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The stark reality of the ‘White Saviour’
complex and the need for critical
consciousness: a document analysis
of the early journals of a Freirean
educator
Rolf Straubhaara
a Graduate School of Education and Information Studies,
University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Published online: 10 Feb 2014.
To cite this article: Rolf Straubhaar (2015) The stark reality of the ‘White Saviour’ complex
and the need for critical consciousness: a document analysis of the early journals of a Freirean
educator , Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 45:3, 381-400, DOI:
10.1080/03057925.2013.876306
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.876306
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The stark reality of the ‘White Saviour’complex and the need for
critical consciousness: a document analysis of the early journals
of a Freirean educator
Rolf Straubhaar*
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA
While the anglophone academic literature has long engaged in analysis
of the role of privilege in the work of educators in the Global North,
this article represents an initial foray into such analysis in non-formal
educational settings in the Global South. Through a cultural-textual doc-
ument analysis of 12 months of personal journal entries written by the
author while working as a Freirean adult educator in Mozambique, this
article documents a lack of recognition of social privilege exhibited by
the author in these entries, which is here referred to as the ‘White
Saviour’complex. This article also documents how the pursuit of what
Freire calls ‘critical consciousness’can effectively problematise this
privileged mindset.
Keywords: Paulo Freire; critical consciousness; privilege; document
analysis; self-study
Introduction
From a Freirean perspective, there is a great deal of personal transformation
that must be undergone by socially privileged individuals who decide to
join in progressive work towards radical social action alongside margina-
lised groups or peoples. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire first
identifies where such individuals are coming from in their upbringing, draw-
ing a clear line between those who are benefited by structural social
inequalities and those who are the victims thereof, calling them (respec-
tively) the oppressor and the oppressed. To Freire (1970a), ‘the oppressor
consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of
its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, peo-
ple themselves, time –everything is reduced to the status of objects at its
disposal’(58).
Freire has often warned that such individuals can reinforce the violent
dialectic between the oppressors and the oppressed if they insist on their
*Email: straubhaar@ucla.edu
© 2014 British Association for International and Comparative Education
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own leadership and the implementation of their own ideas within the revo-
lutionary struggles of the oppressed, failing to trust the capacity of those
who have not received access to the same education and resources that they
have enjoyed. As he states:
Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order;
but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors
of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them;
and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary
change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people,
which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor
without that trust. (1970a, 60)
As will be seen in this article, at least in my own case, Freire could not have
more aptly described my privileged oppressor convert’s mentality as I, nine
years ago, first began working in international educational development.
In this article, I present a cultural-textual document analysis of 12 months
of my personal fieldnotes and journals from my early professional experience,
in this case working with a non-formal adult education non-profit-making
international development organisation in central Mozambique. I will show
that in many ways, my personal experiences (and interpretations thereof ) are
a clear illustration of an inherently problematic lack of recognition of social
privilege, which I here call ‘the White Saviour complex’. I further argue,
building upon my own experience, that the educational philosophy of Paulo
Freire can effectively problematise this privileged mindset. More specifically,
I argue that Freirean theory itself outlines a process of reflection and action
(or praxis) that, by promoting continual self-evaluation in the pursuit of what
Freire (1970a,1970b,1973) would call critical consciousness, can be effec-
tively used by individuals and organisations to try to counter and mitigate the
effects of privilege in work conducted by development practitioners,
especially those who experience intersections of privilege on the basis of
nationality, race, gender and so forth.
Setting: Comunidades de Poder in Mozambique
During the 12-month period under analysis in this article, I worked for a
North American-led non-formal adult education non-profit-making interna-
tional development organisation with ground operations based in Central
Mozambique, which I shall call Comunidades de Poder (CDP). Comunid-
ades de Poder runs a Freirean-oriented adult literacy programme focused on
using literacy as a vehicle for community-based social change. It has drawn
extensively on Freirean pedagogical methods in its educational program-
ming, albeit through instructional materials produced by North American
development organisations that use Freirean methods separately from
Freirean philosophy.
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Methodology
This article is based on a document analysis of primary sources, in this case
12 months of fieldnotes and journal entries written by myself while working
as an ethnographic researcher for CDP. In this article I analyse these field-
note entries using cultural-textual interpretation (Geertz 1973; Greenblatt
1999), a technique in which data sources are used as texts to be analysed so
as to further understanding of the language and discourse that make up a
given cultural world. Within this Geertzian framework, texts can be formal
textualised objects like books, plays or manuscripts, but also personal writ-
ings like fieldnotes and journals. Throughout this article, I will treat my
journal entries and fieldnotes as texts in this sense, and mine them for the
distinctive expressions and tropes that seem to reflect the organisational cul-
ture of CDP in which I was situated and my own thinking regarding devel-
opment work, as well as my increasingly dissonant reactions to elements of
that thinking as I delved into the writings of Paulo Freire
1
.
Through this document analysis process, I will draw on the literature in
critical discourse analysis, which I here use to examine the implicit meanings
and assumptions inherent in my fieldnote entries and thus reveal the larger
ideologies and social structures that inform them (Fairclough 2001; Phillips
and Jorgenson 2002). I am particularly interested in interdiscursivity, a term
used by Fairclough (2003) to refer to orders of discourse: in this case, the
way in which my written discourse relates to and reflects larger cultural
discourses that associate elements of my identity with power. More
specifically, in my analysis I focus on the implicit meanings that are
communicated through my word choice and my descriptions of conversa-
tional interactions between myself and CDP staff and programme
participants. These interactions reveal both the relations of power between
these actors and my own understandings of those same dynamics.
Following this methodology, I will quote sections from my fieldnote
entries and then analyse them using cultural-textual interpretation. These
fieldnote entries are coded by date, using the month and date of each entry,
labelled chronologically from the first month of this study onward. For
example, a fieldnote with the parenthetical referent (1/24) would refer to a
fieldnote written on the 24th day of the first month of this research project.
White Saviour complex
As Freire (1970a) states, ‘Functionally, oppression is domesticating’(51).
This statement applies to both oppressor and oppressed, in that both receive
myriad messages justifying their unequal placement within social hierar-
chies, messages that can make our social positionalities seem natural, or
even deserved. For those from oppressor classes, Freire astutely notes that
‘the oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a
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privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves’(59). For those
Western oppressor-class folk that seek out employment in development, this
privilege often exhibits itself as a sense that we as Westerners have the
unique power to uplift, edify and strengthen: what I here refer to as the
White Saviour complex.
This idea that it is the role of the White outsider to ‘lift’the poor and
oppressed in developing countries seems universal in the Western world and
its thinking, with a continual reflection in literature (Cornett 2010) and film
(Hughey 2010; Vera and Gordon 2003) from the colonial-age British novel
(McInelly 2003) to the 2009 film Avatar (Cammarota 2011; Ketchum,
Emrick, and Peck 2011). As scholars like Sandy Grande (2003), bell hooks
(2006) and Spivak (1988) have pointed out, even much feminist and
postcolonial thought produced by White scholars is open to critique for not
fully acknowledging the continued benefits such critics gain from existent
social structures due to their Whiteness, while also undertheorising the role
of Whiteness in colonial history (Grande 2003) and patriarchy (hooks 2006).
In the teacher education literature in the anglophone countries of the
Global North, the unchallenged privilege held by White individuals has
been thoroughly problematised (Hannan 1983; Ladson-Billings 1994;
Sleeter 1993; Titone 1998; Zeichner 1995), with an entire field developing
around critical studies of Whiteness (Lee 2005; Leonardo 2002; MacMullan
2009; McIntosh 2004). In North America, multicultural education courses
utilising this literature have become a staple of teacher education
programmes (Larkin and Sleeter 1995; Sleeter 1992; Sleeter and McClaren
1995), with the intent of helping White in-service teachers unpack their
privilege. However, a similarly thorough discussion of privilege (in all its
social, racial and national intersections) as it relates to international
development, and especially to the work of international education
professionals, has yet to be systematically undertaken in the comparative
education literature. This article represents an initial entry into this dearly
needed conversation.
Within the larger literature on international development, several scholars
have begun to problematise the role of privilege among practitioners in
international development (Escobar 2004; Heron 2007). However, criticism
of this White Saviour complex has come most recently and memorably to
non-profit international development work from Teju Cole, who describes
the privileged mentality he sees among well-meaning but naive voices in
international development. In Cole’s(2012) words:
One song we hear too often is the one in which Africa serves as a backdrop
for white fantasies of conquest and heroism …. Africa has provided a space
onto which white egos can conveniently be projected. It is a liberated space
in which the usual rules do not apply: a nobody from America or Europe can
go to Africa and become a godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her
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emotional needs satisfied. Many have done it under the banner of ‘making a
difference’. (2)
In short, Cole argues that White development practitioners can easily
overstate their own relevance to the improvement of developing-world
living conditions, seeing themselves as uniquely qualified to bring necessary
information and change to the global poor. In my particular case, my White
privilege was compounded by several other facets of my personal identity:
namely, my status as an upper-middle-class young man in his mid-20s with
advanced degrees, as well as my organisational status at CDP as the
in-house researcher and academic ‘expert’. These various intersections of
privilege only further compounded my own sense of entitlement and lack of
recognition of my privilege, making the process of seeking critical
consciousness that I will describe here all the more difficult, complex and
(as will be seen hereafter) incomplete and continuous.
Findings
Documenting the White Saviour complex
As much as I am embarrassed to admit it, this White Saviour mentality was
quite evident early on in my personal writings as a development worker
with CDP, as evidenced by the following quotes:
Tonight …[I felt] that same rush of optimism [I often feel] about …our abil-
ity, when mobilized and inspired, to defeat evil and empower the meek. (1/24)
Today …it struck me how I’ve felt …about development principles and
about sustainable ways to help …. I wish that I could spread these truths and
principles to everyone I know, and everyone I don’t. (2/3)
In the first quote, my word choice leaves room for a number of questions.
When I speak about ‘our ability’to do these things, am I talking about
employees of CDP, development workers in general, Westerners as a group?
The context of the post does not make clear who the ‘we’is in this context,
but it does seem clear that this ‘we’, which includes myself and others like
me, is separate from those that are receiving development assistance, or the
‘meek’I refer to at the end of the sentence. The words used here set a clear
power differential between those who have power (‘we’as Western devel-
opment practitioners, with the power to empower others) and those who
don’t (the ‘meek’that are in need of empowerment). The implication is that
the ‘we’in this quote, White Saviours like myself, are uniquely positioned
to defeat evil and empower the disempowered. Such reasoning justifies our
presence in development work.
As this second quote reveals, in my own mind I felt a drive to spread
the ‘development principles’I had learned through my undergraduate
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studies and several months working in northeastern Brazil, which in my
mind had the status of ‘truths’. This level of surety in ‘truth’had a very
religious quality to it, in that these truths seemed universal and absolute –I
had learned them, and it was my responsibility to share them with people
who had not yet heard them in this particular rural Mozambican context.
This was hardly a unique position I found myself in –Manji and O’Coill
(2002) provide compelling evidence that particularly in sub-Saharan con-
texts, development-oriented non-profit-making organisations have come to
occupy the same cultural niche previously occupied by Christian missionar-
ies, sharing internationally accepted principles of ‘good’development with
the same religious zeal with which missionaries shared the tenets of Chris-
tianity. You can see this almost missionary flavour applied to development
work in the second quote from my fieldnotes above –like thousands of
development workers before me, it seems that I felt in part that I was in
Mozambique to spread the Development Gospel, the absolute truths that
apply as effective best practices throughout the world.
This positivist understanding that there is such a thing as absolute truth
is nearly as prevalent in development thought as it is in religious philoso-
phy, due to the heavy influence of modernisation theory. In its beginnings
in the mid-twentieth century, the development industry was inherently based
upon modernisation theory, or the notion that development at the national
level is linear (Feinberg and Soltis 2004) and evolutionary (Scott 2011),
with ‘the West [providing] the one and only rational model’of how devel-
opment occurs (Harding 2011, 266). While competing theories of develop-
ment have gained prominence throughout the latter half of the twentieth
century, such as dependency theory and world systems theory, these
competing theoretical orientations retain the same ‘basic language and
assumptions’of modernisation theory (Rust 1991), making their universal
application equally problematic.
In the end, while explicit defenders of modernisation theory are becom-
ing fewer and fewer in number over time, ‘early modernization theory’s
conceptual foundations continue to have pervasive power’in how policy is
formulated and projects are enacted (Scott 2011, 305). In the words of
Escobar (1995), the overlying ‘discourse of development’remains the same,
with the need for and inevitability of development itself having ‘achieved
the status of a certainty in the social imaginary’(271). While post-modern
theorists like Freire continue to problematise such dogmatic linear thinking
(Freire 2001), it is clear from my fieldnotes that such thinking was alive
and well in my own work with CDP.
Power dynamics between outsider development workers and locals
Early on in my time with CDP, I began to notice power dynamics between
myself and local Mozambicans that I would often catch myself using to my
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advantage. This vignette gives an example from an experience I had with
one of CDP’s guards, whom I’ll refer to as Ricardo:
Ricardo is the guard on duty tonight, and a few days ago he asked me if I
could look up something for him on the internet, specifically to see if there
were any diagrams he could look at about how radios work …I had tried to
look up what he’d asked and not had much success, in part because I don’t
think I’d understood exactly what he was looking for, as I’m hardly an elec-
trician and his request was rather technical. So I asked him to explain for me
again exactly what I should look up, but did it pretty brusquely, adding at the
end ‘remember that this is a favor, I’m taking my time to do this.’…As
soon as I started talking like that, though, I regretted it, because I could see
how Ricardo closed himself when I did, apologizing, saying that he must’ve
gotten a bit too used to our friendly, casual relationship, and had started ask-
ing things he shouldn’t have –basically, he was apologizing for having for-
gotten his place, for having asked me for personal favors despite being just a
guard. At that moment, I realized that …I still only was willing to be
friendly and hang out with the guards as equals when I wanted to, when it
was convenient, when I wasn’t tired and wishing I could be doing something
else. Inside, I still wanted (and want) to be able to maintain a bit of that sta-
tus, in that I want to be able to pull into myself and be selfish when I feel
like it …leaving the guard to tend to his ‘place’. (4/23)
Soon after I had arrived in Mozambique, I noticed that many CDP person-
nel and others did not talk with the guards and, as this anecdote shows, I
had begun to pride myself on my level of sociality with them, as if that
proved my willingness to cede my privilege as a White, educated outsider.
As I noted at the time of this fieldnote, that belief was quite naive, and I
had hardly begun to analyse all the ways in which I took advantage of priv-
ilege that I was reluctant to give up. I am not sure I would have taken note
of this particular dynamic so quickly if Ricardo’s reaction to my curtness
hadn’t shown how quickly he understood the message I was sending –this
was a familiar message, reflecting a power dynamic he knew all too well.
That is, he knew from experience when he was being shown his place. I, a
person of privilege whose privilege had heretofore largely remained invisi-
ble, was the one who was noting for the first time the status I held that was
so obvious to those around me.
In another case of this same phenomenon, I was much less self-aware. In
my second month with CDP, I had an opportunity to interview the Regulu
(or spiritual leader) of Oshossi, one of the rural communities in which CDP
was operating. As someone with training in anthropology and ethnography, I
was delighted with the opportunity to better understand the religious
worldview of the people with whom I worked.
For his part, the Regulu seemed almost overly willing to share
information, regarding ceremonies he performed regularly, the beliefs under-
girding those ceremonies and so on. At one point, he volunteered to show
me how one particular ceremony works, explaining that I could film the
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demonstration if I desired. Above all, he took pains to make clear that he
was extremely grateful to CDP ‘for everything it had done’and he wanted
to help ‘with anything I might want’to show his appreciation (2/22).
My delight in this fieldnote was palpable as I talked about how open
the local Regulu was in sharing his practices with me. The still-young
anthropologist in me was delighted to be privy to so much insider
knowledge –only later, as I thought again about the experience, did I find
anything problematic in this openness, recognising that the Regulu might
have felt coerced to oblige me due to the fact that I stood in a position of
power as a representative of CDP. As I represented an organisation offering
this man crucial services, he was likely afraid of potential repercussions
should he not acquiesce to my demands. While he was likely feeling anxiety
due to implied coercion, as the privileged outsider I was blissfully unaware,
instead thinking only of the quality of the data I was being offered.
Deference to power
These societal power dynamics were also reflected in how my co-workers
often felt the need to have their potential actions approved by a higher
authority before moving forward. In one instance, an experienced
Mozambican staff member who was by no means my organisational
subordinate felt the need to check with me before moving forward with his
own work. In this particular case, Adriano, the CDP staff member
responsible for all literacy instruction in CDP communities, approached me
seeking validation for an idea he had regarding his literacy facilitators:
I…thought it was interesting how Adriano came up to me to ask me my
opinion about an idea of his, a great idea for giving the [literacy] facilitators
the chance to earn prizes just like group and zone leaders (in order to give
them some incentive to do their job well). It seemed like he was looking to
me for validation, and also for recommendations on how to improve the idea –
it was flattering, but I was also a bit surprised by it, considering the training
that Adriano has received. Part of me hoped that my educated White outsider-
ness didn’t validate me more as a resource than it should. (1/21)
It seems from this anecdote that I was somewhat ambivalent about being
seen as an authoritative outsider: I was surprised, feeling it was not neces-
sarily my area of expertise or my jurisdiction to determine the validity of
Adriano’s idea, yet at the same time I was flattered. While I felt to a degree
that I was being given a status I did not deserve simply due to my
‘educated White outsider-ness’, I nonetheless enjoyed this status and was
hesitant to give it up (after all, I did still give Adriano my opinion). While
part of me is glad that this struck me as slightly problematic at the time, it
is clear that my White Saviour worldview was only slightly jarred, remain-
ing largely intact for a while thereafter.
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Organisationally, CDP was like most international development organi-
sations with headquarters in the Western world. As a result, given the
organisation of the international development industry as a whole, with
power (especially with regards to funding) and organisational headquarters
commonly concentrated in the developed West, with visits from Western
practitioners and ‘experts’common and familiar to local staff in develop-
ing countries, the deference shown by Adriano was understandable, as in
development work as a whole, Western, outsider ‘expert’knowledge is
commonly seen as more valuable than the ideas of local staff. While priv-
ilege often kept Western outsiders like myself from recognising the prob-
lems with such situations, Freire (1978) clearly states that outsider
teachers, trained and brought up within colonial ideologies, need to be
willing and able to give up their unique ‘expert’status and ‘commit class
suicide’(15), or give up the privileges associated with one’s previous sta-
tus and upbringing. Only by so doing can outsiders become, ‘completely
committed to the deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong’
(16) –that is, those they intend to work with in their efforts towards
social change. In a later text, Freire (1985) makes this same argument
using a powerful religious image, stating that in order to be effective, edu-
cators must ‘live the profound meaning of Easter’(105), dying relative to
their previous lives of privilege and beginning new lives in which they
are equals to oppressed peoples rather than superiors.
This type of direct refutation of the power dynamics inherent in the sta-
tus quo requires serious mental gymnastics –it requires problematising the
social structures we have been raised in and in which we’ve come to func-
tion socially. Any Western practitioner that works in development has built
their experience within a system that prizes their training and status as their
qualifications for doing the work that they do –to problematise that and try
to see local participants as one’s complete equals goes contrary to one’s
training and lived experience. However, it is precisely this process of
problematisation that such practitioners must engage in to reach critical
consciousness. For Freire (1970b), critical consciousness ‘refers to the
process in which men, not as recipients, but as knowing subjects, achieve a
deepening awareness both of the socio-cultural reality which shapes their
lives and of their capacity to transform that reality’(27).
Freire is purposeful in identifying critical consciousness as a ‘process’
rather than a one-time occurrence. Indeed, Freire (1970a) saw this process
as a constant struggle:
Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine
themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow of ambig-
uous behavior. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprie-
tor of revolutionary wisdom –which must then be given to (or imposed on)
the people –is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims
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devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with
the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is griev-
ously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but feels alarm
at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they
offer, and attempts to impose his ‘status,’remains nostalgic towards his
origins. (60–61)
While the beginnings of this process of critical consciousness will be
visible later in my fieldnotes, unfortunately this ‘nostalgia for [my] origins’
is quite evident throughout many of my fieldnote entries before my serious
encounters with Freire.
Building programme and writing curriculum
In my descriptions of the process of writing a curriculum for the programme
I was asked to develop, my latent White Saviour mentality is still
well-established. Particularly, there is little description of solicitation of local
knowledge –rather, I describe at length how I thought through the process
myself:
I started making a list of all the commitments which I had included in the
lessons, commitments that participants would be asked to take on, and I
started listing them in order of priority, or in order of which I think should be
addressed first (i.e., which are the biggest problems, according to a database
of the baseline assessment facts from Oshossi that a CDP employee has
mapped out on a really cool site online). That seems like a good way to start
planning what order the classes should be taught in, addressing the largest
needs first, whereas right now the order they’ve been put in is kinda
haphazard. (1/30)
As can be seen here, each step in planning was made by me individually –
brainstorming potential commitments, prioritising them according to
perceived local needs –in each step I took careful thought of how to
move forward, but did so without any solicitation of local input. The
second step described here, the prioritisation of learning goals according to
local needs, seems like a step at which the solicitation of participant input
would have been particularly prudent and useful –however, instead of
asking those who would participate in this programme what they felt was
most urgent to their needs, I based my thinking on a database of
information collected by a previous CDP consultant, trusting the insight of
another Western outsider ‘expert’over that of those that would be directly
affected by my decisions. The implicit assumption that undergirds this line
of thinking is that trained, ‘expert’outsider input is more valuable than
listening to the voices of local participants.
This same thinking is reflected in another anecdote in which I describe
the process of soliciting ‘buy-in’to this pre-determined agenda in a meeting
with the leaders of a particular CDP-participating community:
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This morning in our morning meeting I presented the curriculum to everyone,
and explained how it is organized and how to use it as a reference. It was a
pretty satisfying moment, to see everyone leafing through the curriculum, and
at least to a certain extent, ‘getting it’in terms of what it could be used for.
(12/4)
My pride in my own work at this moment is palpable –I had spent around
six months writing this curriculum, and to see locals leaf through it and ‘get
it’(that is, accept it as the correct way in which business should be con-
ducted in the programme from here on out) was quite validating. The
flawed assumptions underlying my White Saviour status had been legiti-
mated –I had been brought in because of my curricular ‘expertise’(which
consisted of several short trainings on a particular facilitation method), and
the acceptance of my work based in those shallow credentials was validated
by the work’s acceptance. In many ways, I personified the ‘naive conscious-
ness’described by Freire (1973) as preceding critical consciousness, relying
on gross over-simplifications and generalisations of social problems, lacking
interest in critical investigation into whether what I taught was really ‘work-
ing’and relying on emotional feelings of validation rather than empirical
evidence of success (18).
Generating buy-in rather than asking for input
This process of seeking ‘buy-in’to my own work and my own imposed
norms, rather than asking participants what they would like to see in the
programme or exploring other options through dialogue, continued beyond
the curriculum-writing process to implementation, as seen here:
This morning was awesome, too –I dropped by Oshossi with Peter while the
zone leaders were building the community center, and there were around 25
of them involved. It was really gratifying to see them all so involved in it ….
It made me really happy to see the leaders taking ownership of that. (2/15)
Today we had the first meeting with the community in Inyaya, where we
describe all that CDP does and basically try to make sure that the commu-
nity’s on board with us and will support our work. Overall, it went really
well, with the people that were there –the main problem was that there wer-
en’t many people there, and so a lot of people didn’t even hear what we had
to say and are still relatively clueless on the subject. (3/24)
In the weeks before this first quotation, we had asked Oshossi’s community
leaders to build a community centre in which CDP could offer its classes.
In this documented visit, I show that I am clearly gratified that they did
what we’d asked: we as outside experts had told them what we would like
them to do, and we reinforced this cycle of behaviour by displaying our
approval of their acquiescence. Though this request was done only with the
best of intentions, the fact that CDP in this case was the actor making
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requests and local communities were the actors fulfilling them remains
inherently problematic.
The same dynamic plays out in the second quotation, in which I talk
about ‘our work’as being something with which the community should be
‘on board’,‘supporting’us. In short, I was giving directions much more
than I was asking questions. I had as of yet failed to understand this teach-
ing of Freire’s(1985):
We can learn a great deal from the very students we teach. For this to happen
it is necessary that we transcend the monotonous, arrogant and elitist
traditionalism where the teacher knows all and the student does not know
anything. (177)
In both of these documented instances, I and my co-workers at CDP
were acting as full Subjects, able to act for ourselves and provide
instructions, while local participants acted as Objects to be told what to do
and what to accept. Such a process, however well-meaning, dehumanises
rather than benefits participants. As Freire (1970a) states:
A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education.
Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both
Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to
know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain
this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover
themselves as its permanent re-creators. In this way, the presence of the
oppressed in the struggle for their liberation will be what it should be: not
pseudo-participation, but committed involvement. (69)
Unfortunately, at this point in my personal development, my fieldnote
entries show that what I most desired from participants was not ‘committed
involvement’, together with the voice and participation that that entails, but
rather ‘pseudo-participation’, or buy-in to my previously established
agenda.
Beginnings of reflection
Interestingly, my first forays into Freirean reflection were triggered by
instances of community innovation that caught me off guard. Several times,
I documented myself having this type of reaction to seeing coordinators or
facilitators implementing well the techniques I had taught them (specifically,
I had done trainings on a facilitation technique called FAMA):
This morning I stayed with the coordinators in the office and did a training
with them on FAMA teaching techniques…. They did really well, though,
especially when we went to Oshossi for them to teach their classes. (3/1)
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Fernanda, the girl who gave the class today, did a really good job of leading
a FAMA discussion, I was really impressed. (3/3)
This training today went wonderfully. I don’t know if it’s because they’ve
already had a few weeks to try to work with the technique, or because today
the practices just went more smoothly, or probably a combination of all of
the above, but really today was just hitting on all cylinders. (4/15)
In each of these instances, I was caught off-guard when I saw people I had
trained doing their job well. In the first instance, I state ‘They did really
well, though’, as if I expected them not to do so. In the second, I lay effuse
praise on a particular facilitator, saying she ‘did a really good job’and that
‘I was really impressed’. In the third, I express my feeling that the people I
was training were ‘hitting on all cylinders’and have trouble trying to iden-
tify why. What is problematic about these reactions can be summed up in a
rather simple question: Why was I so surprised? Again, Freire (1970a) pro-
vides some explanation:
Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one
must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the
praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. (51)
In other words, I had been domesticated by the status quo, in which I as the
experienced White outsider should be expected to be knowledgeable and
capable, and in which the same assumptions shouldn’t be automatically
made about local participants. I had heard this stereotype, part of the domi-
nant oppressive paradigm, enough that I had accepted it as natural, and the
occurrence of the opposite (that is, the display of skill and capacity by
Mozambican locals) caught me off guard. Said another way, in another
instance Freire (1970a) asserted that, ‘there are innumerable well-intentioned
bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to
dehumanize’(75). Over time, I began to realise more and more that I was
one such well-intentioned bank clerk.
Problematising positionality
In the process of seeking critical consciousness, Freire (1970a,1970b,1985)
talks first about being able to ‘name the word and the world’–that is, being
able to give a name and a face to the structural inequalities that prevent our
full humanisation. Over time, this became evident in my writing:
Sometimes I wonder about the negative attitudes that are common among
development workers I’ve met here, from all sorts of organizations, the catch-
all explanation that ‘It’s Mozambique’when things don’t go your way .…It
seems like so much more good could happen if our first impulse here were to
look for that which is good and admirable about Mozambique and Mozambi-
cans, rather than having a mindset that expects everything to go wrong. (2/3)
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In this relatively early entry, I had already noted the deficit thinking that
seemed to orient much of the conversation among expatriate development
professionals regarding work conditions in Mozambique. While this troubled
me, weeks later I caught myself referring back to the same assumptions:
It’s been really bothering me to think that I think myself superior to people
…as I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized how much I do that. Granted, I think
most people do, but that still feels like a pretty weak justification. It’s really
been bothering me to think that I hold myself so highly that so many people
fall ‘below’me in my own ranking of the world. (3/1)
In this entry, I began to notice the inherent power dynamic that undergirded
my own daily thinking –without realising it, many (if not most) of my quo-
tidian decisions were oriented by an assumption that my own thinking and
my own ideas were better than those of my local co-workers, simply
because of inherited demographic characteristics. Similarly, in a slightly
later entry, I state:
So many times there are little moments where I’m granted privilege because of
my social status here, and I don’t give it a second thought, which is in effect
saying I’m okay with these social differences. As much as it drives me crazy
to admit it, I seem to have no issues with class difference at times. (3/25)
In all of these entries, I caught myself in quiet evening moments realising
that during the course of the day’s events I had been treated differently by
others, or had treated myself differently. In these quiet moments of reflec-
tion, this bothered me –not enough that my regular daily actions changed
drastically, but enough that my privilege began to seem less and less based
in the natural order of things and seem more and more inherently problem-
atic –part of a system that needed to be challenged.
White Saviour of the White Saviours
These descriptions of such realisations should not be taken to imply that I
had fully worked through my privilege –or that I have now, for that matter.
My personal thoughts on the unequal structures supported by my work were
still problematic –in short, I still wanted to be and enjoyed being a White
Saviour, as the citations above indicate. However, increasingly over time I
began to see myself as an ‘enlightened’person who can help less thoughtful
development workers to change their practice –in short, I still saw myself
as a White Saviour, but a White Saviour of the White Saviours. Note this
anecdote:
Tonight I also had a good long talk with Peter about the direction of a partic-
ular program and the different principles that should guide it. More and more,
I feel like my role here will be at least 50% talking things out and trying to
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persuade higher-ups regarding good principles, rather than all community
work. It seems more and more clear to me that half the battle is in organiza-
tions themselves, trying to make sure that through all the power struggles and
politics, programs are built on good, solid principles. I’m kinda excited to get
a chance to try to help the organizations I work with do that, on whatever
small scale I can. (2/12)
In this quotation, the assumption of my own superior status remains –I talk
about ‘good, solid principles’of development work as if they are a private
stash of knowledge to which I alone am privy, even among other develop-
ment workers. I see myself as uniquely positioned to do good, to ‘help
those that can’t help themselves’–I’ve simply replaced those that ‘need my
help’, swapping out local Mozambican participants for well-meaning (but in
my opinion flawed) development workers.
Pushing against the grain
Over time, after further reflection and thought, I began to see the way in
which the problems in several programmes were more structural than I had
previously recognised. While still implicitly maintaining my own status as
an empowered White Saviour outsider with inherent worth and skills, I
began to note that some of the problems I faced in my work were beyond
my capacity to fix, and that local workers had a capacity similar to my own:
This afternoon …I recognized something important that I need to work on –
helping all the workers [in one particular program] use their critical thinking
abilities. One thing I’ve noticed a lot …is the extreme deference to authority
and desire to fulfill orders that are given that exists here in [this program]. On
one side it shows humility, but it’s also a butcher of critical thinking, as
employees always look to their superior to see what he/she wants them to do
instead of using their good sense and critical thinking …. As things have
gone by, I’ve seemed to have acquired a status of authority, so everyone
always defers to me and looks to me for guidance and direction. The thing is,
as I’ve thought about it, I haven’t fought this that much yet, and in fact I’ve
encouraged it by at times taking over the position of order-giver, mainly
because it’s a nice stroke to my pride. I really need to kill that, though, as
these folks need to feel more comfortable to use their own (vast) powers of
critical thinking within their areas. I’ll need to look out, in order to guarantee
that these guys are able to gain and use more autonomy in their different
spheres. (3/29)
While in my everyday practice I continued to enjoy my status, I began to
recognise that local workers had the same capacity that I did. That is, my
White Saviour status, while enjoyable, was based on a falsehood –that I
had some inherent worth or skill simply due to my educated, White out-
sider-ness. This gradual change in worldview continued as, during my time
with CDP, I revisited a seminal text I’d come to love as an undergraduate:
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I’ve been thinking lately about some of the ideas that struck me most strongly
when reading Paulo Freire’sThe Pedagogy of the Oppressed –most of all the
principle that those who would help to liberate the oppressed must work with
and trust in the ability of those they are trying to help …. In the time I’ve
been here in Mozambique working with CDP, it’s been easy to note tons of
examples of me as an outsider both trusting and not trusting locals –and it’s
struck me how I’m the same person, trusting in one moment and not trusting
in the next. When working through an NGO or other development organiza-
tion …it’s easy to be schizophrenic with how much you’re willing to trust
and put power in locals’hands. I’ve always kind of prided myself on being a
big believer in the capacity and ability of all, but then I’ve found myself in a
lot of moments where it’s a lot easier to make an executive decision, or
where, for whatever reason, despite all I’ve said about letting locals make the
decisions, I don’t, often in situations where in retrospect it would’ve made all
the sense in the world to have done so. And I see the same thing all the time
in others, too (it tends to be easier to notice in others). As I’ve thought about
that, I think that’s why this theme is one that Freire returns to again and again
in Pedagogy of the Oppressed –because it is a principle that, to be effective,
must be implemented completely. In helping people to liberate themselves,
there is no halfway point of trust –there is either trust (in their ideas, in their
reasoning, in their ability to raise themselves) or there is lack of trust. The
more I think about it, the more and more I realize that I have a lot of trusting
to do. (10/18)
Through reflection, I’d come to see how I needed to change –I needed to
not only recognise my privileged status, but be willing to unpack and
unlearn it, granting my local co-workers the same trust that they placed in
me. I had learned to ‘name the world’(Freire 1970a,1970b,1985), or iden-
tify what about my social context needed changing –all that was left was
the hard work of trying to do it. I had begun to ask questions –not ques-
tions that had simple answers, but questions that led to critical thinking and
reflection. As Freire and Faundez (1989) state, ‘thinking about questions
that may not always or immediately arrive to an answer are the roots of
change’(37). That process of change, that first step towards critical con-
sciousness, had now been taken.
Conclusion and final thoughts
So, where do we go from here? It is now a number of years since the time
of these writings –after working further with CDP (an organisation I still
consult with), as well as time teaching and working in other settings, the
process of developing critical consciousness that I have begun to describe
here is still not over. In the time since the year these fieldnotes document, I
have continued to work with Freirean organisations of various types, and
my own interpretations of Freire and his work have changed drastically
many times over. I do not know yet if I feel I have come to a place where I
fully ‘understand’Freirean theory and methods, or if I ever will. As Freire
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(2001) has put it, we are unfinished beings, ‘unfinished yet conscious of our
unfinished state’(11), always subject to change in how we think and feel.
This is part of what is easiest to love about Freire’s thought –the notion
that it is part of my unfinished nature to continue to ask questions, challenge
my preconceived notions of ‘truth’and recalibrate my understanding accord-
ingly. As Freire (2000) states, ‘I like being human because I am involved with
others in making history out of possibility, not simply resigned to fatalistic
stagnation’(33). Freire beautifully personified this flexibility and reflexivity,
taking strong challenges from other theorists and educators very seriously
and, at times, completely re-thinking various aspects of his own work (for a
very beautiful example, see hooks 1994, 56).
I do not pretend to imply that I have here fully presented my thinking in
these fieldnotes as it existed at the time –indeed, it is impossible to fully
separate my thinking ‘then’from ‘now’as of this writing, as the re-reading
of these fieldnotes years later is inherently informed by my experiences
since that time. The re-reading and analysis of these fieldnotes, more than
providing a clear, exact picture of my thinking at the time they were first
written, has instead served as another instrument of reflection, another
opportunity to reconsider what I think now, rather than reconstruct perfectly
what I thought then. As Freire (1997) notes in his later work, there is no
way to separate myself from the temporal and spatial context of this current
writing. As he states, ‘my homeland is, above all, a space in time that
involves geography, history, culture’(40), a reservoir of past experiences
that continue to inform and shape the present. Reflecting upon those previ-
ous experiences and how they relate to the present is an inherent part of the
process of working towards critical consciousness (Freire 1970a,1970b,
1985).
In an ideal world, this is how education should always work, pushing us
to constantly reconsider our sureties and consider new information that
could change the way we think, teach and act. Indeed, this seems to be one
of the central themes of Freire’s legacy, his call for us to push forward,
continuing to reflect and reconsider our pedagogy and our practice through
daily praxis, and in so doing become more and more ‘fully human’(Freire
1970a, 32). While the fieldnotes analysed in this article have an end point,
this process of reflection and change does not –as I and other Freireans
constantly seek to re-examine ourselves to reach and maintain our critical
consciousness, reinvention and recommitment is a constant. I do not claim
to have completely left behind the White Saviour complex –my hope and
belief is that in constantly pushing against this ingrained preconception, I
can mitigate its damaging effects. I also hope that others may join this con-
versation and that, with time, we as comparative educators may build our
own subfield within Critical Whiteness Studies in which the role of privi-
lege in comparative and international education continues to be interrogated.
As Freire has stated, ‘Those who authentically commit themselves to the
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people must re-examine themselves constantly’(60). I look forward to read-
ing the contributions of other comparative scholars of privilege to this pro-
cess of self-examination, as well as critical interrogations of the role of
Whiteness and privilege in international education development written from
other social positionalities.v
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Val Rust and Carlos Alberto Torres for their invaluable feed-
back on earlier drafts of this article.
Note
1. Many education scholars have utilised similar methodological approaches,
referred to alternatively as ‘self-study’(Berry and Russell 2012; Bullough and
Pinnegar 2001) or autoethnography (Berger and Ellis 2007; Chang 2008). The
term self-study is typically associated in the literature with the use of various
potential sources of data, including journals, ethnographic fieldnotes, correspon-
dence and other personal writings (Bullough and Pinnegar 2001; Graham
1989). Autoethnography is commonly defined as the use of autobiographical
stories (Berger and Ellis 2007) or vignettes (Humphreys 2005), though these
are not necessarily based in pre-written data sources.
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