On Western saviorism

You might have heard of the term white saviorism. If you haven't, white saviorism is the ideology and actions of white people acting in a way with the belief that they can "save" non-white people, in a way that centers white ego, sense of superiority, and denies non-white people agency in "saving" themselves.

I want to talk about western saviorism, because the similar tactics, language, and strategies of white saviorism can be perpetuated by western people of color, and exists because of the colonial relationship between the "West" and "Global South." This particularly shows up in Western youth-led activism, but I will be focusing on western youth-led climate activism.

Western saviorism is prevalent in the context of global climate organizing. Think of youth-led climate groups that are started by Western youth, but expand internationally. Think of the ambitious American teenagers who start an "international youth-led environmental nonprofit" and use youth from non-Western countries as tokens for their college application passion projects. If you are on LinkedIn you can go down a brain-rotting rabbit hole of multiple of them. It comes from a place of wanting to make a global impact, but often comes across as exporting a western started movement to diverse third world countries, making them do work to build up the organization under the guise of educating and building leadership, all so they can take credit for the impact as founder and the face of the organization. You know this is what's happening when the number of countries and names of countries are explicitly bragged about to really make impact seem legit. It's like Christian mission trips, sure they get some material benefit and you're giving them a sense of hope but the missionaries get to take credit for saving them.

Now think about climate initiatives started in the Global South. If you're from the Global North, it's very likely you don't know about too many. Same here. Each day I'm learning about initiatives started by activists in the global south that I wish more people knew about. Newsflash, people in these countries don't need our western climate movements. They already have their own initiatives that are fit to their local contexts.

When a movement starts in the West, it's going to have its roots, audience, leadership, and connections in the West. A lot of groups will call themselves global but actually be dominated by Western youth and have a few tokens. It takes a lot of resources and intention to create a truly global movement that decenters the west. A lot of well-established well-funded global NGOs like 350.org do a good job of that, but in this article we are focused on Western saviorism among youth particularly.

A lot of global youth-led things are started for the numbers. To be able to say we reached this many people in this many countries and when these movements are prioritized over ones led by those in the global majority, it becomes a problem. Western youth of color can still and are contributing to this colonial saviorist relationship. We are racialized in the west, but a lot of us have access to more resources than many in the global south and are taken more seriously globally, especially if we can speak English really well, and benefit from living in a colonizer country because of its immense wealth. Some have more economic privilege and capital as well. Again, this is definitely not true for all Western youth of color, but true of youth of color engaged in Western saviorism. No matter what race or ethnicity you are, being in the West you are taught certain ideas about the "third world" and you are prone to treating activists in the "third world" with this imperialist dynamic.

This is something I encountered as a Western youth of color leading FFF Digital. We started digital striking in the US, so we had our roots and connections in the US. But being two Asian Americans who started it did make a difference from the whiteness of Greta Thunberg from Sweden starting FFF. As we expanded globally during lockdown, we became a global organizing team attracting people across the world. But in the beginning of building a team, we received so many team applications from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, known as "the West" or "Global North." Our team leadership were all Western.

It became such a problem that we once had a huge influx of white european climate activists that we had to stop admitting them to our team in an affirmative action style. But many of the Americans who wanted to join were people of color, predominantly Asian Americans, which was pretty cool for an Asian American started group. As champions of diversity and inclusion, we knew that it wasn't just enough to promote leadership of color but to promote leadership of youth from historically colonized countries. We started doing more targeted outreach that de-prioritized Western youth and prioritized MAPA (most affected people and areas). It was those who realized their personal need for digital organizing who stayed, grew as activist leaders, and led the team. Over time the Western dominance faded, as more Western team members became busy and left.

Over time, FFF Digital became people of color led and mostly Asian and Asian American led. Many Asian Americans, some East, South, West and Southeast Asians, some from Latin America, and a small number from Africa. In comparison to most youth climate spaces, it's progress, but evidence that being dominated of one particularly racial group doesn't mean true diversity. Then the MAPA dominated leadership of FFFD "graduated" and moved on to bigger greater things with more established organizations, leaving FFFD with its Western and whiter remaining members. A big shift in capacity meant we didn't have the support we once had to maintain our infrastructure for supporting MAPA, like accessibility and language translation work. An org claiming to serve MAPA dwindled in its MAPA leadership and was left with a Western saviorist model. Desperate for team members, we allowed white and Western people to join the team. With little capacity to restructure FFFD to be as equitable as it used to be, it only made sense to cease the organization.

Instead of coming to a community and shoving your thing down their throat, build a broad and inclusive network, make clear your resources, and let people come to you who want it. This is what happened with FFFD. Even though our organizing team needed improvements in diversity, all campaigns were started by grassroots demand from affected communities themselves asking for OUR help, not us wanting to uplift their struggles to look like good people for doing it.

Instead of telling them how to do things, ask them to lead the way. While there is a lot they can learn from you, there is so much you can learn from them too. Instead of seeing a global problem as a Westerner and seeing yourself as the one who can be the savior to fix it, first take a look at the work already being done by the most impacted communities.