Volunteering Without White Saviourism

I’m a lucky person.

Actually, let’s use the real word: I’m privileged! There are advantages and benefits that I enjoy for no other reason than because I am White. I’m not always aware of them – and I certainly haven’t always felt privileged. But I am.

I’m White, cis-gendered, and fully able-bodied. I know that my path, mostly because of things outside my control, has been amazingly smooth. For example, I’ve never been detained for hours at airport security just because of my skin colour. Friends of mine have.

I also know that there are places where I’m not even aware that the path could be rough. There are open doorways that I walk through without even noticing that they’re brick walls to others.

I’m grateful.

And, like many people who realize their own good fortune, I want to give back.

I see people whose lives aren’t as easy as mine and I want to help. I want to remove the rocks from their paths that aren’t present in mine.

So far so good.

However, a concept known as saviourism rears its ugly head when people like me feel that we can come in and “fix” the problems of a group or community that we don’t belong to. It comes about when we think we have solutions and answers that a community itself hasn’t thought of.

But obviously – we don’t!

Most Egregious of All? White Saviourism

Understand, in this article I’m focusing on what I’d like to term ‘White saviourism’ because it’s the most common and the most egregious form of saviourism. And while much saviourism has its roots in underlying racism, it can also show up in other ways, such as when well-off people offer advice to those who are struggling financially. Even if you’re not racist (or don’t think you are), you might still be indulging in saviourism.

For White saviourism, it notably comes back to racism and White privilege. I don’t mean just the hatred and violence that are given those names in the media. That’s just the tip of a very large iceberg. White people who don’t hate and don’t commit acts of violence can still be racist and, more often than not, we rest on our White privilege without even realizing it!

The Difficult, Painful Truth: I’m A Recovering Racist

Trust me, I know. I'm well-equipped to talk about racism, even though I’m White.

I have begun describing myself as a “recovering racist.” I’ve come to realize that – just as those who have become addicted to alcohol never completely break free of the addiction, no matter how many years they’ve been sober – those of us who were raised as racist or even just with White privilege never completely break free, no matter how hard we try.

I was raised in a family where racism and bigotry were rampant.

The words that were commonly used in my family to describe a variety of groups horrify me now. If you’ve ever watched the 1970s American show “All In The Family,” you might have an idea. I used the words they used, too.

At the time, I didn't know any better. They were a part of the language being used around me by my family and by almost all the people I met. Why would I not use them?

Then I got a lucky break! 

I left home in my late teens, and moved to Vancouver from the small, isolated town in Canada that I grew up in.

I was exposed almost immediately to people who were completely different from those that I grew up with. People of different ethnicities, different religions and different ways of life. After initially resisting,  I realized that what I had been taught all my childhood was wrong. And my world grew bigger and more colourful.

But even after years of fighting the effects of my upbringing, I am still not free.

The other day while I was on a walk, I saw a UPS van go by. The driver was wearing a turban. After the van had gone, I found myself wondering what UPS does to prevent delivery drivers from stealing. As soon as I realized what had come into my head, I felt shocked and ashamed of myself. It wasn’t that I had thought that particular driver was dishonest, or that people who wear turbans are more likely to be dishonest (neither thought ever occurred to me). But I know full well that, had the driver been White, the security question would never have come into my head.

At least I caught it – this time.

As I said, I’m a recovering racist, and probably will be all my life.

Racism and Saviourism: A History  

Racism isn’t necessarily hatred or violence. It can simply involve being blind to, or comfortable with, the privilege that we have.

And it is that blindness or comfort that leads from racism to saviourism.

White saviourism has deep roots. When European expansionism transformed into imperialism, European powers viewed themselves as civilizing forces in the regions that they colonized. From the 18^th century onward, White missionaries and bureaucrats traveled throughout Africa, Asia and other parts of the world to spread Christianity and to “civilize” the local populations. They saw themselves as saviours, and their work was viewed (by the empire-builders who sent them) as a way to uplift the “uncivilized” people they encountered. They felt it was their duty and they paid no attention to the distress and hardship they were causing.

Nowhere is that feeling more blatant than in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden:”

Take up the White Man's burden—
    Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
    To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
    On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
    Half devil and half child.

One of the shocking things about this poem is the fact that people actually believed it!

But the most shocking thing is that some people still believe it today. In fact, I would argue that it is evident in in the way Western countries approach international aid and development programs through the trend toward celebrity philanthropy, where White protagonists “come to the aid” of people of colour, reinforcing the erroneous idea that people from marginalized communities are incapable of saving themselves.

White superiority and arrogance are still rampant.

In many cases, what Westerners consider as being the problem are actually issues which those in the ‘affected’ communities are perfectly comfortable with.

For example, some people may want to “liberate” women from wearing the hijab, while the women themselves usually see it as an expression of their faith and have no desire to remove it. Women outside that faith often aren’t aware that their very desire to “help their sisters” is an expression of White saviourism and racism. But it is.

Most people, in my possibly optimistic view, do want to make a real difference. It’s not just about optics. Usually, though, as in the example above, we aren’t aware that our very desire to help can be an indicator of an innate feeling of superiority. We may explain it to ourselves or others by saying that it’s easier for us because we can be more objective about the issues – we’re not as close to the problem.

But to solve a problem you need to fully understand it. And let’s face it, most of us just don’t have the intimate knowledge or experience to offer useful suggestions. It can be hard for us, mired in our privilege, to truly understand the issues faced by those who don’t have it.

And even if we did have real solutions, it’s not for us to put them in place. Even if our solution would work, it may not be one that the community itself would be comfortable with.

Anastasia Reesa Tomkin, in her article for Non-Profit Quarterly, wrote:

“Even the most well-meaning of anti-racist allies will have blind spots and make grave miscalculations on matters concerning the well-being of people of color.”

A solution that may work for one group just may not be right for another, and we need to be okay with that.

Also, just because we can’t see anything being done to deal with the challenges, don’t assume that no one is doing anything. There may be many grassroots organizations or individuals within the community that are working hard in the background. Significant progress can be made without being obvious to outsiders.

Five Steps to Help Avoid Saviourism in Volunteerism

So, how do individuals volunteer – and involve volunteers in our programs – without falling into the saviourism trap? Many may already know that what they are currently doing isn’t working, but it’s not so obvious what they should be doing.

A good place to start is to embrace the words of Dr. Moussa Magassa, a professor at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada: “We can’t create equity for people. We have to co-create it with them.”

And that is how volunteers can avoid saviourism. But it takes a few steps.

STEP ONE: Acknowledge the racism and privilege inherent in organizations, no matter how deeply it’s buried.

It’s hard – especially if Volunteer Engagement Leaders have been working at eradicating saviourism from policies, procedures, words, actions and even thoughts – to accept that one can still make automatic, unconscious assumptions about the volunteers working in an organization that uphold an underlying sense of superiority, and therefore the entire structure of racism.

Volunteer Engagement Leaders don’t need to accept that prognosis, but they do need to acknowledge the disease both in themselves and in their programs. 

STEP TWO: Ensure that your program truly supports the community.

To support a community that needs help, volunteers need to uphold their efforts, rather than trying to take over. And that requires change.

Take a good look around. Which people are missing from the conversation – even if they’re in the room? If all the ideas and decisions are coming from voices of privilege, there’s a problem.

Before moving forward, leaders of volunteers should recruit people from the affected community who are working on the issues that concern them. Look at the people on staff or on leadership teams; until the majority of them are part of the affected community, keep recruiting.

 Try to find people who were talking before anyone was listening.

Some causes can become bandwagons that privileged people jump on (again, with the best of intentions) because they’ve made the news or were taken up by a celebrity.

If volunteer leaders really want to help a cause, they must join with the person or people who were fighting for that cause before it became well-known. These individuals will know more about it than anyone else and may already have a structure in place that we can become a part of. They may also have tried and rejected some of those solutions once presented as good one! 

STEP THREE: (Forgive my bluntness) Once people from the affected community are invited in, just shut up and listen to them. No judgment, no defensiveness, no shock. Just listen and believe.

Saira Rao, in the documentary “Deconstructing Karen”, says: “When people of color trust you enough to tell you their story, believe us without expressing shock, because when you express shock it pushes you away from the blame.”

And we are to blame.

There is a quote by Albert Einstein: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

As I noted above, many of the challenges that affected communities strive to overcome were caused by colonialism and structural racism. It was Western thinking that caused the problems, so Western thinking is unlikely to effectively solve them. A return to the traditional values and practices of those communities has been seen to be a more effective solution.

If individuals do want to offer solutions, then they need to listen and learn before doing so. And even if their own solution would work, understand that it still may not be accepted. And that’s okay. A volunteer and a volunteer program’s only role is to assist the community in finding its own resolutions.

But just listening isn’t enough. As Tomkin stated in the Non-Profit Quarterly:  

“Simply being heard is neither a gift nor an honor when they [people of privilege] do not seriously consider what we contribute and take steps to implementing it.”

STEP FOUR: Offer up a volunteer program as a tool in the hands of the people you are trying to help, a tool to be used in whatever way they think is most useful. 

Often, thoughts from outsiders about how to be helpful are often less than constructive. They can actually be harmful, and they reinforce the entire structure of saviourism.

As Volunteer Engagement Leaders from all races and nations, we need to avoid facile comments like: “I understand” (because we probably don’t), or “Have you tried this?”, because we may not even know what the real problem is. Usually, we just see the symptoms; we don’t see the problem. We can’t see the problem because we aren’t living it. And there’s no fault in that. The fault lies in denying it and thinking we know better.

STEP FIVE: Act as advocates within our own communities.

Again, as Saira Rao said in “Deconstructing Karen”: “. . . White women have to hear this from other White women. We [women of colour] are not credible in some ways and that, in a nutshell, is White supremacy.”

Men or women, or our organizations as a whole: Volunteer leaders need to step up when they see racism and saviourism in communities and certainly in programs. They need to put a stop to it, even if that means confronting a loved one or an executive director. We all need to have the courage to call others out.

As Brené Brown says: “Brave leaders are never silent around hard things.”

And telling your mother that she’s a racist is hard. Believe me, I know.

A Final Word

So to summarize the five steps to try and avoid saviourism in volunteerism:

1. Acknowledge your own and your program’s biases;
2. Recruit the right people;
3. Listen and learn;  
4. Offer the program as a tool; and
5. Advocate among your own.

If people with White privilege can all do this – consistently, humbly and honestly – then they can become true allies and run programs without saviourism.

*WRITER’S NOTE: I’d like to acknowledge my gratitude to Danielle Russell, who took the time to read over the article and gave me advice to ensure that I didn’t inadvertently cause offence. Any remaining issues are all on me.

SOURCES:

https://www.deconstructingkaren.com/

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/how-White-people-conquered-the-nonprofit-industry/

Brené Brown, Netflix special, “The Call to Courage” https://www.netflix.com/watch/81010166?trackId=255824129&tctx=0%2C0%2CNAPA%40%40%7C51f96e54-11e6-41c8-8768-558942ffb6ca-345323371_titles%2F1%2F%2Fbrene%20brown%2F0%2F0%2CNAPA%40%40%7C51f96e54-11e6-41c8-8768-558942ffb6ca-345323371_titles%2F1%2F%2Fbrene%20brown%2F0%2F0%2Cunknown%2C%2C51f96e54-11e6-41c8-8768-558942ffb6ca-345323371%7C1%2CtitlesResults%2C81010166%2CVideo%3A81010166