Dialogue Description:

• The Reductive Seduction of Other Peoples’ Problems – Courtney Martin
• A Journalists Guide to the White Savior Complex – David Adler
• Resilience is Futile: How Well Meaning Non-profits Perpetuate Poverty – Melissa Chadburn

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Check in / Topics

• In the non-profit space. Doing so much in the name of capacity
• Not clear boundaries. Fear and anxiety about things not getting done. And shows up in paid and unpaid organizing, but is costly to the movements as skill building and knowledge gets centralized and then work cant be shared in the future.
• What would it feel to do less?
• Challenging dynamic at work were we are trying to shift into a worker co-op for the non-profit side, which requires a lot of sophistication (legal, financial, policy) and to make it possible we have to have a lot of expertise and politics, and yet there is a huge diversity of class and education background.
• In the middle of POC telling me to exclude other POC cause of education background and its complicated to navigate
• Roy Moore was a hero where I grew up, a radical activist hero in the Christian fundamentalist movement
• I was raised in that space and if we had more money I could have been that white savior archetype. Particularly disgusts me cause I have done a lot of work against how I grew up. But need to get curious about how it shows up now
• Work at non-profit and struggle with how to advocate with the people I supervise. What does it mean to advocate for myself in that context?
• How to navigate space in racial justice non-profit where professionalism is present, but as a white person struggling to both push against it and fall into it.
• Free lance journalist and its come up as having ideas I want to take on but not knowing if Im the right person to write it. Being fearful after something is produced
• White saviorism within a Collective liberation framework. How to act within collective liberation
• Worked in a non-profit whose staff is mostly white, able-bodied folks, and the clients were mostly POC. Staffed two aids who were physical helpers to the clients and artists and were grossly underpaid compared to the white teachers. Reflecting on that situation. It was a space that fed me and also made me have deep discomfort.
• Semi-retired and so spend a lot of time in activism and personal social justice work. And then am constantly asking myself if I do something for me or for the kids Im working with. Work teaching mindfulness to young kids of color. And I come home feeling good, but then wonder if its just good for me or is it useful for them. Is this just the white savior.
• Giving money to programs for kids of color, in that moment am I just being a white savior or is this just
• Just transitioned out of being a social worker, so interesting to not have that obvious layer and now wanting to critique the rest of my life
• How does critizing the white savior dynamic keep me from acting justly, hoarding capital,, etc.
• Martyrdom part in white saviorism is alive for me. Connected to individualism and really not trusting other people. Shows up in my context with other white people. Me as exceptional. Some idea of my job to radicalize people I work with. Motivated by guilt and shame rather than collective liberation.
• Restorative justice work- people are coming together and if we can send them good wishes that would be great.
• Working in a legal aid clinic in EPA, founded by a white savior notion of what they were going to provide for the community, problematic. Direct legal services, and the second is policy advocacy for tenants rights.
• Conflict for political work cause its driven by the white lawyers and not the community. Feels good to me but

Notes

• perfectionism and martyrdom
• co-dependent relationship with saviorism. Its serving me and also enabling the systems.
• Actually use the framework of co-dependency.
• As someone who is the adult child of an alcoholic, I am trained in co-dependency. It is about white supremacy and structural racism and also the opersonal aspects.
• Thinking of unsettling colonial desires. – so much harder to learn that there is no ok. That it is so uncomfortable is harder work is than to get trapped in the binary of martydom or of buying in, of it being good or bad.
• How to hold myself accountable even as im in the in between
• What is the principle for action even in that uncertainty
• IN a book club around racism and other people were feeling a lot of guilt and inexperience.  Noticed this thought of exceptionalism and how to share knowledge or provide guidance. Have fears about that leadership role, seeming sanctimonious, but also what is the point of educating myself if im not gonna share it.
• How to bring our own humanity into the subject of white saviourism. This common phrase of why we do racial justice work is to tap into our own humanity.
• In the subject of giving money, decided that I would give money when I could be fully present with people and not be transactional and offer space to listen. Most people really respond and want to engage about our lives.
• Article around tourism in peoples lives and how we surf through them and use them for our entertainment.
• How when you are in the system feel like a bar code.
• But also balance the idea of being a tourist.
• Like in conversation I don’t give my contact info, or have a real relationship.
• The fear of not
• Gentrification of public education, white families bring resources and re-strucutre the inequity of a school.
• White saviorism exists because of the underlying system in which not everyone have access to resources.
• The control of re-distribution
• Middle place around the white savior complex. How I perpetuate white saviorism and also my paid work will never shift the underlying structures.
• The most insidious forms of saviourism is thinking that ones paid work is the real transformational work.
• In public schools the reality is the underlying system is fucked and underfunded.
• How we perpetuate underlying patterns.
• If I didn’t do that white savior thing, my white ED would do it and in a much more harmful way.
  • Lots of people fo color can loose their jobs, and the organization shuts.
• Micro ways- if I don’t show up for RJ in one piece, Im not doing my job as an ally or accomplice. Beating myself up if I don’t show up in the moment. The inverse is I show up in my ways, and people say we don’t want to, and then the response is to throw up hands and say im outta here.
• How to be patient enough with humility and impatient enough to feel the urgency.
• Learning to live with discomfort and ambivalence.
• There is this basic question of just asking what people need.
• Why is that so hard?
• Someone might give you an answer you don’t want
• Things that you want.  Like buying a house, the answer might be no. and then you still want to.
• What do you do if the answer is no.
• Asking is important, but often there is not accountable and reciprocal relationships  because of power dynamics.
• In my past I was working abroad. Had a series of interactions that let me know that there was no way to have a real relationship that allowed me to be reciprocal and accountable in that context.
• Wish I was better versed in Marxist theory and what it would say in this. IN the world white people are not the only people who enact white supremacy. White people are better versed cause it benefits us. But also this idea that we are perpetuating harm is true for everyone. Nice about Marxism is the clarity around the boss and the proletariat.
• What is the dialogue between Marxism and critical race theory.
• White saviorism in a harm reduction way
• Don’t know how I build a real relationship of trust in a lawyer client relationship. Obviously structural racism and the power dynamics are intense.
• People I respect do a lot of asking, and make sure clients have full information and agency.
• The courtroom dynamic-
• Pangea legal services – points of unity. Worker directed non-profit. Immigration defense law. “we recognize the law is a living document. It was not set up to serve us. And we operate within in but it is not our liberation
• As a union organizer. Organizing model. Unions came out of organizing, but has evolved into a service model. Client provider exchange. Attempt to return to the organizing model. Educate and empower. How to navigate on a day to day basis is tough as people also need service. Want to continue to pursue the organizing model.
• The balance between that and patronizing is a close one.
• I had folks I really encourage to get involved in organizing groups. Conversations about the police.
• Non-profits as part of maintaining the class and race system, and because we need to work and may be better than working for big banks, how to not be the tool that is keeping the system how it is. What we have said is the micro actions of what we can do.
• Humanizing to acknowledge when I enact dynamics that are appropriate
• IN the service of connection and dignity, its useful to name urgency and not enoughness and scarcity is being visiblized. When I sense that we aren’t serving it.
• Slow work of changing hearts and minds. Shifting one person at a time.
• The more that we attempt to do something different, the more revealed the the structure is. Trying to push back against capitalism and it is thwarted it helps us notice how capitalism operates.
• Parrells between white Christian fundamentalism and white liberalism.
• White saviourism out there whose goal is to maintain the hierarchy.
• Christian Zionists. Who want jews to get isreal cause it leads to the coming of Christ or to get them out of this country.
• Thinking about it and to not be oblivious and to keep in mind what my intentions are
• Acting from the place of the middle and not letting the energy always point inward and become a dialogue about self and morally coded when I think about how white saviourism comes up for me.
• Feeling a little bit uneasy, judging myself for not bringing more.
• Power of community and collaboration when trying to do this with myself.  Not gonna get too many answers just working on it with myself.
• Martyrdom and activists as martyrs to the cause and then bringing it to the middle space.
• Reflect on what happens with old dynamics of spearheading change.
• Interesting that im having judgement on this topic as old and tired and yet there are ways that im showing up at work that are really not in integrity. I need to get my house in order actually.
• I need to rage about that how we need to sit with extreme discomfort and not knowingness, and the other side is like are you fucking kidding me I am watching the world burn and that’s the best we got. It is so deeply unsettling that I am able to get angry at it, wonder what it would look like to use that rage. Fucking species are going extinct and its not good enough to just sit with how it feels in my chest.
• Have been frozen at work cause im fearful of the white savior complex at work. Models of people who have been doing this work for a while and deeply reflecting but not getting bogged down.
• Attorneys. Treating each other like humans. Not common for attorneys to treat me like human as a kid. It is powerful maybe to name that with clients.
• Deep desire to be needed and how that relates to organizing and white saviorism and co-dependency. How to be aware of the motivation of where Im coming from. Thinking of young people suing the president for climate change and the future that it is stealing from them. SO things do matter, but being conscious of not doing things just so I matter.