Madonna, the saviour? White Saviorism And Its Dangers

motleymagazine
Apr 15
5 min read

By Staff Writer Lia Daskalopoulos

Millions of people travel overseas every year to volunteer in humanitarian aid efforts, hoping to do good or improve their CV. However many of those volunteering abroad genuinely want to seek personal growth and feel like they’ve made a change in foreign communities. Celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie are famous for their philanthropy efforts and adoptions of children from African countries. The aspiration to help those seen as less fortunate is noble, but unfortunately a lot of businesses in humanitarian aid and voluntourism sustain practices and institutions that do more harm than good.

Wealthy university students pay thousands of euros to help at orphanages, which are popular destinations for voluntourism. According to a 2018 article in The Guardian, the number of orphanages has been growing in countries like Haiti, Cambodia and Uganda, not because of a growing number of orphaned children but because of a huge rise of foreign tourists willing to work in them. ‘Child finders’ are paid to go into communities and identify families from poor backgrounds in order to convince them to institutionalize their children. Lumos, a London-based group that seeks to end the institutionalization of children, believes that some of these orphanages are engaged in trafficking and selling children for adoption in wealthier countries.

Madonna faced controversy while adopting her four children in Malawi due to bypassing Malawi laws regarding adoption and being accused of bullying Malawi state officials. She allegedly demanded V.I.P. treatment while visiting the country due to her philanthropic efforts. State officials of the country describe these efforts as ‘exaggerated’, as she claims to have built several schools in Malawi, but has only assisted in the building of a few classrooms, according to a press release by former Malawi President Joyce Banda in 2013. A Reuters article from 2007 states that the father of Madonna’s first adopted child from the country claims that he did not understand the adoption papers signed by him since he cannot read or write. This resulted in misinformation about the adoption proceedings of the child, although these claims have been dismissed as untrue by a Malawi government official. Whether true or untrue, evidence suggests that western intervention in developing countries can be unnecessary and lead to damage within families and communities.

A young, white American woman, Katie Meyler, went from being an internationally celebrated philanthropist to perhaps one of the most hated women in Liberia in just a few years. In 2014, she was named one of Time Persons of the Year for her philanthropy work. In 2018, Vox reported on Liberians marching on the streets of the country’s capital Monrovia with her name plastered on placards. “Fix the system. Shame on you Katie Meyler.”

Meyler was the founder of More Than Me, a non-profit organization designed to protect young girls from sexual abuse and offer them opportunities for education, in a country where rape has been declared a national emergency and women are systematically denied access to education. According to ProPublica, her charity would go on to raise over $8 million in USD by 2018. As a result of this charity work, Katie Meyler got to meet Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, on top of receiving a White House invitation to meet former President of the USA, Barack Obama.

However, a 2018 investigation by ProPublica uncovered a dark secret. The girls who were supposedly being ‘saved’ by More Than Me were being systematically raped by its co-founder and close friend of Katie Meyler, Macintosh Johnson. Although Johnson’s crimes filled hundreds of pages of police and legal records, More Than Me worked hard to obscure details, shift responsibility and prevent victims from coming forward. The abuse was not limited to Johnson. Other staff members had been accused of rape and spreading sexually transmitted diseases to female students aged 12-16. More Than Me went as far as to blame Liberian culture, and claimed that the good they have done made up for any suffering caused. “Where is your school? Where is your scholarship providing healthcare, or anything for these kids?” Meyler asked at the end of a 2018 interview with ProPublica regarding Johnson’s horrendous crimes.

No one seemed to question whether a young American woman with no previous experience in education, healthcare or management would be fit to run a school and medical center for thousands of Liberians. According to the 2018 ProPublica investigation, not only her, but Meyler’s entire team’s lack of qualification was evident. No teaching experience was required in the process of hiring teachers and principal staff. The school didn’t have accreditation from the Ministry of Education for years. When the Ebola epidemic hit west Africa in 2014, Meyler organized Ebola-relief efforts in Liberia, which required high levels of professional healthcare expertise. More Than Me never received approval for an Ebola care facility from the Liberian Ministry of Health. A Ministry of Health official stated to ProPublica that Meyler appeared to be repeatedly disregarding local laws. According to Vox in 2018, money was reported missing, and the charity’s country director, Morgana Wingard, expressed her concerns about girls being taken from their homes and spending the night at staff houses.

Johnson, who Meyler described as “Jesus of West Point”, was raping girls as young as 10 years old. Johnson’s victims told authorities that he threatened to take away their scholarships or kill them if they came forward about the horrors they experienced. He impregnated several students, one of them being 14 at the time. Johnson never faced punishment for his egregious actions; he died of AIDS before a final trial could take place. Several of his young victims also tested positive for HIV. The American charity shut down in 2019 in response to the ProPublica investigation, after initially denying and questioning claims made in the article.

“The white saviour supports brutal policies in the morning, funds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening”, writer Teju Cole wrote about white saviorism on Twitter in 2012. The ‘white saviour industrial complex’ refers to institutions and practices that use historical inequities to validate white people’s privileges and emotional experiences. It is usually used in reference to western intervention to systematic issues in formerly colonised countries. The WISC rewards the 'saviour’ emotionally while allowing them to overlook the policies that created those problems in the first place and disregard the long-term sustainability of their solutions. These countries are situated as places in need of heroism, perpetuating the need for external forces to come and save the day while diminishing the agency of locals.

Iris Martor, school nurse whom students initially confided to about the abuse at More Than Me, told ProPublica that Meyler didn’t understand Liberia and that More Than Me didn’t listen to its staff. “They think we are all stupid people with little to no education, and our system is fragile, and they can get away with things because their skin is white. That is what Katie feels.

Cole concluded his series of 2012 tweets on white saviorism with a powerful statement. “I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.”

SOURCES:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/13/the-business-of-voluntourism-do-western-do-go oders-actually-do-harm The harms of voluntourism, The Guardian 2018

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/24/17995536/liberia-girls-more-than-me-katie-meyle r Vox 2018