Racism - a Reality and a Scapegoat. By Themrise Khan
In the non-profit sector, in which I include foreign aid and philanthropy, race has become a tool to both subjugate and gain power.
I say this as a Brown woman from the Global South who has spent a lifetime in this sector and experienced both overt and subtle forms of racism, in my home country, Pakistan, and while living and working in the West. In the former, it has been via expatriates “posted” in Pakistan on behalf of powerful Western donor agencies and INGOs, who looked upon us as “local workers” to forward their “programmes” and “projects”. In the latter, as a Global South person, therefore an outsider in a dominant white society, who still has to “learn how things are done”. I was actually told this by a Northern consulting firm. Never mind that this industry was supposedly created to work for and with people like myself and the knowledge we held about “how things are done” in our own countries.
These experiences, which have been littered throughout my career, are undeniably a result of the legacy of colonialism. The roots of Indigenous genocide, African slavery, South Asian partition and Latin American and Caribbean conquests, are all steeped in the historical truths of colonialism and white supremacy. Much of this history has also seeped into the world of foreign aid, itself a creation of a fractured, post-World War Two, post-colonial world.
However, there is more to this that I have also discovered across my career. My co-edited book, White Saviorism in International Development[1], introduced the idea of the “brown (or black) savior”. Someone who has imbibed the mindset of white colonial power to exert control over their own people who are less fortunate than them. Many do not identify this as racism because it exists within one geographical and cultural group rather than across different ones. This is also encouraged by the assumption that non-White persons cannot be racist, by virtue of their identity or because of their historical subjugation by Western colonial powers. And indeed, that race itself is a colonial construct.
But much about the development sector has shown that this is not entirely true. Racism not only manifests itself through skin colour, though that is undoubtedly the dominant paradigm. It is also exerted and exacerbated through economic, social and political power. In South Asia, where I come from, systems of oppression such as casteism, tribalism etc. existed before the arrival of colonialism. Between serfs and landlords, Muslims and Hindus, ethnic tribal groups and princely states – the “savages” and “civilized” of the pre-colonial world, respectively. Much of this was weaponized by the onset of colonialism, which used existing cultural norms to plunder wealth and exert control, instead of creating greater cohesion and solidarity. Several current territorial disputes in South Asia that mirror colonial ethnic displacement policies, are a direct result of the influence colonial rule has had on the region.
As a result, what we witness in much of the present-day Global South, is racism in the shape of discrimination and hatred towards minority ethnic and religious groups, colourism against darker-skinned communities and classism between the rich and the poor. All within and between borders drawn without our consent or collaboration.
The world of development and non-profits mimic this history in how Global North development institutions have established themselves as the center of power, positioned as who everyone wants to be associated with because it gives them greater social credence. To this day in Pakistan, many still want to join an international NGO or the United Nations not because they want to do good for their country, but because of the financial and international opportunities it could afford them in their ambition and hope to access the Global North. It has created a new empire within former colonized states based on elitism, wealth accumulation and heightened class superiority.
I have personally witnessed this phenomenon, what I term, “neo-racism” across my career as an international development practitioner, both in domestic and international spaces.
The first is within the domestic space in the Global South via who holds the most power within racialised communities - in their village, town, city etc. This power comes from being in a position within an organisation or community that has access to Global North resources. A development “partner” to use development terminology. Elevated within their communities or organisation to a superior standing by virtue of this association, racialised leaders begin to emulate and replicate the same tactics they accuse their white counterparts of, against those in lesser privileged positions within their own communities. This is especially prominent within the urban and rural divide in Pakistan, where largely urban-based NGOs work within impoverished and marginalized rural communities, many of whom are part of ethnic and religious minorities. This is the least understood form of neo-racism within the sector and one which is usually avoided, because it pits racialized persons against each other. It self-defends itself with the question; “how can we be racist if we are working with our own people?”.
The second is in the international space in the Global North, by those who are racialized in a dominantly white society. This includes those who are of immigrant origin and have chosen to join the non-profit aid sector in the Global North, but are discriminated against by their dominant white superiors. They are part of the very racial structures that the sector is built on, but are yet to be seen as equal representatives of those structures. This is demonstrated when those who belong to non-white racial groups are held to account for far more than their white counterparts in the same situation, particularly those in high-profile roles.
The third is a mix of domestic and international. This is the power exhibited by these very racialised persons who live in the Global North but represent these institutions of power when they travel to the Global South. Here, tables turn and while being discriminated against in the Global North for the reasons above, they behave with the same sense of superiority once in the Global South as their white counterparts do. For instance, a South Asian origin person living and working in North America if posted to Pakistan as a foreign aid representative, tends to behave similar to a white person in that same space by virtue of the institution and country they represent.
These three forms of neo-racism as a tool of both subjugation and power, are not linear and often cut across each other in different contexts. Not only that, but they also exist between different racialized groups. For instance, brown South Asians are still referred to as “coconuts”, not just by white groups, but by other non-white racialized groups as well, as I recently observed in an exchange between two different non-white racial groups on social media.
Similarly, Brown South Asians refer to Black and dark-skinned persons, including those within their own countries, as “kaala”, literally meaning black. Both instances are a direct result of colonial transfer across continents. This form on inter-racial neo-racism has filtered down into the international development space where those from different continents such as Africa, South Asia and Latin America, do not feel comfortable working with each other, and instead, are beholden to the power of white donors and INGOs. Each geographical “race” competes with each other to obtain the most financial benefit from Western benefactors, be they bilateral, multilateral, philanthropy etc. And the latter encourages this unfair competition by continually changing its geographical focus from one Global South region to another.
One can rightly blame colonialism for these cross-cultural racial tensions across the Global South as a whole. But the reality is, that despite there still existing a world that we refer to as “neo-colonial” and what I call “neo-racism”, that era did come to an end as early as the 1960s. This now makes it our responsibility as racialised people belonging to sovereign, independent nations, to overcome these colonial tropes and attitudes which we still possess. Why do we, the formerly colonised, continue to emulate the colonials? Why are we still beholden to the white development practitioners to come and “save” us, when we have the ability to save ourselves? Why do we still use racially and culturally divisive tropes that disparage regional neighbours to work with each other? Why does the international development sector encourage this to continue by pitting countries against each other in terms of who gets how much foreign aid?
There is a clear choice that is facing us today. Either we, as post-colonial, racialized nations in the Global South continue to allow colonial notions of divisions and racial hatred within and amongst ourselves to fester until it completely destroys us. Or, we decide that it is actually about working together to rid us of a common history that divided us all in the first place.
The choice is ultimately, ours to make. Not theirs.
Sources
[1] Khan, Dixon and Sondarjee (Eds); White Saviorism in International Development. Theories, Practices and Lived Experiences; Daraja Press; 2023