Growing Up White Saviors

Abstract

In an enduring moment of pandemic, racial reckoning, and grave economic inequalities, the question of how white people with privilege most effectively and ethically engage momentous social problems remains. I inquire whether those who have participated in the white savior complex earlier in their lives later commit to more critical, reflexive, and collective forms of social justice organizing. Based on 21 interviews and a survey with people who had formerly participated in advocacy pertaining to the protection of children affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war between 2008 and 2010, this work explores what enables the white savior complex, whether white saviors can change, and if so, what facilitates transformation. Ultimately, I argue that the white savior complex is about being extraordinary. It is part of a pursuit to find purpose. It is about being right and good—and it is about reaching out to assist another while avoiding examination of both oneself and the conditions that enable the suffering in the first place. I found that people who have been engaged in the white savior complex can and do change. Yet, growing up and transforming from the white savior complex is not inevitable. It takes time, new social networks, and education that cultivates critical consciousness. I conclude by naming antidotes to the white savior complex: efforts which place lineage, humility, and curiosity at the center. Such efforts incorporate accountability and critical feedback and invoke concerted reflection on structural determination as well as personal social location identities and motivations.

Keywords

activism change movements qualitative race

Introduction

The white savior complex (WSC) is a network of relationships and resources that is guided by an ideology that centers white bodies as essential helpers to respond to social problems. The WSC has been justly critiqued by many (Aronson 2017; Bandyopadhyay 2019; Cole 2012) and it endures. It is woven into the demise of advocacy campaigns like Invisible Children that sought to popularize in the United States the impact of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war on children (Taub 2012). The WSC was also paramount in the recent well-circulated news story of American missionary Renée Bach who set up a clinic to treat malnourished children in Uganda (Levy 2020). The WSC produces the logic behind the creation of Teach for America (Anderson 2013), global health projects, and volunteer and fundraising campaigns for vulnerable populations around the world (Lasker 2016). It appears in many popular films such as Green Book (2018), The Help (2011), and Dances with Wolves (1990), among countless others (Hughey 2014). It is interlaced with U.S. imperialism—in both the origin myth of the country and the contemporary narratives circulating about military intervention in Iraq and beyond (Jordan Flaherty 2016). Today, we observe the WSC in some white-bodied people’s responses to police brutality and the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking the impeccable photographic moment or poignant post to disseminate the message, “Rest assured, I am a good white person.”

The narrative of the white savior is commonplace and builds on the predictable black-and-white savages-victims-saviors metaphor (Chazal and Pocrnic 2016; Mutua 2001): brown and Black folks hurt; a compassionate white individual observes this and designs an exceptional intervention that alleviates suffering. In this account, the root causes for the harm and uneven power distribution remain largely unexplored. The ones who intervene perform acts of heroism against “a black-and-white construction that pits good against evil” (Mutua 2001:202), and most commonly, they are not prompted to examine their complicity in harmful systems, leading to suffering in the first place. Indeed, even the development of the idea of an “altruistic self” ultimately “functions to reproduce the global means and relations of production that serve the ruling ideology of capitalism” (Althusser, Goshgarian, and Bailbar 2014, Fanon 1970; Willuweit 2020) as the notion that some of us fulfill a benevolent desire to help others never interrogates the social terrain of power, enabling the WSC to play out again and again. According to somatic trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem (2017), the principles of white saviorism are a form of “dirty pain” that ultimately provides white progressives a way to flee from the root causes of violence while living out their fantasies of being helpful (p. 166). Rooted in a colonial framework (Fanon 1963), the WSC is interwoven into cultural narratives, as well as in the internalized oppression that can be experienced by people of color in the form of embodied, racialized trauma. Downstream, it materializes into major disparities in wages, contributing to the growing racial income and wealth gap (Birn and Richter 2018; Crane 2013). Furthermore, akin to the military-industrial complex, the white savior industrial complex is a “self-perpetuating” and “self-serving” framework that shapes the victim’s story “to fit the particular needs of the political economy of NGOs” (Bex and Craps 2016:46). Ultimately, it upholds a status quo of grave symbolic and material inequality, which benefits the white savior at the expense of others.

Several years ago, I conducted a research project that revealed the WSC at work in the project of Invisible Children, a movement led by young, white-bodied north Americans who were galvanized to fundraise and take political action to address the atrocities and suffering caused by the LRA war in eastern and central Africa (Finnegan 2013a; 2013b). I observed how young American’s biographies (in particular, their race, class, and gender) influenced their motivation and actions on behalf of children affected by the LRA war in Northern Uganda. This work was in conversation with a breadth of scholarship that attempted to make coherent the rise of Invisible Children and their viral video campaign, Kony 2012. Invisible Children sought to mobilize young people—mostly in the United States—to call for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the alleged Commander-in-Chief of the LRA. Critics of Kony 2012 raised concerns about misrepresentation (Izama 2012), commodity activism (Brough 2012), mis-portrayal of child soldiering (Drumbal 2012), the critics’ own reductionist approach to the video’s audience (Andacht 2014), the misalignment of international activism with local needs (Schomerus 2015), and broader trends in celebrity humanitarianism bolstering neoliberal capitalism and global inequality (Chouliaraki 2013; Dauvergne and LeBaron 2014; Kapoor 2013).

In his 2012 critique of Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign, Nigerian American essayist Teju Cole astutely describes the WSC and scrutinizes it to expose the dangers it poses. Ultimately, Cole reminds his readers how the WSC is one that incentivizes people to act on behalf of others to feel better about themselves, without examining the policies that have created and maintained systems of oppression in the first place. He notes,

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege . . . His good heart does not always allow him to think constellationally. He does not connect the dots or see the patterns of power behind the isolated “disasters” . . . There is much more to doing good work than “making a difference.” There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.

Several years after my initial study and the rise and fall of Kony 2012, I was contacted by someone I had met years earlier during his participation as a college student in WSC activities. He wrote to me to share how he had changed over the years. Our exchange genuinely inspired me to probe more deeply. In a specific critique of Invisible Children, Cheney (2015) wrote that “as Invisible Children fades away, youth activists may in fact rededicate themselves to a more critical and self-reflexive activism, substantively challenging—rather than reinforcing—global inequalities.” My project explores precisely this query. Did those who participated in Invisible Children, arguably a manifestation of the WSC, later commit to more critical, reflexive, and collective forms of social justice organizing, those that seek to shift power and challenge underlying inequalities? My findings suggest, as social science research often observes, “it depends.”

Ultimately, this project has allowed me to interrogate several key tenets of the WSC. I have asked: (1) what enables the WSC?, (2) can white saviors change?, and (3) if so, what facilitates transformation? In this paper, I argue that, from the perspective of those who participate, the WSC is about being extraordinary. It is part of a pursuit to find purpose. It is about being right and good, and it is about reaching out to assist another while avoiding examination of both oneself and the conditions that enable the suffering in the first place.

I have also learned that people who have been engaged in the WSC can and do change. As Menakem (2017) offers, white-bodied people can redefine themselves by “taking responsibility and growing up” (p. 274). Yet, a transformation from the WSC is not inevitable. For some, it comes with time, through social networks that challenge this kind of engagement and through education that cultivates critical consciousness. The tireless work of social movement organizers for racial and economic justice also cannot be underestimated in the societal shifts that have taken place in the last decade. Efforts that are an antidote to the WSC place lineage, humility, and curiosity at the center; they highlight accountability and critical feedback; and they involve concerted reflection on structural determination as well as personal social location identities and motivations. These aspirations are difficult to realize but not impossible to achieve, and this project serves as a call for all of us—educators, organizers, students, and community members—to center these principles so that our efforts can contribute to meaningful social transformation toward justice.

Methods

For this project, I re-interviewed 21 individuals with whom I originally spoke between 2008 and 2010.¹ The semi-structured interviews took approximately 1 hr over the phone or, in the case of one person, in a public restaurant in Gulu, Uganda. I audio-recorded the interviews, had them transcribed, and then coded them by hand and with HyperResearch coding software using a grounded theory analytical framework (Glaser and Strauss 1967). I augmented the interviews with a brief online survey sent to each participant. The survey gathered demographic information as well as self-perceptions of the participants’ role in social change. It asked questions about their activist identities and their orientation and feelings toward Invisible Children.

All of the research participants had some previous engagement with Invisible Children, Resolve Uganda, or Gulu Walk, the key North American–based organizations that focused on advocacy pertaining to the LRA war, which was originally centered in northern Uganda.² Nine were compensated staff at some point with Invisible Children or Resolve. All 21 participants considered themselves as a person with privilege, to some degree. Table 1 summarizes the demographics of my participants, highlighting a majority white, formally educated, socially economically advantaged population.

Table 1.

Demographics of Participants.

Demographics of participants (n = 21)
Racial identity		Class markers
15	White	Annual Household Income
4	Black—Ugandan (2 from N. Uganda)	7	Less than US$30,000
0	Asian	4	US$30,000–US$50,000
0	Native American	5	US$50,000–US$100,000
0	Hispanic/Latino	4	US$100,000–US$200,000
0	Biracial	1	More than US$200,000
2	Other	Self-Assessment of Socioeconomic Class
Gender		2	Poor
13	Female	2	Working class
8	Male	11	Middle class
Religious Affiliation		5	Upper-middle class
8	None	1	Upper class
3	Catholic Christian	Educational Status of Parents
5	Protest Christian	3	High school degree
2	Evangelical Christian	3	Technical/Trade school training
0	Jewish	7	College degree
0	Muslim	8	Advanced degree
0	Hindu	Participant Educational Status
0	Buddhist	0	Less than high school degree
3	Other	0	High school degree
		2	Some college
		5	College degree
		4	Some graduate school
		10	Graduate degree

Captivating Us: What Enables the WSC

Fundamentally, the WSC is enabled by our social and political conditions constituted of blatant power inequalities where resources, opportunities, and agency are distributed asymmetrically across the human populace due to the global operating system of racial capitalism (Estes and Dunbar-Ortiz 2020; Robinson 2000). Within that uneven terrain, my interviews reveal what compels people to participate in the WSC, which I have organized into four pillars that I will unpack as key findings: (1) a yearning for the extraordinary, (2) meaningful life purpose, (3) a demarcation of being right and good, and (4) avoiding critical self-reflection and systemic reflection.

Extraordinary Living

Many who I interviewed spoke about their hopes to live a spectacular life. They looked at the societal landscape and saw a mundane quality that they wanted to sidestep. Mandy told me,

[leaders in Invisible Children] they really, I think they sparked this in my life and other people’s lives . . . Just not live a boring life. And go out and have a lot of adventures that are related to seeing the world; but just really having fun, and like living a big, full, fun life that’s outside the normal a little bit.

For many, Invisible Children was an “eye opening” experience, which tapped into their emerging global curiosities, their creative energies, and their yearning to be engaged citizens. It provided unique and interesting opportunities to travel, to meet new people, and to learn about a different part of the world of which many were unfamiliar prior to their participation. James noted how he was originally compelled to Invisible Children partly because of the travel adventure it presented as a U.S. volunteer in their roadie program: “ . . . [it] would get me in weird little pockets of the country I would never travel to otherwise . . . I got to experience Americana in a way that I don’t think very many other people have ever done.” For others, the global focus of children in Africa allowed evasion of the murky realities of complicity in inequities at home.

Beyond physical adventure and travel, the extraordinary pillar of the WSC also draws on the inclination for young Americans to portray themselves as “cool.” Sophia noted how

the reality is that like for young kids that could afford to be young and engaged in issues outside of their own community, Invisible Children had a draw for them . . . It was an appealing thing to be involved in. I don’t want to use the word trendy but . . . it was this thing that they were convinced that they wanted to be involved in.

Similarly, James noted the unique aesthetic vibe that was part of what made Invisible Children so captivating: “I think the charm of Invisible Children and the charisma of it, and why people really gravitated toward it so much was that it had such a youthful, almost like reckless energy.” Indeed, part of what propels the WSC is the image that it is “cool” to be perceived as someone who is compassionate towards others. Sara noted a “star-struck” vibe in Invisible Children spaces that was “cool, beautiful people telling you that if you cared about Africa, you could be cool and beautiful too.” Carly, an Invisible Children leader, shared, “I think one of the biggest accomplishments we did was creating communities where activism . . . came with social capital, instead of smoking cigarettes making you cool.” The premise is that activism for Black bodies in the Global South makes young white bodies in the United States exceptional.

Purpose

For many, the WSC also offers life purpose. The alienation of an individualist, capitalist society that disassociates people from one another and from rich cultural and faith traditions has, perhaps, left privileged folks divorced of deeper meaning and connection. Several participants in my study noted how beyond adventure and excitement, the experience with Invisible Children tendered young folks the opportunity to discover the inherent value and possibilities in their “one wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver (1992) invites. Indeed, as Flaherty (2016) observes, “many people with privilege are actually bored, estranged, and disconnected” (p. 13) and Invisible Children opened a novel sense of possibility. In this vein, Sophia noted that Invisible Children was “the first time that I felt like I had a mission.” She shared how she felt once she had learned about the horrific suffering of children at the hands of the LRA. She said, “I felt like it was my responsibility, because I had this knowledge and this awareness of something.” Invisible Children opened her to the idea of “what can we do to make a bigger impact on humanity?” And then it further pushed her to organize with others. In describing the work of Invisible Children on campus, she explained,

So it wasn’t like just give me money. It was you can become a part of solving this problem and here’s how . . . You get to be part of something, a part of a movement and you’re with all these other people in your age group and it feels really good at that age to be a part of something greater than yourself, right? And at the same time, you are helping these kids that are in Uganda.

James also spoke to this longing for meaning in life, which Invisible Children helped satisfy:

I think that’s what our culture is so hungry for these days, is just people coming forward and being genuine and true in what they believe in and what they fight for and work towards . . . I think that was kind of what set them [Invisible Children] apart and how they were kind of revolutionary. It’s just that they came in and filled that void where people wanted something more meaningful in their lives. They didn’t want to just be looking at Instagram on their phone or you know using Facebook but they wanted to be making some sort of important social change . . . the general demographic of who participates in Invisible Children and for the most part it was like people from suburbia, white Christian kids that were of a younger age. And I think that was for a good reason because I think especially in Western culture, we’ve become so thirsty and so hungry for a deeper meaning that these kids really latched onto this and said, “I’ve been living this privileged life and it’s become quite boring, and very unfulfilling, and I want to be doing something more.” And I think Invisible Children was kinda one of the first organizations to come forward to that demographic and say “here’s something you can do.”

Many folks with privilege struggle with a yearning to be personally efficacious, especially upon coming to terms with appalling anguish that is present in the world. To that point, so many participants spoke to how Invisible Children opened their eyes and offered an opportunity to be part of positive change. Jennifer shared,

Invisible Children had . . . an energy about them, that they made you believe that you could affect change. That was the difference for me. I mean there were plenty of charities that I could go along to . . . But they, they made you believe, you know what I mean? . . . you actually used your energy and thought, “yeah okay, maybe I can do something.”

Being Good and Right

The WSC is also grounded in the individualistic and binary moral framework that people are deemed good or bad, and right or wrong. There is not a spectrum but rather a black and white delineation. Through action to help others, one can be deemed to do “good” and be “right.” In the case of Invisible Children, tones of American evangelical Christianity, a religious influence that some members espoused, reinforced this notion that participation with Invisible Children was one mechanism to express one’s “rightness.” Jackie noted, “American Evangelical Christianity to me, is about dogmatic belief around being right and that rightness mandating that you go out and compel other people to see your rightness.” It is reinforced by American exceptionalism, a sense that the United States and its people are special, inherently good, have a unique rescuer interventional role, and are not bound by the same rules of engagement as others (Bacevich 2008). Jackie explained,

this idea that the people . . . know the right answer and can do the right thing and can make everything better . . . that raw belief in their own rightness, I think produces a really profound lack of curiosity about what people actually need.

She went on to expound that in Gulu, Uganda, where Invisible Children had education programs and where she came into contact with many young American Invisible Children followers visiting the region,

I felt like that there was very much an air of “we are the people who are here to save the day.” And I often watched western staff come over and be very surprised about their kinda irrelevance in the broader scope of the situation . . . I think it was a bit of a shock for them to show up and be like “wow, I’m not the person that is going to fix this thing.”

Embedded into this opportunity to do good and be right, I found that part of what enables the WSC is this sense that privileged people could be apathetic about adversity in the world, but they are choosing something else, something more noble, something for others. Rather than compare themselves to anti-racist collectives in the struggle for Black liberation, they note how they could be spending their time and energy in much more egomaniacal undertakings. Thus, their efforts to think outside of themselves ought to be lauded. Tyler reflected,

I mean there was a lot of critique of the organization that we had this white man’s complex or imperial complex or Christian complex and that can’t be denied. I think any form of international aid or help in some capacity—it’s going to derive from something like that if you’re coming from an imperialistic country historically like the United States. When you look at the demographic of Invisible Children, it was primarily privileged, white, upper-middle class Christian. I think there’s something to be said about that . . . I don’t feel guilt or shame but I mean I look at what I did and that was a very young, idealistic, kind of naïve thing to do but I could have just as easily gone off and partied and done a lot of drugs and have done less beneficial things for other people. I just took that young energy and invested it in a way that at that time I felt was helpful and appropriate. I don’t think there’s anything shameful in that.

This indication that the necessary and important step for white folk with privilege is to turn outward and invest energy and time in groups of people who are suffering is hopeful yet also evading a responsibility to examine their role in upholding the systems that cause harm in the first place. Essentially, it eschews the systemic analysis of how root causes—including white supremacy and racial capitalism that are particularly created, fostered, and upheld by white people—have shaped the wounding situations in which we find ourselves and in which we seek to change today. Flaherty (2016) illuminates this dynamic that “people with race and gender privilege are taught by white supremacy and patriarchy that they have a certain authority to impart to the world” (p. 28). Our engagement with the world then is as “helpers” but “only on our own terms in ways that benefit us” (p. 38). This phenomenon is partly enabled by how young Americans are schooled in a history that is “much more eager to learn lessons from the crimes of others” (p. 30) than to acknowledge the genocide of Native Americans, or the brutality with which African Americans have been treated since they first were brought to North America in the 1600s. Indeed, focusing on others is one way for white privileged folks to avoid the deeper “dirty pain” efforts of examining and moving through complicity, culpability, and how we have benefited from historical and contemporary unjust practices.

Illustrating this contemporary pattern of white folks moving toward brown and Black people “to help” to prove their worthiness, African American playwright Claudia Rankine reflected on an exchange with a white middle-aged man who asked her publicly after reading one of her works that depicts the ugly veracity of racism in America, “What can I do for you? How can I help you?” She noted how “his questions struck [her] as an age-old defensive shield against identifying with acts of racism at the hands of liberal, well-meaning white people, the kind he had just listened to [her] read” (Rankine 2019: vii). In his posture toward her, he positions himself outside of the problems of racism “while maintaining a position of superiority relative to me in his act of offering to help me” (p. vii). Her poignant response was, “I think the question you should be asking is what you can do for you” (p. viii). This is a critical appeal to those in white bodies, to those with privilege to commit reflective energy toward analysis of the historical, political, and social contexts that created the inequities in our society, and for us all to acknowledge our personal relation to it as an appropriate next step.

Absence of Critical Analysis of Self and Systems

The final pillar of the WSC is the dearth of rigorous reflection, neither on one’s own power and motivations, nor on the contextual historical, economic, and political systems that contribute to harm and human suffering. Liz observed that many Invisible Children folks embodied the frame: “I do care about this but not enough to actually do some research and really know what I’m talking about.” Similar to the good/bad binary already noted, rejecting recognition of how hurt occurs in a relational context is dependent on a very individualistic frame. Yet, many young Americans, particularly those with power and privilege, do not know enough about how systems work to analyze and incorporate this understanding into their wider recognition of how systemic oppressions—such as capitalism, racism, ableism, and patriarchy—operate. In the case of Invisible Children and the LRA war, little was done to illuminate structural analysis of the social forces that led to the LRA rebellion, militarization in the region, poverty, child abduction, and displacement. Most young people involved were not asked to think critically about what underlying forces led to children suffering in eastern and central Africa. They were also not guided to ask about who else was working on the issue, instead building on the narrative, “if we don’t act, no one will” (Finnegan, 2011). To this point, Toby noted in critically reflecting on his earlier activism with Invisible Children: “I was not critical enough about . . . any system or aware there was a system or if I was making waves or not.” He went on,

I just don’t know if I knew enough about systems to know if I was wave-making or not . . . The story of my involvement with Invisible Children was . . . I think I was a pretty ignorant young person and I’m probably just as ignorant now. But I probably know enough to know that I’m ignorant now.

Invisible Children produced media to tell a story that was intended to galvanize young privileged North Americas emotionally and then to harness that emotional energy toward action for eastern and central Africa through fundraising. Young participants in Invisible Children were not encouraged to inquire about what structures contributed to the arduous realities in eastern and central Africa in the first place, and this phenomenon is foundational to the WSC. Furthermore, they were not advised or even encouraged to read more history, to investigate U.S. imperialistic interventions in Africa and beyond, or to seek information from other media sources centering the narratives of those impacted by the LRA war. Andrea noted, “I think Invisible Children just happened to show up at that time when I was looking for something and then they were like, ‘Here it is, and it’s so easy and it will make you feel good about yourself’.” Laughing, she noted, “and it just fit all those things that I was looking for, that I didn’t necessarily have the tools yet to critique in a helpful way.” A few other participants also noted how they were discouraged from questioning essential premises of what Invisible Children was doing or how the LRA war connected to other problems in the world. Sara reflected how her questions about Invisible Children’s theory of change at the time she was involved were perceived as “too heady” by Invisible Children. She shared,

I made the mistake of asking how—under what circumstances did they think they had the ability or platform to say that they were going to arrest Joseph Kony? . . . do you not think anyone else has thought of this idea ? . . . This is a lot more complicated than you’re telling people . . . and it’s young people. And that was the thing that always got me was, you know, you guys are really beautiful and cool and you’re convincing young teenagers that they’re going to be able to do something that you have no right to even be talking about.

Invisible Children compelled young people to digest their media and follow their theory of change rather than engage in collective scrutiny about what approaches could be applied that were grounded in humility, community, and justice and that recognized the web of oppressive frameworks that were implicated in the LRA conflict, from colonialism to capitalism to militarism to white supremacy to patriarchy.

As others have theorized, this drive to relieve guilt for those with privilege and move to action quickly is resonant with Mawhinney’s (1998) concept of “moves to innocence,” which is about those in dominant groups who are disturbed by their power, “[trying] to escape or contain the unbearable searchlight of complicity, of having harmed others just by being one’s self” (Tuck and Yang 2012:9). Drawing from the work of Fellows and Razack (1998), Malwhinney notes that the “‘moves to innocence’ are characterized by strategies to remove involvement in and culpability for systems of domination” (p. 17). The absence of critical analysis in the WSC embodies a “move to innocence” as Invisible Children participants sought quick and stress-free ways to take some, any action in light of learning about atrocities in Africa. Avoiding analysis that might point to upstream causation of the LRA war, U.S. militarization in the region, and ongoing colonial trade and development policies that yield widespread impoverishment allowed Invisible Children participants to evade reckoning with complicity in the suffering of others. Indeed, Cole (2012) noted this in his original critique that Kony was a “convenient villain” when what Africa needed more urgently was a “more equitable civil society, more robust democracy, and a fairer system of justice.”

The reality is that, especially for folks of privilege, it is dishonest to suggest that our roles are only to be helpers when we encounter suffering. As Spade (2020) observes, “stories of individual heroes obscure [sic] the social and political conditions producing the crisis” (p. 142).

In Cole’s original searing critique of the white savior industrial complex, he conveys his own multiple identities and notes, “I don’t fool myself that I am not implicated in these transnational networks of oppressive practices.” Indeed, we all are. And not to bring that into campaigns that address human anguish is insincere and, ultimately, an obstacle to the deeper transformative work required for liberation. Speaking to just this, Mandy shared her concern that many Invisible Children young people were not thinking systemically and may not have really known what they were asking for in their advocacy:

So it was like write letters to your congressperson. Take out Joseph Kony. But I’m still curious today if any of those young people knew that what they were asking for? Did they know they were asking for military to be sent over to hunt down someone and actually kill them? Did they ever think about the ramifications of that? You know, being in northern Uganda at the time like, people really had varying opinions about what they wanted in terms of international involvement in bringing the conflict to a resolution. And I don’t feel like Invisible Children helped people here understand that like people in Uganda had an opinion, you know. You’re writing letters to your congressperson and asking them to support US foreign policy without even thinking about if that’s the action that the person on who you are speaking behalf really wanted.

In the case of Invisible Children, whether or not their campaign “asks” what folks in the region really wanted has certainly been debated, particularly when their advocacy pointed to military support for apprehending the LRA. One of the Ugandan former Invisible Children colleagues with whom I spoke noted,

I must admit . . . there was a point in time when I felt uncomfortable. Kony 2012 made me uncomfortable . . . I felt that that mission was not our mission. That was their mission . . . Their being the foreigner’s mission. I felt like . . . it was their interest, not our interest.

The lack of critical systemic analysis enables the interests of the white savior to supersede those most directly affected by the social problem(s) being addressed. The audacity of centering outsider interventions as straightforward solutions is characteristic of the WSC and the Invisible Children project in particular. Again, Sara explained,

That all that they needed to do was get some kids to camp out overnight, get a celebrity and Joseph Kony was going to be arrested and everything would go back to normal and they’d save the day. Like, just like the stars in their eyes and the way that they were—no, it wasn’t even the stars in their eyes. I can almost picture the room actually. It was the way that they were able to speak to people . . . made the majority, definitely not everybody in that room, but the majority of the people in that room think that they could do it too. That like all they had to do was run a rally on federal property and get all these kids and as soon as a football player came and it made the news, then they were going to end the war. And I was just like—do you think for one second, if it was any bit of this easy, the conflict would have been going on for this long? Like, are you kidding me? . . . I felt like I looked around and everybody was like glazed over, staring at like a pop star, the way that the boys [Invisible Children leaders] were speaking.

Carelessly trusting simple solutions led by charismatic outsiders that do not interrogate root causes is, indeed, a critical component of what keeps the WSC in motion.

Furthermore, the WSC endorses activism to care for a group of people who are distant from the activists themselves (Boltanski 1999). In the case of Invisible Children, this raises critical questions, such as whether it is ethical for folks with privilege in the Global North to tell and consume the painful stories of others in the Global South. Razack (2007) has provided poignant analysis of how Western citizens’ consumption of the stories of the Rwandan genocide “has mostly served to dehumanize them further, and in the process, to reinstall us as morally superior in relation to them” (p. 376). She articulates, “we can mourn with them and avoid any responsibility for the past or implication in the present” (p. 391). White saviors bask in the moral high ground of caring for another, in part because they do not recognize their African peers as complicated humans who are more than simply a route to seeing themselves as good people. Mamdani (2009), in a striking analysis of the Safe Darfur Coalition, notes, “no discussion of history or politics, no context, no analysis of causes of political violence or possible consequences of a military intervention” but instead “a full-blown pornography of violence . . . meant to drive a wedge between your political and moral senses, to numb the former and appeal to the latter” (pp. 56–57).

Thus, the WSC enables, in world of pain and inequality, the possibility to be good and right and feel extraordinarily purposeful—meanwhile, ignoring the underlying conditions—conditions in which we may be personally implicated—that led to harm in the first place.

Can We Change?

A significant impetus of this project was to consider whether folks who have engaged in the savior complex earlier can and do change over time. When asked specifically about their previous involvement to address the LRA war, participants expressed a range of sentiments from pride to embarrassment to gratitude to resentment to nostalgia to inspiration to discomfort. Of the 21 people I interviewed in this phase of the project, 7 were largely positive in their assessment of their earlier engagement; 10 expressed mixed feelings; 3 were mostly critical; and 1 was omitted because of lack of familiarity and original involvement with activism to address the LRA war. This section explores how participants understand the impact of their earlier engagement with the WSC and how they feel about it now. Ultimately, it leads us to the insight that transformation from the WSC is not inevitable, but possible.

The range of work and activities my participants are doing now is largely directed toward altruism and social engagement, but not necessarily social justice. Since I had spoken with them years earlier, some participants completed graduate degrees in Urban Studies, Education, Public Health, International Development, and Peace Studies. Seven were living in Africa or closely connected to community work there. Several were spending significant amounts of time raising young children. While the type of work someone performs is not enough to determine whether or not transformation from a savior complex framework has indeed occurred or not, I offer Table 2 to depict some of the key thematic areas of contemporary participant involvement. In the survey participants completed as part of my study, 76 percent assessed that they were currently activists, 86 percent affirmed their contemporary participation in social change work, and 86 percent noted appreciation for Invisible Children activism and its impact on their lives.

Table 2.

Thematic Areas of Current Participant Livelihood.

Education	3
NGO leadership	7
Political campaigns	2
Health provider training	2
Psychotherapy	2
Marketing for private firms	2
Arts	1

Note. NGO = nongovernmental organization.

Overall, approximately one-third of those I interviewed were largely positive about their earlier participation. Highlighting an exuberantly affirmative assessment, Jennifer reflected,

I’m very glad I did it. I think it was wonderful certainly for many years and I’m eternally grateful for the experience of it . . . I just thought Invisible Children was just the most amazing bunch of people who not only had such a good heart but just the sheer creativity and energy and enthusiasm to make change. And, you know, I’m sure we made mistakes and but I think overall, it was a great. I’m really happy that I was a part of that and I’m grateful for that opportunity.

Also emphasizing a commendatory appraisal of his earlier engagement, Tom noted,

I think if you go to Uganda . . . there’s a lot of kids who are gonna have some opportunities and their future is bright now, that I’m really proud of that. And just so grateful for everything that it did for my life; yea, 100% grateful.

Many participants pointed to the importance of raising global perspectives for young Americans and of putting public attention to the plight of those experiencing crisis in central and eastern Africa. Lawrence noted that the efforts “forced them to contend with realities about the nature of our world that they wouldn’t have otherwise contended with.” They were invited to look beyond themselves and offered an opportunity “to give back,” said Angella. Young Americans learned about advocacy, lobbying, and, according to James, “how to tell a story, why to tell a story, how to deliver it to someone well, in a meaningful way to give them an emotional connection.”

On the ground in Africa, participants recognized how the fundraising efforts of Invisible Children had enabled schools to be reconstructed and secondary and university students to return to school. Furthermore, many folks had been employed, and beyond a stable paycheck, they had also gained useful work experience through Invisible Children. Politically, Invisible Children, Resolve, and Gulu Walk played critical roles in passing a bill through the U.S. congress, which some have criticized as leading to the militarization of Africa, while others deemed essential for protecting civilians from the LRA at the tri-border area of Congo, Central African Republic (CAR), and Southern Sudan.

Through their earlier engagement, many participants also gained practice in student leadership and organizing. Even from those who were most critical of earlier participation, important lessons were gleaned about humility and social movement work. Andrea said her experience with Invisible Children “has very much served as a touchpoint, a warning; like how easy it is to get sucked into something without really checking yourself and how dangerous it can be to sell one narrative.” Toby noted his key philosophical and practical takeaways from his engagement with Invisible Children:

being skeptical about any organization’s stated impact; being skeptical about how much you think you are impacting anything or anyone; thinking more about interacting with people directly rather than through intermediaries; . . . [and because of my experience with Invisible Children], I also try to always bring food every time I hold a meeting because then people will show up more.

The majority of those with whom I spoke shared what I categorized as “mixed” sentiments about their earlier participation—some pride, some resentment, some appreciation, some judgment, some discomfort, and some sense of learning from the experience and subsequent engagement. Many of the participants had complicated and thoughtful reflections on their participation in the WSC, demonstrating critical and reflexive analysis. Andrea reflected,

I look back at the way that that story was told and the way I participated in that and I don’t feel great about that at all. But I also try to have compassion for where they were coming from and for myself. In being like, “yeah I didn’t know yet what that meant.” I feel grateful for the chance to have been involved with something like that but again it’s kinda concerning to me. Yea, I mean the whole thing, the whole idea that 18-year-old white kids are going to change everything is just troubling. I’m not sure if you can ask 18-year-old white kids to know that they can’t change everything.

She went on, later in the interview:

. . . with distance, I’ve become less frustrated with all the ways that they got it wrong. I just don’t have space to be angry or upset about that anymore. But . . . I don’t think if I actually sat down and looked at what they were putting out and looked at the way they talked about these issues now, that I would feel any better about it than I did five years ago . . . I have appreciation for some of the paths that they opened up for me but I also really feel very skeptical of the paths that they could have led me on if they were the only ones taking me along that way.

Similarly, Sara noted, “I think I’m glad that I did it. I learned a lot about myself . . . I wouldn’t, for a heartbeat, do it again now, but I’m not the same person I was then.”

Indeed, the majority of the 21 participants offered nuanced and thoughtful reflection of their involvement and of what Invisible Children and its partners had achieved. Thirty-three percent of the participants even spoke about and implied an understanding of the problematic nature of the savior complex or the narrative of the “white man’s burden” in their interviews.

Within the group of participants who expressed mixed feelings about their participation, several described feeling embarrassed about their earlier engagement. Even while they noted appreciation and pride, they also mentioned how they sometimes avoided bringing up their affiliation to Invisible Children or Kony 2012 when they were meeting new people because of negative public impressions. Interestingly, the shame they experience may be more about the perception of being connected to an organization that had a very public backlash following Kony 2012 (Taylor 2014) than any authentic reflection about the savior complex or social justice. Toby, who had expressed a strong dose of criticism about Invisible Children, noted how he felt:

not proud but weirdly grateful at the same time . . . On the one hand it helped turn me on to . . . what became my career path . . . On the other hand, it was sort of conceived totally on this really glossy version of history . . . this glossy, uncritical version of history that Invisible Children was inventing . . . also of how you could play a role in that history. It very much was like, “donate money and you would get this impact,” and that is kinda how I thought about it when I was in high school and the beginning of college. I was like, “oh I helped raise this money. I helped raise this awareness. This organization is doing great things. I’m doing great things now.” And then you realize that work that I was doing was part of a false narrative that was kinda self-promotional. It was actually very self-promotional and I actually have no way of gauging my impact . . . All that awareness that I thought I was raising was actually not awareness all. I was actually raising a really ignorant version of history.

Indeed, many of the participants noted that despite the criticisms they had about the project, they also had gratitude for how their earlier experiences led them to trajectories they were grateful to have pursued. Certainly, in hindsight, even experiences we do not wish to repeat or efforts in which we now more thoroughly understand the inherent pitfalls, we appreciate for what they taught us and how it led us down other revelatory paths.

When asked about whether she feels her support for Invisible Children has grown or diminished over the years since we originally spoke, Carly noted an evolution:

It’s changed . . . it’s just become more mature. Like, its number one less self-congratulatory. I’d say number two, it’s less dramatic and sorta like the feeling of your twenties, and you’re like “everything I do matters” and it’s a little less self-centered. I think I see it as part of a larger story that was important and I’m proud that I made those choices and had the opportunity to grow as an activist at that age . . . it just felt so important at the time and not that it’s less important . . . I think I see a larger context where other things are equally as important.

Finally, 12 of the 21 participants with whom I spoke—Ugandans and Americans alike—noted that friendships and expanded social networks were a momentous outcome of their earlier engagement. James summarized, “I’m left with this vast network of incredible humans that now are like brothers and sisters to me essentially.” Several spoke of reunions and weddings and life-long connections from Invisible Children activism.

Ultimately, I found that recognizing, offering a critique of, and changing from the ideology and practice of the savior complex were not inevitable outcomes for my participants. Only 3 of 21 emerged as critical of their earlier participation in Invisible Children. And while they did not outwardly critique the savior complex to me in 2008–2009 when we originally met, each of these three demonstrated seeds of critical thinking and curiosity even then. In the first set of interviews I did with them as young people deeply engaged in the work of Invisible Children, they asked me what I thought about their work with Invisible Children. I recall that Toby made astute observations about the racial identities of those who participated. Sara observed how Invisible Children had made it “popular to care.” And Jackie, while she noted “I am proud of our work here,” also observed how the influx of young white Americans to northern Uganda was deeply complicated and problematic. Notably absent at the time of their earlier engagement was any acknowledgment of their own complicity in systems that produce suffering and harm, in their home communities or in northern Uganda. Like the majority of people in the WSC, the frame of their analysis was centered on a problem located in Africa and their role as helpers.

What Facilitates Transformation

My findings suggest that participants in the WSC can and do change. While it is not an inevitable process, these interviews indicate several factors that play an important role in transformation. The first is time and development of critical consciousness. Time away from the intense period of engagement can shift perspectives, disentangle ego, and broaden understandings of social forces at work. Indeed, Freire has described how critical consciousness develops in a de-coding process over time (Freire 1973). Experiences in traveling, education, reading, and research can all contribute. Pertaining to education, Andrea remarked how feminist and liberation theologies were critical to her own maturation. Similarly, Toby’s international development studies and also his own research on the conflict in Uganda, which revealed a disparate timeline from what was presented in many Invisible Children films, also began to raise a deeply critical eye. Several participants offered a critique of humanitarian aid and development, an analysis they gained at university. And finally, social networks were key to how participants grew in their perspectives. Meeting new people and shifting friendships also played a role in exposure to new perspectives.

Some leaders in the movement spoke to the need for groups like Invisible Children to better scaffold how they engaged young people. They articulated a need to go beyond films and fundraising to engage folks more profoundly and also to encourage curiosity and more critical analysis, before driving toward concerted action. To that end, Lawrence reflected,

You know, they had a system that basically brought people in from a naivety to a shock and a wanting to get engaged and then . . . the vast majority of them rotated back out when there was no further deeper place for them to go. And I think in that, there’s an enormous lost opportunity to awaken a generation to injustice in our world through much more critical capacity. And that, that I really wish we could have spent a lot more time doing that.

Indeed, for many, the activist trajectory was not realized in the Invisible Children project and is not in most efforts saturated in white saviorism. Reductionist frameworks that prioritize easy and rewarding actions stifle the possibilities for building transformative power necessary to address inequalities and advance social change over the long haul.

As noted above, the interviews suggest that the passage of time, an evolving critical consciousness, and new social networks correlate with transformation away from the WSC for many. But how do social change collectives facilitate transformation and nurture a metamorphosis away from the WSC in the pursuit of social justice? It certainly warrants further methodical, comprehensive study of the transformation process for those in the WSC. And through my research and organizing, I have also learned that efforts that are an antidote to the savior complex prioritize lineage, humility, and curiosity; focus on accountability and critical feedback; and integrate concerted reflection on structural determination as well as personal social location identities and motivations. I will briefly unpack each of these dimensions in what follows.

Lineage, Humility, and Curiosity

Collective efforts that build the power that is needed for transforming the status quo recognize that struggles to address endemic social problems entail a lineage. There were folks that engaged the issues before us, and there will be folks who continue to engage the issues after us. We are encouraged to consider how the efforts of those who came before contribute to what might unfold in the future. Those working in Healing Justice, a political framework that “re-centers the role of healing inside of liberation,” offer critical insights to this concept and practice of lineage (Brown and Mitchell-Brody 2014). At its core is the understanding that individuals do not shift power and address social issues; rather, collectives across time do that work.

Lineage is indispensable to our efforts to generate social change, in part, because of how it centers humility. The WSC is propelled by ego and a deeply rooted determination to be the one to “make a difference.” For many, white saviors are arrogant people who think they are the first and only people to address a problem. White saviors do not start by analyzing who the stakeholders are, how power is operating, and what has worked or not worked in the past. Instead of engendering curiosity and asking questions about root causes and reading from divergent perspectives about an issue, those enmeshed in the WSC often begin with a conviction that “I got this right.” White saviors too often assume that we alone are the ones who are able to solve the issue(s) at hand. Seeking congratulations or appreciation, we also usually have an oversized perception of the relevance and utility of our interventions.

Accountability and Inviting Feedback

Beyond honoring lineage and cultivating humility and curiosity, the practice of accountability and seeking and integrating critical feedback are also imperatives to disrupting the WSC. Building in routine reflections, acknowledging harm, and naming and implementing changes going forward are straightforward patterns we can all develop in social change efforts. It is inevitable that we are all going to make mistakes in our efforts. The choice we have is what we do with our mistakes. Maurice Mitchell, a leader in the Movement for Black Lives and National Director of the Working Families Party, reflects on mistakes in racial justice work:

What I tell non-Black people is that your anxiety around possibly getting something wrong has nothing to do with my liberation, nothing at all. So if the reason you are sitting on your hands is because you are afraid of making mistakes, then that really is a personal, insular, self-centered concern, that isn’t a collective communal social change concern.

Mitchell reminds that a focus on avoiding individual mistakes does not advance our collective struggle for social justice. When we structure routine reflections that interrogate what worked and what did not, we can build a culture where it is okay to make mistakes as they become meaningful opportunities to repair harm and revise for the next time. Without recognizing the inevitability of mistakes, we risk setting up norms where shame engulfs every time someone says the wrong thing, makes an assumption, or acts too quickly. When that happens, the offending individual never grows, and more importantly, pursuits for social justice are not advanced.

Purposeful Reflection on Structural Determination and Social Location

And finally, efforts that move away from the savior complex are those that prompt participants to examine and interrogate structures that have led to suffering in the first place. We ought to be asking, how have social conditions enabled this harm to occur? Specifically, how do entrenched social patterns, policies, and institutions that rest on white supremacy, racial capitalism, imperialism, war profiteering, colonialism, and patriarchy create a context in which children commute at night to evade rebel abduction, indigenous communities are unsheltered, toddlers are malnourished, and Black people are routinely lynched by the police? When we encounter hurt, inequality, and a sense of injustice, perhaps some of our first questions ought to include: What happened [or is happening] upstream that has led to this? How can our efforts to address suffering also dismantle root causes? How are we entangled in those root causes of oppression? In his insistence that even material interventions integrate a root cause analysis, Dean Spade (2020) reminds why concerted contextual reflection is so important:

Being able to get help with a crisis is often a condition of being able to politically participate. It is hard to be part of organizing when you are struggling with a barrier to survival. Getting support through a mutual aid project that has a political analysis of the conditions that produced your crisis also helps break stigma and isolation. In capitalism, social problems resulting from maldistribution and extraction are seen as individual moral failings of targeted people. Getting support in a context that sees the systems, not the people suffering in them, as the problem can help combat the isolation and stigma. People at the front lines have the most awareness of how these systems harm and are essential strategists because of their expertise. (P. 137)

Beyond critical structural analysis, folks with privilege ought to also examine our complicity in social systems in order that we might consider withdrawing consent from what is harmful. Such self-awareness fosters consideration of our intersectional identities and based on who we each are, how we might shift power productively by leading in our networks of influence. Beyond consciousness of our complicated social contexts, we might also then acknowledge what perspectives are omitted in our decision-making.

Of course, a crucial lynchpin in dismantling the WSC is beyond analysis to our nuanced collective practices. In recent times, some white folks are increasingly naming their privilege and locating themselves when they speak and propose solutions for social problems. While this is necessary, the words do not automatically transform into a different method of engagement. And as some of our networks include more racial diversity, I have learned that privileged folks from a range of racialized bodies can and do perpetuate the savoir complex. One respondent in a focus group for a multiracial health justice group I am a part of noted,

The biggest growing industry is the white savior complex, and it is seriously growing, and we are part of that movement. And now we are getting into a multi-ethnic privileged foreigner savior complex, so how do we not evolve into that?

Indeed, while rooted in white supremacy, the dangers and fault lines of the savior complex are not reserved solely for those living in white bodies.

Mutual aid strategies provide an excellent contrast to interventions that have been steeped in the WSC as they build on the notions of lineage, accountability, and critical analysis of social structures. Spade (2020) defines mutual aid as

a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable. (P. 136)

They often emerge in the wake of crises such as fires, storms, and floods but also have a critical role to play in “the unnamable disaster that is everyday life under neoliberal capitalism” (Mutual Aid Disaster Relief 2019:81). Emphasizing solidarity rather than charity, mutual aid strives to disassemble dependency on systems that hurt people and instead build an infrastructure of community care through new social relations (Highlander Research and Education Center 2020). Spade (2020) offers four useful questions for evaluating our interventions and determining their potential for liberation:

Does it provide material relief? Does it leave out an especially marginalized part of the affected group? (e.g., people with criminal records, people without immigration status)? Does it legitimize or expand a system we are trying to dismantle? Does it mobilize people, especially those most directly impacted, for ongoing struggle? (P. 133)

Conclusion

To build the base of power that will be necessary to transform society and heal people, we need more folks to be engaged—not fewer. Maurice Mitchell affirmed,

It is our job, as organizers, to always invite people. We are about addition. We want to win. We believe in victory . . . and so when people come to our ranks, in whatever condition that they are in, it’s our job to meet them where they are at. (Mitchell 2020)

That said, those of us enmeshed in the WSC are not able to contribute meaningfully to social justice efforts because it is more about us being extraordinary, finding purpose, being right, and avoiding any rigorous scrutiny than about critical reflection and collective organizing. The good news of my findings is that folks can change and emerge from the WSC. But that change is not predetermined.

Over the years of studying Invisible Children, several people suggested to me the simplicity of being shocked by scenes of desperation, with clear delineations of which individuals are dangerous and which are helpful; being moved emotionally to act on behalf of those in need—whether through fundraising or lobbying for state-centric intervention—is all that we should expect of a young, naïve, privileged American audience. To this end, Jennifer noted,

if you want mass mobilization, you got to have a simple message that your color demographic can easily latch onto . . . you know, in terms of engaging a whole new audience of young people into what was happening in Africa, I don’t think complex kind of news messages are the kind of thing that would have engaged people.

Yet, as an educator who strives to cultivate critical consciousness among fellow learners, I have found it patronizing and even sexist to suggest that young American women can only be motivated by simple messages. We must consider that perhaps young, privileged Americans cannot handle complexity around social change because we do not ask them to do it. To that point, some have counseled that a simple savior framework may be an initial stage that folks with privilege go through as they awaken to the realities of inequity and harm in our world, on their way to a more nuanced critical consciousness. Yet, the findings from this study suggest that those who participate in the savior complex do not necessarily evolve into more critical social justice organizers. The invitation to participate in collectivized social justice pursuits built on critical analysis must be offered and modeled always, from the beginning.

The summative findings from this study urge us to raise the bar for what we expect of young folks of privilege and their participation in social change efforts. If we want participants to think critically, our pedagogies ought to invite them into the messiness of what the world is, what it could be, and the processes of transformation. In my estimation as an educator and an organizer, when we give folks with privilege special accolades because they are doing something—anything, really—to think about others beyond themselves, we uphold the status quo. We imply that it is their moral prerogative, not their collective responsibility as beneficiaries of an unjust system, to participate in social change.

It is possible to create norms where folks with privilege work together and under the auspices of the leadership of those most impacted by the issues they are tackling, whether it be police brutality, hunger, or the LRA war. The WSC is not the only orientation to serious social concerns of our time. Social change efforts can and do honor lineage. Participants can create a culture that invites feedback, welcomes mistakes, upholds accountability, and engages in critical systemic and personal reflection. And perhaps most importantly, when we find ourselves operating within the machineries of the savior complex, let us remind ourselves that we can transform and generate more nuanced, critical, collective efforts for social justice.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received a faculty development grant from the University of St. Thomas to support the research.

Notes

Author Biography

Amy C. Finnegan is Associate Professor in Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas. Her research interests pertain to the white savior complex, critical race theory, conflict transformation, and transformative pedagogies. She is on the leadership team of EqualHealth, a global grassroots health justice collective.

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