this website and the Nation of Islam. If you want to argue your points then duke it out in the relevant threads, not here.

[Five Year Plan]

Os,

A couple of preliminary things. Even if what you say is true, the moderator in question could have just relocated the posts to a new thread. He chose not to. We can all guess why, but it almost seems as if he wanted the post to be expunged from the board altogether. Also, he jumped into a subforum that he does not moderate. I am guessing he received Quail's permission before doing this?

Now to the issues. I respect your view, but I obviously disagree with your conclusion. The article was about a particular manifestation of what it called "white savior mentality." It did not mean to imply that said mentality only manifests itself in regards to NGOs. It manifests itself in other ways, especially in liberal political circles where white people are assumed to know exactly what is in black people's best interests, regardless of what black people have to say about the matter.

My point in the posts was that this mentality can also take the opposite form: condescending to black people by not taking their ideas seriously enough to treat them as ideas. As a result, black people are not allowed to participate, and speak on their own behalf, in substantive critical political dialogue. Instead they are pandered to and treated as though their ideas are to be judged solely on the basis of their being black, their interlocutors being white, etc. In the relevant thread involving RealYehuda, the prejudicial epithet "cracka" was tossed around as a way to impugn interlocutors and suggest that those interlocutors were expressing their views not in order to present a vision of black liberation, but as a bad faith desire to oppress black people.

Not only did this reinforce the notion that black people and white people have completely opposing interests upon which they can be expected to act in the context of political debate (when in fact their interests only oppose one another within certain contexts, and by completely bracketing socialist revolution out of the discussion). It also functioned to short-circuit the political dialogue in a way that prevented anybody, black or white, from having a serious debate on black liberation. And in a society where white people do indeed enjoy definite privileges, this harms black people more than white people. As in the case with with the smarmy liberal NGO bureaucrats, the end result is that black people's ideas are erased from the conversation by white saviors, just under a different but no less noble guise.

I happen to have enough confidence in the capacity of black people to engage in revolutionary political discussions of substance, so that they don't need to be insulated from political criticisms on the basis of accusing (and not even trying to prove) that people involved in the debate are debating and bad faith or willfully attempting to reinforce a system of racial oppression. Perhaps some of the moderators don't share this view, but I think that speaks to race issues they need to work on.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't agree that those posts belong here. I would move those posts out of the trash and into the relevant thread but the problem is that the poster in question was (justifiably) banned and the threads where those posts would be relevant are also in the trash. So what I would recommend you doing is to create your own thread somewhere if you feel like you have a point to make. Either that or address a complaint to an admin.

[Five Year Plan]

I don't agree that those posts belong here. I would move those posts out of the trash and into the relevant thread but the problem is that the poster in question was (justifiably) banned and the threads where those posts would be relevant are also in the trash. So what I would recommend you doing is to create your own thread somewhere if you feel like you have a point to make. Either that or address a complaint to an admin.

So posts can't be moved from existing threads in to their own new threads?

[Leftsolidarity]

A couple of preliminary things. Even if what you say is true, the moderator in question could have just relocated the posts to a new thread. He chose not to. We can all guess why, but it almost seems as if he wanted the post to be expunged from the board altogether. Also, he jumped into a subforum that he does not moderate. I am guessing he received Quail's permission before doing this?


Would like to clear this up. I didn't relocate the posts to a new thread because it's not my responsibility to make sure to organize your drama in every thread you post. I moved them to the trash where they belong and if I wanted them "expunged from the board altogether" (cuz i obviously care so much that a random person dislikes my opinion on a previous poster) I would have deleted them completely.

I didn't just "jump in" here to check if you were saying things I disagree with. I came here because I go through many different sub-forums and enjoyed the OP's article (which had nothing to do with your posts hence they got trashed). I pointed this Quail's way, if you are really this curious, and they said it was troublesome but wasn't able to get to a computer so someone else could handle it. Sooo I took the 3 seconds to trash them myself. If Quail comes in here and disagrees with that actions I took, that's fine, but honestly you're just proving the fact that you're derailing this thread and turning it into your little beefs with other posters. I would trash the rest of this back and forth that's gone on (my post included) but I'm not going to make this seem like some sort of tit-for-tat that you get to play victim with. I'll leave that to the rest of the mods/admins to do whatever they think is best for the thread. I really don't care about "silencing" you or whatever weird ideas you have going on; I just care about not having your drama derail a thread that has nothing to do with it.

[Five Year Plan]

Would like to clear this up. I didn't relocate the posts to a new thread because it's not my responsibility to make sure to organize your drama in every thread you post. I moved them to the trash where they belong and if I wanted them "expunged from the board altogether" (cuz i obviously care so much that a random person dislikes my opinion on a previous poster) I would have deleted them completely.

I didn't just "jump in" here to check if you were saying things I disagree with. I came here because I go through many different sub-forums and enjoyed the OP's article (which had nothing to do with your posts hence they got trashed). I pointed this Quail's way, if you are really this curious, and they said it was troublesome but wasn't able to get to a computer so someone else could handle it. Sooo I took the 3 seconds to trash them myself. If Quail comes in here and disagrees with that actions I took, that's fine, but honestly you're just proving the fact that you're derailing this thread and turning it into your little beefs with other posters. I would trash the rest of this back and forth that's gone on (my post included) but I'm not going to make this seem like some sort of tit-for-tat that you get to play victim with. I'll leave that to the rest of the mods/admins to do whatever they think is best for the thread. I really don't care about "silencing" you or whatever weird ideas you have going on; I just care about not having your drama derail a thread that has nothing to do with it.

Since your intervention here has basically sabotaged the discussion of my points in this thread about how a "white savior complex" manifests itself on revleft, and shifted the focus onto bureaucratic procedure, I am politely requesting that you, Quail, or Os relocate the posts you trashed into a new thread titled "White Savior Complex on Revleft," and move the rest of the posts in this thread that deal with that issue into that new thread. I think that will satisfy all parties involved in light of how things have developed.

[Sinister Intents]

Since your intervention here has basically sabotaged the discussion of my points in this thread about how a "white savior complex" manifests itself on revleft, and shifted the focus onto bureaucratic procedure, I am politely requesting that you, Quail, or Os relocate the posts you trashed into a new thread titled "White Savior Complex on Revleft," and move the rest of the posts in this thread that deal with that issue into that new thread. I think that will satisfy all parties involved in light of how things have developed.

Why can't you do it yourself? You can quote your own posts and others you feel necessary so you stop derailing this thread.

[Five Year Plan]

Why can't you do it yourself? You can quote your own posts and others you feel necessary so you stop derailing this thread.

Because I cannot recreate the thread structure, and can't "quote" posts in the trashcan. I would like to reproduce the whole dialogue, and not just only my posts since I think everybody's views should be heard on this forum, at least within the context of good-faith exchanges between people with revolutionary perspectives.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I was really pleased speaking to a colleague yesterday. They said that they were thinking about doing a volunteering holiday this summer but had come across this same article and it switched a light on in their head re: rich people being useless at these sorts of jobs.

As they're a teacher I suggested that they actually do have a skill set that could be useful in a development context, but I was also really pleased that this is something that has perhaps started to penetrate mainstream society, and hopefully the volunteering element of travel and 'gap years' will start to die away, because it is a rather lecherous and faux-moralistic part of travel and tourism.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Would like to clear this up. I didn't relocate the posts to a new thread because it's not my responsibility to make sure to organize your drama in every thread you post. I moved them to the trash where they belong and if I wanted them "expunged from the board altogether" (cuz i obviously care so much that a random person dislikes my opinion on a previous poster) I would have deleted them completely.



I didn't just "jump in" here to check if you were saying things I disagree with. I came here because I go through many different sub-forums and enjoyed the OP's article (which had nothing to do with your posts hence they got trashed). I pointed this Quail's way, if you are really this curious, and they said it was troublesome but wasn't able to get to a computer so someone else could handle it. Sooo I took the 3 seconds to trash them myself. If Quail comes in here and disagrees with that actions I took, that's fine, but honestly you're just proving the fact that you're derailing this thread and turning it into your little beefs with other posters. I would trash the rest of this back and forth that's gone on (my post included) but I'm not going to make this seem like some sort of tit-for-tat that you get to play victim with. I'll leave that to the rest of the mods/admins to do whatever they think is best for the thread. I really don't care about "silencing" you or whatever weird ideas you have going on; I just care about not having your drama derail a thread that has nothing to do with it.


This is a baseless claim. Aufheben didn't even provide any names when he was beginning to make his argument. You were the only one who confirmed your own involvement in the thread in question by choosing to confront him directly, which entailed deleting his posts. So please don't accuse him of bringing "personal drama" into this when the only hands caught in the cookie jar are yours.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Because I cannot recreate the thread structure, and can't "quote" posts in the trashcan. I would like to reproduce the whole dialogue, and not just only my posts since I think everybody's views should be heard on this forum, at least within the context of good-faith exchanges between people with revolutionary perspectives.
Um, copy and paste?