Uh Oh: The Peace Corps Is Now Considered To Be “White Saviorism”

“Hey, we’ve run out of things to call racist and white privilege.”

“Huh, that’s too bad. So, I was reading a story on the Peace Corps..”

“Stop, that’s it! The Peace Corps!”

Peace Corps’s complicated relationship with the ‘white savior’ complex

A serious “white saviorism” reckoning is afoot. Internet searches for “white savior” have grown steadily over the past decade, following Teju Cole’s searing critique, “The White-Savior Industrial Complex,” in 2012. Commentators such as Cole often target archetypal white saviors — missionaries, voluntourists, celebrities — who make short-term trips to “help.” Also included in the fray are “poverty porn” journalists. Until now, government organizations such as the Peace Corps mostly have been spared. That’s starting to change.

As a former Peace Corps teacher in Malawi, I believe that saviorism is real, pervasive and toxic. The longstanding power imbalance between the Global North and South, including bastions of white privilege in the former and atrocities of colonialism in the latter, makes the white variety of saviorism especially pernicious. I applaud nonprofits such as No White Saviors and the Instagram account Barbie Savior for sparking a long overdue discussion about “decolonizing missions and development work.” While their screeds are difficult to hear, they resonate deep within us and our institutions.

Peace Corps, an institution I hold dear, exhibits hallmarks of saviorism. A prime example is the motto: “Make the most of your world.” The message is clear: The world is yours, go forth and fix it. In fairness, the consultants who likely concocted this messaging faux pas are hired to craft sound bites that resonate. And marketers are acutely aware of how a $173 billion voluntourism industry, which competes with Peace Corps for recruits, has turned white savior mythology into a thriving business.

So, if I’m getting this right, the uber-compassionate folks who join the Peace Corps, and, I think I’m safe in making the generalization that most vote Democrat, are really just white knighting racists. Seriously, this is Wokeness on steroids. Of course, if we got rid of the Peace Corps, that would then be called raaaaacist. There’s just no winning with these nutballs

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5 Responses to “Uh Oh: The Peace Corps Is Now Considered To Be “White Saviorism””

  1. formwiz says:

    the uber-compassionate folks who join the Peace Corps, and, I think I’m safe in making the generalization that most vote Democrat, are really just white knighting racists.

    Hate to say it, but I think the guy’s right. Scratch a Lefty and they think that all the stuff that ends up making a place look like Baltimore or San Fiasco is necessary because they must protect the (insert aggrieved minority) from white nationalists (this starting to look familiar?).

    Back in the days of slavery and later Jim Crow, whites would tell us Yankees they were protecting blacks who were too feeble-minded to live in a modern society. Now they want us to believe blacks need their own districts for voting, which ends up giving Rs a free hand everywhere else. Ditto abortion, pushed by Margaret Sanger as a way to eliminate blacks and other lesser races (too bad for her the Church told its people it was the road to Hell).

    TAKE up the White Man’s burden—
    Send forth the best ye breed—
    Go bind your sons to exile
    To serve your captives’ need;
    To wait in heavy harness, 5
    On fluttered folk and wild—
    Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
    Half-devil and half-child.

    Take up the White Man’s burden—
    The savage wars of peace—
    Fill full the mouth of Famine
    And bid the sickness cease; 20
    And when your goal is nearest
    The end for others sought,
    Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
    Bring all your hope to nought.

    Take up the White Man’s burden—
    And reap his old reward:
    The blame of those ye better, 35
    The hate of those ye guard—
    The cry of hosts ye humour
    (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:—
    “Why brought ye us from bondage,
    “Our loved Egyptian night?”

    The Lefties hate him, but Rudy had them nailed.

  2. Kye says:

    Rudyard’s one of my favorites (along with Robert W. Service). He was a race realist having dealt with the cacophony of races then ruled over by the Brutish Empire (spelling deliberate) and seen the barbarity of the r-selected organisms when left to their own desires. Today he is of course considered a Raccccist because of those observations and most likely a “white supremacist” due to being a Mason.

    But another observation was made today at Moonbattery entitled “A Future Without Toilets”:

    “Africans evolved as r-selected organisms. This, not superficial physical characteristics, comprises their fundamental difference from K-selected Europeans. Regarding r-selected organisms,

    Those organisms described as r-strategists typically live in unstable, unpredictable environments. Here the ability to reproduce rapidly (exponentially) is important. Such organisms have high fecundity (glossary) and relatively little investment in any one progeny individual, they are typically weak and subject to predation and the vicissitudes of their environment. The “strategic intent” is to flood the habitat with progeny so that, regardless of predation or mortality, at least some of the progeny will survive to reproduce.

    Disease and their inability to feed themselves used to prevent African numbers from getting out of control. Then came the West’s suicidal altruism. Now, their numbers will continue to explode until there are no longer enough Europeans left to feed them.

    We are not even allowed to acknowledge this existential threat to Western Civilization, much less address it, because that would be racist.”

    Trump 2020 Save the toilets! Flush the commies!

  3. Professor Hale says:

    The peace corps was the liberal alternative for their young men to “join the military”, back when there was a draft. There was never anything virtuous about taking a taxpayer funded vacation in foreign lands. I am personally in favor of people paying for their own vacations and hobbies out of their own pockets.

    Disband the Peace Corps. While you are at it, take Ameri-corps with it.

    • Kye says:

      Agreed. When I volunteered for Vietnam half leftist Democrat “patriots” I knew went into the Peace Corps because that was “their patriotic duty”. Bullshite. That was their chance to screw hairy broads, take a trip and get paid for it.

      BTW the other half of patriotic Democrats got student deferments or headed for Toronto.

      Trump 2020 Shut down the Peace Corps and Ameri-corps too!

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