a small point, but it isn't the "white industrial savior complex" unless when you say "white man" here you mean american. when i spoke of the grant program and its administration, the vast majority of faces of those running the program, the ngos, our board, were african or african american. but all were ultimately framing it in terms of a global north and its institutions. i assume that is what "white" really means.
ken
On 3/22/12 8:41 AM, Ikhide wrote:
Obi,
Many thanks for your thoughtful response. I have no doubt that Teju Cole speaks volumes for many in your generation of African writers who have been caught flat footed and winded by the powerful winds of change sweeping the world.
While, you, Teju and I are feeding off of the African Victim Industrial Complex writing pathetic scrolls about the white man's perfidy, my 12-year old son is using his smartphone to link up with millions of other kids to do something for a child. THAT, sir, is new, get used to it.
Obi, there may be hope, the children you and I and Teju have muttered about for fat pay from our white friends may get relief, wow. You sit there fed and burped by the White Industrial Savior Complex and explode in rage when they offer a drop of water to your children.
Did you and Teju just wake up to the notion of a White Savior Industrial Complex? Then you are both incredibly narcissistic - because you are all happy graduates of that generous dysfunction.
If you have never given a black child a t-shirt you have no moral right to rail against a white man for giving said child a Lakers t-shirt.
Now go back to feeding off the white man's trough before I descend on you some more ; -) Next?
- Ikhide
From: Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:35:17 +0000ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comSubject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"
Ikhide, I wonder which part of the "articulated priorities" riles you. I'm also a bit nonplussed by your take on the title, quite so because, I think it does express sufficient irony and pathos apt to Teju Cole's incisive analysis. Perhaps you'd wish him, as you often do, to dismantle and cuss out Africa, blame the land and people, and maintain the cynical lie that these images retailed serially about that sad continent where the left-handed charity industry is most lucrative is indeed all of Africa, and be left without scrutiny. I think Teju speaks volumes and does speak for me in many regards. I suspect your ambivalence is driven by a need for a particular kind of tepid correctness that would serve very little to the spirit of the article. All those who take a stand for that continent must, to quote the erudite Okpewho, call it by its proper name. Teju Cole does. He does more: he takes a steady look at this phenomenom of the "white savior Industrial Complex," a more contemporary equivalent of the "whiteman's burden" and puts a name to it. His articulated priority? to point to the powerful implication of misrepresenting an entire continent by the powerful imagery created in powerful lands where Africa remains a strange alchemy off horror - terror, war, tyranny, disease, and death, and nothing else . Teju speaks for many of us in his "articulated priorities."--
Obi Nwakanma
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:47:43 -0700
From: xokigbo@yahoo.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com; Ederi@yahoogroups.com
"One song we hear too often is the one in which Africa serves as a backdrop for white fantasies of conquest and heroism. From the colonial project to Out of Africa to The Constant Gardener and Kony 2012, Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected. It is a liberated space in which the usual rules do not apply: a nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs satisfied. Many have done it under the banner of "making a difference." To state this obvious and well-attested truth does not make me a racist or a Mau Mau. It does give me away as an "educated middle-class African," and I plead guilty as charged. (It is also worth noting that there are other educated middle-class Africans who see this matter differently from me. That is what people, educated and otherwise, do: they assess information and sometimes disagree with each other.)"- Teju Cole in The Atlantic Mobile, March 21, 2012Thoughtful fairly nuanced piece; the condescending title does the burden of his essay a disservice. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it but I couldn't disagree more with the essay's articulated priorities.- IkhideStalk my blog at www.xokigbo.comFollow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
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