On White Charity in Lesvos: Launch

In the past month, on the Greek island of Lesvos, I’ve met the most incredible people. I’ve met the kind of people that inspire you on a daily basis, through their selflessness, their integrity, their humility, and their resilience. I’ve met people of extraordinary bravery.

You could essentially place the people I’ve met into two groups: firstly, the humans who’ve had the purposefully degrading ‘title’ of ‘refugee’s’ thrust upon them, purely because they are unable to live at home anymore due to the fear of death; secondly, the volunteers who attempt to help alleviate the struggles of these humans, both those that live here and those that have flown in from all parts of the world for varying lengths of time.

That being said, however, you could make the argument that there is no need to separate these people into two different groups: we’re all humans. In the broad scheme of things, our tiny Earth in a big Universe, isn’t that enough?

Apparently not.

Over the past 500 years, we, meaning the world at large, have been conditioned into a certain mindset, one that has been founded and perpetuated by structures of power and knowledge created by the West. It is a colonisation of the mind.

We’ve been taught, through the continued actions of the West, that the maintenance of these structures of power and knowledge are desirable above all, to the extent that humanity falls below it. This is preserved in certain ways: there was, of course, the political colonisation that destroyed much, if not all, of Africa. What must be understood, though, is that the greater system of colonialism did not end with the political independence of ‘former’ colonies.

To this day, we are still colonised in many ways.

In social terms, constructs were created based on skin colour, race, and ethnicity, with white European culture as the dominant race over other all other cultures. This prevails today.

In cultural terms, knowledge production is based on Western ideas, to the extent that institutions in non-Western societies often follow Euro-centric curriculums; similarly, knowledge distribution, such as the media, follows Western models and agendas.

In economic terms, the grossly capitalist world economy suppresses ‘former’ colonies through international industries and new economic systems, and through unfair trade partnerships and aid programs.

Out here, in Lesvos, I believe that it is necessary that we as volunteers challenge these notions. This is a difficult undertaking, of course, especially on top of our efforts to ease the travels of our fellow humans fleeing war and destruction; but these structures of privilege, from Westerners and for whiteness, will remain as long as we continue to ascribe to and benefit from them.

After all, the current ‘refugee crisis’ is a direct result of these structures. The West’s historically insatiable thirst for power, dominance, and resources, while those from the West live in fear of the supposed differences that other humans might bring to their constructed concepts of a ‘nation-state’; the at-large smugglers, driven by the money that has come to represent this power, and, at the core, the humans that suffer the most: those fleeing the death and destruction of their homes. Why do they all want to come to the West, or so the masses scream?

Those that are fleeing to the West also suffer from this prevailing colonial mindset, a life-long conditioning of oppression for the sin of being born in the wrong place with the wrong skin colour, practicing the wrong religion and speaking the wrong language. They flee to the West because they have been colonised to believe that fortune lies there. They flee to the West because the West has ensured that their homes are uninhabitable. They flee to the West because they hope the West will save them.

It is the prevailing geographical dimension of colonisation: non-Western parts of the world have been geared to serve the enrichment of the West, and so it is only natural that humans will follow this line.

So, here we are in Lesvos, a Greek island nearer to Turkey than to Athens. It is a so-called ‘hotspot’ of this mass migration, a place through which thousands have passed in an effort to reach their hopes and dreams of the West. Entire families, bereft of any other options, pay inordinate sums of money to smugglers and board precarious rubber boats wearing fake lifejackets, casting themselves across the Aegean Sea, often at the dead of cold night — “no one puts their child in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” All their belongings, in black bin bags, lie at their feet, in pools of water. Many don’t make it, and become nothing more than a statistic at the bottom of the ocean.

However, many others do make it. They fall onto the beaches of Lesvos, where we greet them. The volunteers. Many of whom have left jobs to help humans in need. Medics, lifeguards, clothes distributors, warehouse packers, cooks, cleaners, coordinators, trainers. I’ve met many, from all over the world, and they inspire me.

But there is another context we need to deconstruct here. What we must realise is that we, as volunteers in this place and in this time, represent a forced narrative of Western society: that of the white saviour, who are subconsciously, unintentionally placed above the poor and pitied ‘refugee’, perpetuating the demeaning notion that non-Westerners can only be saved by Westerners and Western society.

This is what I hope to challenge through this series: On White Charity in Lesvos. How do we interact, as volunteer to ‘refugee’? How do we interact, as volunteer to volunteer? How do we interact, as volunteers to those back home? Those in support and those against? How do we, as volunteers, see ourselves?

In doing this valuable, much-needed work, we need to deconstruct the narratives to which the prevailing colonial mindset of Western dominance and privilege attempts to ascribe us. In practical terms, as volunteers, there are traps we can and must avoid so that we do not perpetuate this notion of white self-righteousness, of Western saviours heroically arriving to ease the pain of the ‘other’, and the portrayals of that in our own self and to those back home.

It will be a messy process, and I by no means hold the monopoly of answers. Your thoughts and engagement throughout the series would be greatly appreciated. As in all aspects of life, we’re in this together.

*By White Charity, I refer to the construct of Whiteness that Westerners largely ascribe to, and not to individual skin colours of volunteers.