New lenses
I plunged into my memories to write about my life as a humanitarian and I started exploring the dark side —the times I was in the wrong— of this period of my life. And, the more I looked into repressed feelings of slight shame, the more my feelings and insight shifted. I felt like I had betrayed my values as I observed how I had turned a blind eye on the privileges I had as a white expatriate.
To succeed in the aid sector I had defended the privileges I enjoyed at the time: my hard work, my University degrees and my —some sort of superior— moral values due to my European background, justified those benefits. Today, this rationale comes into view like a pile of lame excuses: I now see them as common, but false, myths about the humanitarian profession. For example, the premium salary justified partly by the higher exposure of expats to danger —because we cannot blend in— makes no sense if you look at the numbers of local employees or volunteers that die or suffer harm in security incidents. Also, the notion that expatriates can be neutral and impartial, while local employees are biased by nature, can only be categorised as whitewash bullshit.
I opened a Pandora's box leading to the conclusion that I had been in the wrong all along. Once I began wearing anti-racist lenses, I could not justify most of the unjust rules that favoured me and others like me.
As I read “Travelling While Black” by Nanjala Nyabola, I can see how the colour of our skin makes our experiences different, but alike. She writes “ When I travel, I am more aware of my blackness; my womanhood; my age; my Africaness;” while I experience my whiteness and my Europeanness. But aren’t we both experiencing the colour of our skin and the weight of our cultures of origin? Disparate because we are at opposite ends of the stick of racism, but comparable, for travelling works as a wake up call.
It strikes me how, through these opposed standing points, we both arrive at pretty similar conclusions and her words resonate in me: How to legitimise the role of aid work when you no longer believe the help you came to give is needed? What about having access to clean water and nice cars while most people around you don’t? On these privileges she enjoyed, she wonders: “Is this all okay because I came to help? I see so much to criticise but feel less prone to criticising: I am no better than those I would challenge.” (Nyabola, p.28.)
I really see her when she writes “I want to be different, but I don’t know how”. Because I feel that I still want to help but not this way, not perpetuating the very system I came to change.
Reading the first essay of Nyabola’s book I find myself nodding my head and happy to be on her side. I notice that racist acts do not require the presence of a black or brown person, nor does anti-racism. In fact, isn't the absence of people of colour often the result and quiet outcry of racism? I am following her advice ‘Write As Yourself and Write What You Know’: I see that my role is not only to step up when I notice an unjust rule that undermines others, but most important, to highlight the privileges that I enjoy because of my white smile.
So maybe my voice is needed not because I witnessed direct and straightforward racist behaviours, but because I lived less obvious but nevertheless flagrant white entitlement. I am going to “start with the woman in the mirror” questioning rights I wanted to deserve but I knew I did not. Better late than never, and the more the merrier, so dear white expats, shall we stop our hypocrisy and start with our own backyard? If you want to be different but you don’t know how, a first step could be to say out loud —or just in your head for starters— racism is everywhere and I benefit from it, may my awareness be a light to make better choices everyday.
