"The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad is a novel that shrouds itself in the overproduce message that imperialism is wrong yet upholds the ideology that Europe is inherently better than Africa. The idea that Africans are savages and must be saved by Europeans and their civility is not an idea that dies easily. These views are still very prevalent today especially visible in mission trip photos.
I see them everywhere all over social media. Photos of white trip goers and the people of color they're so graciously helping. They're toting these little brown children on their hips and there's a caption on how funnily they reacted to their whiteness. Captions about how they loved playing with their silky blond hair or asked if they're sick because of their pale skin. In these photos the people of color are used as prompts to make the white savior look like a savior.
It may not exactly be a "darkness" but it does seem based on the same ideas.
Your post is really interesting. It reminds me of our class discussion of volunteering in general and if it possible to have mutual recognition relationships with people you volunteer to help. I think that the "darkness" of service trip posts lies mainly in the captions. Service trips are awesome experiences and its great to post about them on social media, unless the captions are used to establish binaries like the ones you used as examples.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you're saying. It reminds me of what Mr. Heidkamp said in class about how sympathy and charity can sometimes perpetuate binaries even more than apathy. I think your post begs the question of why we choose to donate our time and money to people in need: are we doing it for the people we're trying to help, or for ourselves?
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