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David Lammy is right to call out the ‘white saviour’ narrative – if only Comic Relief understood that

Last year, Comic Relief CEO Liz Warner said we wouldn’t see celebrities ‘standing in front of people talking about them’ – what happened?

Habiba Katsha
Thursday 28 February 2019 16:37 GMT
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Stacey Dooley criticised for 'white saviour complex' Comic Relief trip to Uganda

“Poverty porn” – exploiting the the poor to gain attention or sympathy for a charitable cause – is a relatively new term for such an old phenomenon.

Most of us have grown up seeing the adverts of poor African children with flies on their faces, or been forced to withstand a number of versions of Band Aid’s patronising “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time?”, a song focused less on the lives of the poor, and more so on what the west can do to “save” them.

If, somehow, you aren’t familiar with poverty porn, all you need to do is go on Instagram and you’ll be able to find at least one example of a white person surrounded by a group of black children with a caption that refers to how their experience in Africa “changed their life”.

Or, just go to Stacey Dooley’s profile.

Labour MP David Lammy recently criticised the investigative journalist for reinforcing the “white saviour” stereotype, after Dooley posted a picture of her holding a child from Uganda while working with Comic Relief.

He said: “The world does not need any more white saviours. As I’ve said before, this just perpetuates tired and unhelpful stereotypes. Let’s instead promote voices from across the continent of Africa and have serious debate.”

Lammy’s comments come a year after Comic Relief vowed to tackle the white saviour stereotype. As Liz Warner, the CEO of Comic Relief, told The Guardian: “You’ll see the films we put into Sports Relief are a step towards ... change. People talking in the first person in their own voices, with local heroes and local heroines talking to us about the work they’re doing. You won’t see a celebrity standing in front of people talking about them.”

But it’s evident that more work needs to be done to deal with the issue, which evidently Comic Relief still doesn’t seem to understand. In response to Lammy’s criticism, the charity claimed that they had approached him to make his own “film in Africa”, further highlighting their inability to grasp what the problem was in the first place.

What people who have come to Dooley’s defence haven’t quite grasped is that Lammy isn’t saying that white people shouldn’t help or travel to Africa at all, rather that they should be weary of the old messages that Comic Relief are reinforcing.

Having a celebrity go to these developing countries places more emphasis on their “hard work” and suffering, rather than that of the local people. Celebrities such as Dooley are far removed from the lives of ordinary people in their home countries and when they venture off to front charity appeals, their “bravery” tends to overshadow the actual problem at hand.

Predictably, since Lammy’s decision to call Dooley out, backlash ensued, and Dooley and her supporters remained blissfully ignorant to the detailed explanation Lammy provided about the power Comic Relief has in framing western narratives about Africa.

He essentially argues that the role Comic Relief plays is vital and it should use its platform to give people a more nuanced view of African countries. Merely showing people images of poverty means that we only ever see Africa in a negative light. But still, Dooley responded to Lammy’s tweet with a reductive: “David, is the issue with me being white? (Genuine question) ...because if that’s the case, you could always go over there and try raise awareness?”

Images of white people – particularly white women – with black children, without any indication as to whether they even had consent from their families to take as well as share their photos, are everywhere. So much so that there’s even a Barbie Saviour parody profile replicating the trope. But people shouldn’t need these images as an influencing factor to give back to charities. Nor should they need to buy into the imperialistic idea that west is the only way that Africans will be able to escape poverty.

Dooley has covered various topics in her BBC documentaries, many of which have been in developing countries. You would assume she would have unlearned the idea that the west is the saving grace of the world by now. You would also assume she would know the importance of representation and how specific images tell different narratives. Which is why it’s disappointing that she doesn’t understand how, as a white person, she has contributed to dated narratives about the continent.

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For many children, Comic Relief is their first encounter with Africa. As a black Brit, the way Africa is represented has had a profound effect on me. White children in school would ask if there’s electricity in Africa and whether or not we had water – which made me question my own view of the continent until I started having more conversations with my mother about Africa and started to read more about my heritage.

As an African from the Democratic Republic of Congo, I have yet to visit my country, but was fortunate enough to spend some time in Ghana two years ago. That experience completely changed the way I saw Africa and myself. Being there reminded me of how bad general western representations of Africa are – usually with huts, starving children and nothing more. Because what I experienced in Ghana was so far from that. Some parts of it even bore a closer resemblance to places I’ve seen in Europe.

Which is why it’s important to have people in developing countries telling their own stories, rather than someone who has limited knowledge on the specificity of their experiences. As Lammy stated earlier: “The people of Africa do not need a British politician to make a film. I want African people to speak for themselves, not UK celebs acting as tour guides.”

Appeals like Dooley’s should have no place in the charity sector. Instead of going to these countries to provide services they barely understand themselves, white people should be educating themselves on how these developing countries became poor in the first place.

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