Am I Engaging in Service or Saviorism?
Service is SO IMPORTANT for so many reasons, one being that it is a great way to get on a first name basis with others. It’s a way to get outside yourself and see that situations don’t have to happen to you to matter to you. If you hold privilege, service is a way to spend it in a productive way.
But, we MUST make sure our service is out of a desire to be an ally, not a savior.
How can you find that balance? How do you determine whether you are serving or trying to save?
To answer that, it’s important to unpack white saviorism and the detrimental effect that it has on communities in our backyard and across the globe. If you want to transform your good intentions into confident action, here are 5 questions to ask yourself.
1. Is the organization I’m partnering with led by Black, Indigenous, People of Color?
The people in the community you are serving need to be leading the change, and you need to be in the supporting role. You don’t need to be the voice for the voiceless — they have voices. You need to step back and amplify those voices and hear their solutions.
2. Where am I on my anti-racism journey?
What preconceived notions do you have about the community you’re serving? Biases are part of life, but what you need to do is sit down and really unpack what those are and where they’re coming from, and try to fight against them.
3. When and how am I going to learn about the history of the community I am serving?
Dig deep and figure out how white supremacy and colonialism played a role in the problems this community is facing. So many of the problems that we see stem from white supremacy, our history of enslavement, our history of colonialism, of taking resources, of exploiting communities.
4. What is my attitude toward the people that I’m working with?
This work isn’t charity — it’s redistributing your resources because the system has been set up to give them to you over other people. It’s something you need to do. It’s your responsibility to redistribute and to make things more equitable by giving of your time and resources.
5. What am I going to do if my service begins to look more like saviorism?
The white saviorism mindset has a lot of things contributing to it, so it’s easy to slip in and out of. Even if you are really dedicated to trying to serve instead of save, there are some moments when you might slip back into that, so take time to be reflective and look critically at your thoughts and your actions.
Learn more on the First Name Basis Podcast Season 3, Episode 7: “Service, Not Saviorism.”
