What can I do to help? It's a question you might ask yourself after seeing people—especially people of color—in need during or after a natural disaster, an environmental disaster, a pandemic, or any other humanitarian crisis. Or maybe it's a question you ask yourself after seeing the day-to-day inequities that Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC, for short) face.
But is what you're doing to "help" making you feel good about yourself more so than actually combatting the systemic problems that affect BIPOC people? Enter the white savior complex.
While helping out your fellow humans is a noble idea, the white savior complex is something that can stand in the way of addressing the real work that needs to be done. But what exactly is the white savior complex, and why is it bad? Here's what you need to know about it—and how you can avoid it.
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What does the white savior complex look like in action?
The white savior complex can be played out in pop culture and in real life. In movies, a white person coming to town to help "save" a group of BIPOC people—whether they are students, athletes, or wrongly accused prisoners—is a common storyline. In real life, white savior complex was most recently on display during the pandemic. COVID-19 disproportionately affected BIPOC people in the US. As the country saw them getting sick and dying, the response was to come up with solutions to meet the needs of individual sick people. And that immediate response was needed to save lives. But someone with a white savior mentality might believe that they've already provided the solution and then shift their focus the next disaster rather than think about the structural barriers in place that put BIPOC people at a disadvantage when it came to health access and outcomes during the pandemic, Smith says. And without addressing those barriers, substantial change can't happen in the long run.
RELATED: 5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Be a Better BIPOC Ally
Is white savior complex harmful?
Yes. "I sort of liken someone who's engaged in white saviorism to a person who rushes into the emergency room wanting to help, but if they don't have training as a nurse or a doctor, they may actually end up doing more harm than good," Nolan says.
But how can someone who wants to help actually wind up doing more harm than good? By only putting a Band-Aid on the problem. That Band-Aid will eventually come off, revealing the deeper barriers that still exist. "It's essentially a form of blindness," Smith says. "It's not going to allow you to perceive what is in front of you accurately. And if you can't see it accurately, then you can't be of really profound use in solving the problem."
The person who is trying to render aid may not mean any harm. But white saviorism "perpetuates white supremacy as the system by which we organize our society," Nolan believes. And research shows that white supremacy—whether conscious or unconscious—leads to poor health outcomes for BIPOC people. "Physicians typically tend to see the patient as an individual person presenting a specific illness or symptom, and they don't see the larger issues like living in poverty and living in places with high crime rates," Smith says. "These social factors impact peoples' health and well-being, and if health care providers want to treat people holistically for them to be healthy over a long period of time, you cannot only treat the symptom that they are presenting. And that is what the white savior mentality does; it focuses on the individual and their specific symptoms … rather than focus on the larger systemic structural issues that cause these illnesses."
How to avoid white savior complex
White people who want to help people and communities of color first need to take a backseat, Smith advises. "Follow the lead of the people of color in the space that [you] are entering," she says. "[You] need to be willing to not be at the center of the work of the solution and to follow the advice, expertise, and request of the people who are closest to the pain and the problem."
It's also important that the work white people do addresses structural societal issues. Instead of narrowing the focus to the individual level, think broadly and consider what systems are in place that might be influencing their health and well-being.
If you see other people or an organization engaging in white saviorism, call them out. But then call them back in. "If you have an understanding of what white saviorism is, then you are in a position to see it and to think about it," Nolan says. "And hopefully if you're working to avoid it, you're also in a position to articulate what the harm of it is, how it can be avoided, and how much more impactful whatever the work the [person or] organization is trying to do will be if [white saviorism wasn't at play.]"
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