In 2020, Jade Bentil, a Black feminist historian, used the term Wakandafication in a tweet during a wave of online discourse surrounding the trailer of the Disney+ film ‘Black Is King’ (I wrote about this here). She wrote, “The Wakandafication of the continent and Black diasporic identities is entirely uninspired. The repeated tropes/symbolic gestures that homogenize & essentialize thousands of African cultures in service of securing the terrain for Black capitalist possibilities & futures is tired.”
Inspired by Jade Bentil’s tweet, I came to my own explanation of Wakandafication, which slightly deviates from the original. Wakandafication is the selection of desirable fictitious and real African cultural elements and their presentation in mainstream (primarily Western) media as simply ‘African’. Wakandafication perpetuates the misconception of Africa as a homogenous place and capitalizes on the pan-African idea that Africa is or should be one. Looking back, I think there is also a need for me to clarify that pan-Africanism is not simply “Africa is one”, but it is a movement that encourages the unification of African and Afro-descent people, among many other things.
In this post, I want to focus on the meaning of Wakandafication as tweeted by Jade Bentil.
Wakandafication post ‘Black Is King’: Young, Famous & African
Since my previous essay on the issues in portrayals of African culture in international media there have been newer releases specifically targeted towards black people. In this article I want to focus particularly on the Netflix reality TV show ‘Young, Famous & Africa’, henceforth YFA.
YFA premiered on Netflix in March 2022, with a second season coming out in May 2023. The show follows a group of wealthy African individuals: celebrities, media personalities and businesspeople as they go about their lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is important to mention that nearly half of the cast do not live in South Africa full time (and are not of South African origin). Different African countries are represented including South Africa, where the show is filmed, Namibia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.
The show starts with one cast member planning a party. She says, “we’re celebrating the continent because it is our time and we want the world to know that we’re also as ‘first world’, even though they call us the third world.” This party, a “flex night” as she calls it, sets the narrative for the rest of the show.
In both seasons of YFA the viewer is presented with a one-dimensional view of African wealth. Despite coming from different countries, cast members’ display and use of wealth seems rather samey and uninspired: expensive real estate in Johannesburg, lavish parties, boat rides, brunches with no real purpose other than drama, private jets, extravagant (and sometimes impractical) outfits, and Western designer clothing and accessories. It’s considered a negative thing if you can’t keep up. In one scene in season 2, two cast members get into an argument and one accuses the other of wearing fake designer items and not being as rich as she claims.
This fixation on wealth and luxury, as Jade Bentil wrote, is “in service of securing the terrain for Black capitalist possibilities and futures.” The end goal (becoming rich) is idealized to the point that nothing else matters. The how-tos and the daily challenges of making money as an African artist or businesswoman in a deeply patriarchal society are never explored – not even superficially. This is becoming a major flaw in our society that celebrates capitalistic success through net worth lists and Instagram followings without paying too much attention to the means of obtaining such wealth: exploited and underpaid workers (including children) in factories and mines in developing countries, ever-increasing carbon emissions, and tax evasion through loopholes and offshore accounts.
Wakandafication is primarily a media-related term and the concept it explains is likely to continue to dominate Afro-centered media in the near future. Shows like YFA validate black/African capitalistic ambitions among young Africans in the continent and those in the diaspora while simultaneously profiting off African cultures presented in an inauthentic or exaggerated way. While I’m excited about more Africa-focused content in international media, I’m ambivalent about feeding into this type of representation that is likely to have negative consequences in the long run.
Black Is King was controversial from the moment its trailer was released and now even after the film was released on Disney+, there has been a lot of criticism regarding its depiction of Africa and the way Beyonce chooses to celebrate or uplift Africa and African heritage through her art. In this very long essay, I decided to look into some of the issues that have been brought up in discussions about Black Is King, in addition to others that I observed while watching it.
Inauthenticity
Following the release of The Lion King live-action remake in 2019, there was a lot of controversy regarding Beyonce’s album The Lion King: The Gift which was inspired by the film and featured several afrobeats tracks. The controversy was because we, East Africans (referring to Tanzania, Kenya, mainly) found it confusing that Beyonce would use our language (Swahili) in an album inspired by a film that is said to be set in East Africa and not include any East African artists. Instead, the album featured some West African and South African artists like Wizkid from Nigeria and Moonchild from South Africa. You can even see a shot of Mount Kilimanjaro in one of the scenes, the characters’ names are Swahili words; Simba, Rafiki, Kovu, Shenzi, Pumbaa, and even the most famous phrase from the film “hakuna matata” is Swahili. So why weren’t any Swahili-speaking artists considered for the album and the film that followed?
I’ve seen a lot of Beyonce fans who say that she did her research and therefore knew what she was doing, but I don’t think that is true here. We can let go (I think) of The Gift, but they had a whole year to work on Black Is King, a retelling of The Lion King story, and not once did someone say, ‘hey since this story is set in East Africa it’ll be more authentic to include East African artists’? They didn’t do that and it just shows that research wasn’t done. It also perpetuates the idea that African culture is something homogeneous and therefore a story set in East Africa can feature West African and South African artists. Some might argue that afrobeats (a genre that is included in Black Is King) is African, so it doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Afrobeats is a West African music genre. It is quite popular in many African countries and elsewhere, but other Africans are avid listeners of music that is native to their regions. For example, in East Africa, Bongo Flava is the most popular music genre. Therefore the perfect features would’ve been Sauti Sol, Mrisho Mpoto, Diamond Platnumz (Simba himself, that’s what he and his fans call him), Saida Karoli, Jose Chameleon, Vanessa Mdee, Nandy, Navy Kenzo, and others.
Of course, at the end of the day, it is Beyonce’s album so she can do whatever. But in the spirit of educating about Africa, such authenticity should be expected, especially from big global artists like Beyonce.
African religions
Black Is King features elements of some African religions. These include calling on ancestors and the use of headpieces that resemble some ancient Egyptian goddess and others. This has brought up the debate on the respectability of African religions and spirituality, i.e. those that existed before Islam and Christianity were brought by “the Arab and the white man”.
Islam has existed in Africa (Horn of Africa region: present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea) since the 7th century. Christianity has existed in Africa since the first century. That’s a really long time ago, and yes, it is a different version of Christianity from what is practiced in most African countries today, but it’s still Christianity. So we can say that both Islam and Christianity are in fact African religions.
The debate usually involves the word ‘traditional’, and ‘traditional’ refers to something that has existed for a long time. While taking this meaning into account, all forms of spirituality together with Islam and Christianity are traditional African religions, because in reality there is no specific time period after which we get to decide if something is traditional, but the time gap between the 7th century and today is quite big and even bigger if you consider the 1st century and today. We can’t just exclude certain things because they don’t fit the narrative that we are trying to create. The truth is Islam and Christianity are just as African as whatever existed before them.
It is also important to acknowledge that both Islam and Christianity were later spread across Africa through brutal means, i.e. jihads and European colonialism. I have seen tweets claiming that demonizing African religions (with the exclusion of Islam and Christianity) and spirituality is anti-black. Jihads in West Africa were carried out by the Fulani/Fula Muslims. The Fulani are a West African ethnic group of black people. This contradicts the anti-black claims. I’m not sure if the Fulani were forcibly converted, but they did forcibly converted others so these jihads were the result of black people’s actions and so that contradicts the claim that choosing to align with “non-African” religions such as Islam is anti-black.
A good number of Africans today are either Christian or Muslim. These are monotheistic religions and so many who follow them don’t participate in other forms of worship. I have seen Africans getting attacked for speaking against the polytheistic African religions or for stating why they have chosen to stay away from these beliefs. Some of the attacks say that we are brainwashed by “the Arab man and white man”. I agree that most of us became Christian or Muslim as a result of external influence, but saying that we are brainwashed is an insult to us Africans because this assumes that Africans lack agency. Either we know what these other religions can do and we want no part in it, or for some, Christianity and/or Islam are just as African, because as mentioned before, they have existed in the continent for quite some time.
Black royalty and related tropes
Black Is King (Disney 2020)
The Lion King is a story about royalty, but to some, it seems like Black Is King is playing into the “we were kings” narrative. This narrative was adopted into the mainstream discourse about European colonialism in Africa. It came during a time when many Africans, especially those outside of Africa, were trying to show that Africa wasn’t a backward isolated ditch where black people lived and therefore European colonialism was not needed. I fully agree with this because if other societies, including European societies, could move past slavery, feudalism, and pointless religious wars, then so could Africa – on its own. However, the African/black royalty narrative has gotten to a point where it is being brought up not only in online debates but also in art, specifically in film. Here we refer to Marvel’s Black Panther and now Black Is King, which are the most popular recent films of such genre. Yes, the Black Panther story had already existed before the film was even made and Black Is King is a retelling of The Lion King, as mentioned before, but what does it tell us about society that these kinds of stories that use the black royalty trope and are centered around black people, are some of the most popular black films? Excluding these two, other popular stories that are centered around black people tend to be stories that exhibit an unbearable amount of black pain, i.e. American slavery (12 Years a Slave, The Birth of a Nation, Django Unchained, Precious), European colonialism in Africa (Tarzan, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) and chaos in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa (Hotel Rwanda, The Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamond, Beasts of No Nation).
Perhaps then there is a reason why African royalty in films is being celebrated. As black people, we are tired of being portrayed as slaves, helpless colonial populations and bloodthirsty armed rebels or corrupt political leaders. The African/black royal trope only serves as a reaction to misconceptions about Africa that had existed before, but it also has its problems. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe said (according to Africa as a Country), “I do not see that it is necessary for any people to prove to another that they built cathedrals or pyramids before they can be entitled to peace and safety. Flowing from that, I do not believe that black people should invent a great fictitious past in order to justify their human existence and dignity today.”
Chinua Achebe is right here. This is exactly what racism does to the oppressed. We end up spending decades and even generations trying to show racists that we too have a great history in order to prove them wrong or gain their respect. But that is not necessary. The great past (and it wasn’t great for every African society, by the way) is gone and for the most part, Africa today is quite messy. It’s pointless to put up photos of skyscrapers in Nairobi and elsewhere as a counter-point to “Africa is poor”. The truth is that many African countries are poor, even in urban areas where some of these skyscrapers and modern architecture exist, and the evidence isn’t hard to find. As an example, Nairobi has the largest urban slum in the continent: Kibera slum. We shouldn’t be focused on royalty, former greatness and carefully selected positive elements of modern Africa. Instead, we need to focus on the truth, i.e. reality. However, this is not to mean that works of art such as Black Panther and Black Is King should not exist.
We need more art that depicts everything; black royalty, black pain, black success (e.g. Dolemite Is My Name). But we also need to be careful about how we consume such works and how we carry the topics brought up by these works into the real world. Black Panther played itself. The film found itself trying to prove to racists that Africa isn’t all poor and desolate. When this particular message was taken into real life we found ourselves calling any African country that seems to be doing well, especially in regard to economic development and political order, Wakanda (e.g. Rwakanda to mean the seemingly organized and efficient Rwanda under President Kagame). This wakandafication tends to erase or simply ignore the pain and poverty that still exists in Africa in addition to the pain caused by these supposedly efficient yet authoritarian governments (e.g. Tanzania). But it could also be that such terms are meant to uplift and encourage other countries to do better. I’m sure it’s no one’s intention to do this, which is why we ought to be careful when bringing fiction into reality.
Black Is King
As a visual work of art, I think Black Is King has exceeded expectations. It is indeed satisfying to watch. I really loved the costume design and the evidently high-quality production. It did also do well in retelling The Lion King as a modern African story.
The issue is what part of Africa needed to be represented in order for it to be authentic. As an East African who grew up in the continent, I feel very disconnected from it. The film reminds me of the need for East Africans to work on telling our own stories. We have a lot to offer, and we already do through Swahili, Bongo Flava, and other cultural elements, yet we are still largely excluded from the ongoing Africa “wave” even though it has shown to continuously exploit our region and its culture (Black Panther, The Lion King, Black Is King).
Something interesting that I realized about Black Is King is that it does exactly what Binyavanga Wainaina wrote in his famous piece How to Write About Africa, “Subtitles may include the words… ‘Nile’, ‘Sky’, ‘Sun’…”. In the film, there’s a song titled NILE. Important to point out that the cultures depicted in the film are West and South African, so the mention of the Nile is somewhat irrelevant. Even in The Lion King, the Nile is nowhere to be found in the particular region of East Africa. The shots of Mount Kilimanjaro are proof. Wainaina also writes, “Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.” Sadly this is how it happened with Black Is King. The film wasn’t well-researched meaning it lacked attention to detail in relation to The Lion King story. It combined a few of many West and South African cultures to tell a story of Simba and co. most who have Swahili (East African) names. The saddest part is that no one at Disney thought to make this accessible to Africans (“…too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book”). It was announced that it would air on M-net, which is available in nearly all African countries, however, it is important to mention that Mnet is accessible through DStv. As an African, I know that it’s mostly the upper and middle class who can afford DStv. Another thing Wainana writes is, “Wide empty spaces and game are critical – Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. This can be observed in the film itself (see image below).
Black Is King (Disney 2020)
To end this very long essay, I’ll leave a quote by Nelson Mandela that I think relates to some of what this essay touches on, because as Wainaina writes, “Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.”
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
As usual, something happens on the internet and someone tweets about it and I say to myself, ‘that would make a great blog post topic’.
I believe this is related to something Beyonce did or will be doing soon with Disney, but I’m not really a fan or a follower and I do not know anything significant about her work, so I will not comment on that. I’m here to have fun with different (but maybe similar?) arguments.
If you’re not familiar with the term ‘Wakanda’, allow me to direct you to Marvel’s Black Panther film from 2018. A majority of the film is set in the fictional East African kingdom of Wakanda. Wakanda is exactly what the “Africa isn’t what you think it is” crew try to portray when they tell you that Africa isn’t what you think it is. It’s an African country that is still in touch with its roots because unlike others, it was never colonized. Wakanda still has poweful monarchies with political power and best of all, they figured out a way to use their most precious resource, the metal Vibranium, for their benefit. Wakanda’s technological capability is top in the Marvel universe. It is indeed a pan-Africanist’s fantasy, but that’s all that it is: a fantasy.
Black Panther came out, many of us (people of African descent) hyped it up, it got an Oscar nomination (which it did not deserve, in MY opinion) and a few of its elements, like the“Wakanda Forever” salute made its way into mainstream media through hashtags, dances and memes. But something about the film lingered and I think it has stayed with us for too long.
I remember going to Kigali, Rwanda in August 2018 and hearing someone call Rwanda ‘Rwakanda’. The nickname ‘Rwakanda’ was given to Rwanda because it’s said to be a hopeful African country. The cities are clean, things work (allegedly, I don’t know much to have a say on this) and several other progresses that have been made in the country, which are truly remarkable considering its recent history. The adoption of the nickname ‘Rwakanda’, even though not meant to be taken seriously, represents the wakandafication of real places in Africa by Africans (and others) in order to prove to the world that we are worthy of respect. It mirrors the common “we had kings and queens, we had great architecture…before European colonialism” narrative. This narrative tends to overromanticize pre-colonial Africa and glorify things which none of us actually know about very well. For instance, African societies didn’t just have monarchies, we still have them. They too are royal families with titles, but mostly without political power like many other royal families in European countries. The reason why we don’t hear about the African ones is the same reason why we want to prove that they once existed.
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe wrote what I’m trying to say better:
I do not see that it is necessary for any people to prove to another that they build cathedrals or pyramids before they can be entitled to peace and safety. Flowing from that, I do not believe that black people should invent a great fictitious past in order to justify their human existence and dignity today.
It’s almost as if we only want to be associated with Africa, or bring Africa to non-African spaces, if it is presented in a colonialism-never-happened-kinda-way. Wakandafication ignores the bad stuff, and reality. A good example is how conversations of ‘Rwakanda’ rarely acknowledge the undemocratic government in Rwanda. And for the democracy-doesn’t-work-in-Africa party, the ability to speak does not make you smart. It does, and it should.
Wakandafication of Africa is the selection of desirable fictitious and real cultural elements, and their presentation in mainstream media as African and not as parts of different cultures in the continent. Wakandafication perpetuates the misconception of Africa as a country with a homogenuous culture and capitalizes on the pan-African idea that Africa is or should be one.
Africa was never cool until Black Panther. Sometimes I think it still isn’t cool because most of what Africa is presented to be in mainstream media is just select unrelated elements of different African cultures that seem to give the idea that Africa is where it’s at, even though that is not true. (You may refer to a previous article I wrote on a similar topic). African countries, as they are, are not seen as desirable. Africa as a whole is, but only when given to the consumer in a way that makes them feel good about themselves; after wakandafication.
Spirits, made-up rituals, lions, the savannah plains, rare minerals, etc. These are some of the things that make the cut during wakandafication. If we looked in a bit deeper we would know that spirits are not considered good in many parts of Africa because of their connection to witchcraft, which was never embraced in pre-colonial times, contrary to what some Twitter threads might try to tell you. In my tribe, for example, witches were explicitly bad because of their ability to cause harm to others, and that’s not on European colonialism. Some rituals like the one presented in Black Panther are just made-up and they are meant to be consumed as works of art and not to be brought into the real world as “our roots”. There were rituals before, but most of us don’t even know what they were, some of us don’t care to be honest, and it’s not anyone’s job to create new ones. Lions are being killed by poachers, read the news. The savannah plains are just the savannah plains and animals live there. Most are conservation spaces. Do they look good? Yes, but it’s very important to know the racist colonial history of these places. Rare minerals have become causes of human rights abuses, fraud and other crimes. I’m just trying to show what’s real.
So, dear reader, things are not how we want them to be. I would love it if there was an African country as advanced as Wakanda. I respect the art that created Wakanda, but I will no longer participate in wakandafication and I hope you won’t either.
At 4:30 am (May 17) I was on Twitter, as usual, trying to delay sleep at all cost (yes, I have issues). I then have a random thought about Nas Daily, so I decide to check if he’s still doing his travel the world project. If you don’t know who Nas Daily is; his real name is Nusseir, he’s a vlogger who’s been traveling around the world for a while now and he makes daily 1-minute videos on his travels, last I checked. He might be doing something else now, but I really don’t care so I didn’t bother to look it up.
There’s this video he did titled Be Careful in Africa! and basically, he documents some good things about the African cities he’s been to; Cape Town, Kigali, Nairobi, Casablanca, Lagos. He points out the good of Africa; nature, growing economies, there’s even a shot of a fancy car thrown in there and I don’t really get why. His whole point is that the Africa we see on international media isn’t accurate because there are clean roads in Kigali, so duh, Africa isn’t a sh*thole. I think I’ve always had a problem with these kinds of videos (not just his) because they oversimplify the issues that have and continue to challenge almost every country on the continent, since the end of colonialism.
When talking about Cape Town he shows a clip of a white man next to a van and then an aerial shot of some residential area in the city while saying, “these houses go for $2 million USD each, this is one of the most expensive real estate on the continent!”. Now, this is problematic, even though it is a fact. To put this out there as something we Africans should be proud of and something that non-Africans should find nicely surprising is not a good look. South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Not even a lifetime ago, the country was deeply segregated. The white minority controlled most of the wealth and their government implemented strict discrimination laws against the black natives and other non-white groups. I’m sure even Nusseir’s life overlaps with South African apartheid. Cape Town is what it is today, expensive and highly modernized in comparison to almost every other African city, because of apartheid. To single it out as “this is the Africa they don’t show you” is just weak. Unemployment rates in South Africa continue to be high, 20+ years after apartheid and many black South Africans continue to live in poverty. Why? Because of the system that enabled Cape Town to be what it is today while disenfranchising, exploiting and marginalizing the natives.
This Nas Daily video represents everything I hate about Africa conversations in the western world. I’ve had several eye-roll moments when people would talk about how amazing Tanzania is and how living there is like experiencing a paradise. I even fell into this trap myself until one day in 2019 when I was at a dinner party and this man started talking to me about his travels to Tanzania while he lived in Kenya and all I could think of was #cantrelate. Most people who from African countries find their lives unbearable and unhappy because, “we live in paradise, but none of us have the time or the means to actually live here” (Deni, Guava Island).
I absolutely hate every single “Tanzania” video on the internet that tries to be overly positive about the country, because they oversimplify the issues, just like the Nas Daily videos, and create a narrative that only works for specific demographics. To experience paradise in Tanzania you have to be rich, non-black and if you are black then you need to be a straight man. I’ll give an example from my own experience. Women in Tanzania get mistreated and a good number of us feel trapped and unhappy when we’re there yet you’ll see videos praise Tanzanian women for our decency. But we can’t even wear what we want. We have to be “decent” and cover our knees, etc. so that we don’t get beaten in the street (yes, it’s a thing) or get told that we’re trying to “tempt” men. We can’t express ourselves as intellectual and sexual beings without being called sluts and told that we should know our place in society, because God didn’t create us to equal men and so we can’t have the same freedoms – yes, I’ve been told this very many times by family members. To make a video that ignores the story behind is insulting and careless.
This is just one example of the many issues in Africa that videos like Nas Daily’s fails to address and therefore, contributes to the same problem he’s trying to “fix” (my choice of word, not his). These videos are presented as content created to debunk myths like the world’s wrong perception of African countries as poor, diseased and with all kinds of evils, including the killings of people with albinism, among other things. Well, the truth is that these issues are present in Africa, very present, and I think it’s time we started being vocal about them on social media. Fearing for your life is a reality for many people, and poor living conditions are basically life in most African countries. I understand why we need to push back against the narrative that Africa is just huts and wildlife and not much going on. But we have to do it in a way that doesn’t downplay the issues that Africans face.
Fact is, those three skyscrapers in Dar es Salaam won’t erase the unnecessary conservatism that enables inefficient authoritarian rule and misogyny to exist in Tanzanian society. They are there because the government allowed them to be. The same government that will rent them for public office space and restrict entry for women wearing pants and skirts that don’t cover our knees (I am not making this up). We keep saying, ‘Africa is changing’ to mean positive developments, but is it?
I’m sure you’ve come across white savior films like The Help, Blood Diamond, Green Book, La la land and the latest being The Red Sea Diving Resort. This list is definitely not exhaustive.
First check out this Seth Meyers parody, just because:
The white savior complex is refers to the need/desire of a white person to help (save) “people of color” from problems that have been and are still caused by predominantly white societies, structures and practices (slavery, colonialism, imperialism).
White savior films are the scum of film-making. Not only do they undermine the struggles of people of color fighting against oppression, but they also continue to reinforce the idea that things can only work out if a white person is involved.
Meanwhile, in Africa, the toughest work clearly falls to the local guides who led the perilous Jewish exodus from Ethiopia to the Gedaref Refugee Camp. Raff composites all these heroes into a single character, Kabede Bimro (played by Michael Kenneth Williams, Omar of “The Wire”), the film’s only nonwhite ally of note.
The existence of these films is one of the reasons why white savior practices continue to thrive in the real world. Think of the horrifying case of Renee Bach. This is just one example of the white savior complex going into someone’s head to the point of her thinking she can actually bring change by playing doctor on Ugandan kids from a poor area suffering from all sorts of illnesses even though she has no medical degree. 105 kids died because of her irresponsible actions.
In his essay The White Savior Industrial Complex, Teju Cole writes, “if Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself.” I agree with this statement because the politics side of things is often overlooked. We might write hundreds of blog posts condemning white saviors, but the cause actually lies in politics. Western governments usually play roles in all kinds of conflicts and destruction in developing countries: Syria (currently), Cambodia (20th century), the colonization of Africa (Since the 15th century), the colonization of the Indian subcontinent (read on the Kashmir situation today). The result of all this chaos is that these places have become places that now need to be helped through charity organizations from the same countries whose governments contributed to the chaos through evil ideologies such as white supremacy that then led on to slavery, colonialism, etc. Even though lives get saved and significant numbers of people get the help they need, charity is pointless if the politics are all the same. Think about how we have had the United Nations for 74 years and organizations like UNHCR and UNICEF are literally everywhere, but today we have more than 25 million refugees and nearly 300,000 child soldiers worldwide.
I might have gone on a tangent there, but I hope you get my point: a good number of the world’s problems are a result of evil racist ideologies like white supremacy (colonialism and its effects, etc.) and the funny part is that films and some people try to tell us that the same ideologies are part of the solution. The white savior complex is cut from the same cloth as white supremacy. Thinking you’re capable of saving “people of color” through medical procedures even though you are as unqualified as they are is white supremacy.
Now back to the white savior films-they are simply a reflection of our world. One thing I feel that people with the white savior complex tend to ignore (in the context of African countries, for example) is that there are locals who can do the exact same thing a western volunteer does. The tough part is that locals are not seen as capable because of many things including the message carried by white savior films and the inferiority complex that many “people of color” still have to this day.
Also, a message to westerners wanting to spend a summer in some remote African village: there are literally people suffering in your own countries. Think about them before spending thousands of euros to travel across the world to do something that can easily be done by the local population. I’ve lived in Germany for 2 years now and I know western countries also have issues that need normal citizens to help, such as refugee integration.
the writing nib 