The White Savior in the Mirror

Abstract

Rolf Straubhaar’s 2015 article, “The Stark Reality of the ‘White Saviour’ Complex” is the author’s critical self-reflection as a young development worker in Mozambique confronting and developing his understandings of his position and privilege as an upper-middle income, White American. Drawing from his journal entries during a year working as an ethnographer for an education development project, Straubhaar interprets his activities and interactions as a Freirean educator and not surprisingly, finds himself falling short of those ideals. As a similarly situated upper-income White male whose earliest professional experiences were cross-cultural, and then international, many of Straubhaar’s reflections and self-checks rang true to me. But it also made me reflect on how the contexts in which I taught – a proudly community-controlled school on the Navajo Nation, and in public schools in Japan, were profoundly different from that of the author. In this chapter, I argue that Straubhaar’s experience wrestling with this the “White Saviour” necessitates deeper historical and cultural contextualization. In addition, I argue that Straubhaar’s interpretation of his hosts’ actions can be re-conceptualized through a reading of Marcel Mauss’ The Gift, as neutralizing the “White Saviour” by reciprocation. I will finish the article by briefly articulating some principles for pre-departure training for (White) Americans involved in international education and development to neutralize the White Savior.

Citation

Frey, C.J. (2016), "The White Savior in the Mirror", Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2016 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 185-198. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920160000030014