Introduction: 'The White Man's Burden' and Post-Racial Humanitarianism

Critical Race and Whiteness Studies www.acrawsa.org.au/ejournal Volume 11, Number 1, 2015 SPECIAL ISSUE: THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN ‘AFTER RACE’ Introduction: ‘The White Man’s Burden’ and Post-Racial Humanitarianism David Jefferess University of British Columbia, Okanagan This special issue addresses the question of how racial thinking continues to inform humanitarianism and international development. Scholars such as White (2002) and Kothari (2006) have identified the “silence” about race in development ideologies and practices. How racism and racial thinking inform the historical conditions that produce and maintain material inequality in the world is silenced, and there is a silence about how humanitarian expertise and ethical responsibility are tied to notions of whiteness. While the title of Kipling’s 1899 poem, ‘The White Man’s Burden’, continues to provide shorthand for the critique of the white saviour mentality in humanitarian initiatives, just as commonly the phrase is invoked simply to identify the paternalistic nature of the development enterprise. Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden (2006), for instance, focuses on the failure of development aid to effect positive economic change. Despite the title, Easterly does not however engage with how racial thinking informs international development. Indeed, as Wilson (2011, p. 316) describes, in the post-1945 development era, “as the binary oppositions of race went ‘underground’ within dominant discourses, they were mapped onto those of development and underdevelopment.” Instead of talking about race and racism, the philanthropic discourses of humanitarianism and development acknowledge the importance of ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’ in project countries, and distinguish between ‘indigenous’ recipients of aid and ‘expatriate’ benefactors (Kothari, 2006, p. 18). The humanitarian mindset acknowledges racial thinking as only a historical phenomenon, and typically postulates racism as something that has been overcome (p. 19). Hence, humanitarian and development discourses reinforce a post-racial ideal within a progressive developmental narrative: racism is no longer recognised as a cause or condition of global poverty, race-thinking is attributed to ‘cultures’ and ‘ethnicities’ in the Global South, and, indeed, the humanitarian ethic reflects the achievement of a humanist ideal, the transcendence of racial thinking to value and care for all humans. Yet, while ISSN 1838-8310 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2015 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 humanitarianism purports to colour-blindness, its structures of representation reflect a paradox. For instance, in child sponsorship advertisements, the child ‘in need’ must reflect an ideal of universal childhood, yet their ‘need’ is distinguished in part by how they must look “‘different’ or ‘ethnic’ to show that they are ‘Other’ children” (Dogra, 2012, p. 36). This post-racial paradox of humanitarianism is captured succinctly by a critic of the Kony 2012 campaign who Leonard cites in his contribution to this issue: “How can they be racist when they want to help so badly?” (cited in Leonard, 2015, p. 5). This special issue is entitled “The White Man’s Burden ‘After Race’” in order to highlight the racial paradox at the core of contemporary humanitarian discourse: humanitarianism is posited as modelling post-racial ethics, yet, as the contributions to this issue show, racial thinking continues to structure humanitarian discourse. The four essays provide examples of distinct modes of humanitarian practice in distinct local contexts: fundraising initiatives in Denmark (Christiansen), social media activism in the United States (Leonard), nutrition and health policy in Canada (Burnett, Hay, and Chambers), and the social construction of white women development workers in Tanzania and Kenya (Gross). While the articles each provide insight into the way humanitarianism continues to inflect notions of whiteness, they emphasise the local contexts for these racial formations, and particularly the influence of liberal multicultural discourses that promote a colour-blind ideal. As Eng (2008, p. 1480) notes, since the emergence of racial thinking in the European Enlightenment, “race has always appeared as disappearing,” and, I would argue, humanitarianism has always been figured as a harbinger of the disappearance of race and as the antithesis of racism. From the British and American movements to abolish the slave trade and slavery, to Dunant’s advocacy for what would become the International Committee of the Red Cross, to the figure of Albert Schweitzer sacrificing fame and fortune in Europe to care for the ill in Gabon, humanitarianism has been associated with compassion and care for others regardless of ‘difference.’ Yet, ironically, each of these historical examples of humanitarianism may also be seen to affirm white racial superiority, wherein responsibility is understood not so much as to an other in need as much as “to the moral integrity of one’s own class of humanity” (Slaughter, 2009, p. 103). The contributors to this issue take up this problem in the contemporary moment: Leonard argues that social media activism structures racially segregated communities that allow the pleasure of imagining an anti-racist self; Christiansen analyses how humanitarianism becomes a core characteristic of Danish national identity, as articulated through ideals of solidarity with African struggles and through the image of a racially diverse national community; Burnett, Hay, and Chambers examine how contemporary settler colonial policies of assimilation are defined in terms of humanitarian care; and, Gross examines how white women development workers in East Africa must confront the particular ways their bodies are coded as wealthy and providing opportunity. These four essays provide important insights into how racial thinking and racism continue to inform humanitarian practices, and they reflect the need for further analysis of the complicated ways that humanitarianism and development continue, ironically, to affirm social inequalities. In this Introduction, I highlight some of the key insights of these contributions while providing a broad overview of the context for an examination of the ‘white man’s burden’ in contemporary humanitarian and development practice. 2 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 ‘The White Man’s Burden’, today … The question of race and racism is taken up within humanitarianism and international development, today, most overtly in relation to non-governmental organisation (NGO) marketing practices. The negative image of the child ‘in need’ is no longer the norm in humanitarian marketing. That stereotypical image of the impoverished (racialised as not white) child—dirty, in tattered clothes, looking desperate and forlorn—has been largely replaced by the ‘positive image’ of the (racialised as not white) child who has benefited from humanitarian aid. In part, this shift may be attributed to the introspection that humanitarian and development agencies undertook in the wake of criticism of the way the 1984 Ethiopian famine was represented in media and NGO marketing. For instance, in its report, “The Live Aid Legacy: The Developing World Through British Eyes” (2002), the British NGO Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) outlines the way in which British perceptions of the “developing world” rely upon demeaning stereotypes and a narrative in which the British are figured as morally superior, generous givers, while people in the “developing world” are regarded as not fully human, grateful recipients. The VSO report does not characterise these stereotypical images, or this narrative framework, as racist. Significantly, the problem addressed in the report is that of (mis)representation, the report is concerned with challenging “our sometimes lazy assumptions of the developing world” and with the urgent need to “rebalance the picture” (p. 15). The report’s conclusion argues for the need to “emphasise a common humanity” but the work of “building a global community” is attributed to VSO volunteers (p. 15). The development enterprise is above question, and the critique of media stereotypes of Africa is used to affirm the organisation and, ultimately, humanitarian benevolence. The practice of being charitable and providing aid has long been associated with the performance of whiteness in Western cultures (Ryan, 2005; Laforteza, 2007). In this sense, “whiteness is an orientation that puts certain things within reach. By objects we would include not just physical objects, but also styles, capacities, aspirations, techniques, habits” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 154). The shift to more ‘positive images’ in humanitarian marketing is no less demeaning or implicitly racist, for the success and accomplishments of the recipient of aid are presented as only possible through the care and material gifts of, primarily, white benefactors. Further, seeking to fix the way global poverty is represented by focusing on the relative negativity or positivity of the image of the impoverished—with or without identifying the problem as one of racism—is not the same as contending with structures of racial privilege and power. It does not address the way humanitarianism provides a capacity, technique, or habit of whiteness, wherein the white humanitarian defines both the Other and the problem, and imagines the humanitarian self as (only) a solution. As Chouliaraki (2013) contends through the notion of post-humanitarianism, humanitarian marketing now often centres emotional fulfilment gained through humanitarian feeling. Post-humanitarianism “blurs the boundary” between the “public logic of economic utilitarianism, applicable in the sphere of commodity exchange” and the “private logic of sentimental obligation to vulnerable others” by commoditizing “private emotion and philanthropic obligation” (pp. 5-6). Yet, 3 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 even if humanitarianism seems increasingly concerned with the ‘uplift’ of the (Western/Northern) self, this sense of fulfilment is still constituted against the Other ‘in need’ elsewhere. The self-affirmation for the humanitarian subject of ‘being the change’ is dependent upon the idea of that Other who ‘lacks’ and whose possibilities in life are dependent upon Northern benevolence (Jefferess, 2008, 2012). This self-affirmation is derived from a variety of actions, including ‘sponsoring’ a child, building a school in a ‘developing country,’ fundraising to purchase goats or invest in microfinance programs, or through various modes of ‘clicktivism’ and ‘causumerism’, such as signing online petitions, joining online movements such as the Girl Effect, or purchasing Tom’s shoes or from the Me to We Style Collection.1 As Singer (2010, p. 173) argues in his treatise on the moral obligations the ‘fortunate’ have for those ‘in need,’ the little commitment necessary to “save a life” is “more rewarding than you imagined possible.” Although advocates of a humanitarian ethic for responding to global poverty, such as Singer, rarely affirm whiteness overtly, their arguments often rely on a similar moralising rationale as that articulated by Kipling in his poem. This burden is overtly paternalistic, focuses on the humanitarian’s sacrifice, and objectifies an unfortunate Other in need of ‘empowerment’. Written more than 100 years ago to prevail upon the United States its imperial obligations as a ‘white nation’ to export (white) civilisation, Kipling’s invocation continues to resonate today as a way of understanding the Northern burden to care, particularly in its seemingly post-humanitarian forms. For instance, in their critique of the (RED) campaign—an initiative in which proceeds from the purchase of certain products are directed to the “fight against AIDS”2—both Magubane (2008) and Richey and Ponte (2011) revise Kipling’s phrase—as the “(Product) Red Man’s Burden” and the “Rock Man’s Burden”, respectively—to articulate the way humanitarian ethics, consumerism, and the celebrity model of benevolence are intertwined. While ‘whiteness’ is removed from this new formulation of the humanitarian’s burden, these critics uncover the post-racial assumptions of celebrity humanitarianism. (RED)’s linking of consumerism with philanthropy—which Magubane notes is consistent with Kipling’s emphasis on Christianity, Civilisation, and Commerce—is seemingly inclusive, defined not by race but by morality (and means). The Vanity Fair issue that helped to launch the (RED) initiative, for instance, included a genetic map that traced all of the contributors to their “African roots”, which Richey and Ponte identify as imagining a cosmopolitan human community based on shared origins (p. 71). In her analysis of celebrity endorsements of (RED), Magubane focuses on how Bono and Oprah, as humanitarian figures, are aligned with the colonised rather than colonisers. Bono refuses to acknowledge his own racial privilege, instead associating himself with Irish struggles against colonisation, while Oprah emphasises “her personal pain, caused by a history of racism and discrimination against all Africans and African Americans that motivates her philanthropy,” and specifically her emphasis on education as the antidote to poverty (p. 7). Humanitarian benevolence, in these examples, is actively disassociated from the figure of the white saviour. 1 See http://www.girleffect.org/; http://www.toms.ca/; and http://www.metowestyle.com/. 2 See: http://www.red.org/en/about. 4 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 While these critics trace complicated articulations of race in contemporary manifestations of the argument for a humanitarian burden to care, there is a relatively small, but significant body of scholarship that seeks to specifically address the way contemporary humanitarianism continues to be informed by, and reassert, discourses of white supremacy: for instance, Goudge’s The Whiteness of Power: Racism in Third World Development and Aid (2003), Razack’s Dark Threats, White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New Imperialism (2004), Heron’s Desire for Development: Whiteness, Gender, and the Helping Imperative (2007), and Mahrouse’s Conflicted Commitments: Race, Privilege, and Power in Solidarity Activism (2014). Importantly, what draws these analyses together is the recognition that racism needs to be understood not only in terms of overtly white supremacist imagery but that racial thinking informs the very basis of the humanitarian enterprise. This distinction is summed up well by Teju Cole (2012), in his widely circulated critique of the Kony 2012 video phenomenon, which he characterised as an example of “The WhiteSavior Industrial Complex.” Many critics of the campaign identified Kony 2012’s use of overtly racist tropes of the Saviour, the Victim, and the Savage (Mutua, 2013). As Cole reminds us, within a wide range of narratives and practices, from humanitarian marketing, to life writing, to film, to voluntourism, “Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected” (2012). The problem with the Kony 2012 video was the way in which (white) American youth were invited to see themselves as saviours, protecting innocent, and powerless, (black) children from sinister (black) criminals. The “White-Savior Industrial Complex” conceives of complicated problems of gross material inequality and suffering as simply problems of care. Cole writes: “All he [the saviour] sees is need, and he sees no need to reason out the need for need” (2012). Humanitarianism can be understood as an orientation of whiteness, in part because it affirms the caring subject while refusing to recognise the racialised trajectories of global material inequality and its apparent solution, humanitarianism. In his engagement with how Kony 2012 relied on social media, Leonard, in this issue, argues for the way this orientation is reaffirmed by online activism that structures segregated communities of individualised care and action that prevents critical interrogation of position, privilege, or complicity; hence, facebook activism foreclosed the possibility of seeking to understand the “need for need”. Similarly, in their analysis of Canadian government food subsidy programs and nutrition education initiatives in Northern Indigenous communities, Burnett, Hay, and Chambers, in this issue, argue for the connection between humanitarianism and settler colonialism in Canadian policy, wherein ‘need’ is understood as inherent to Indigenous communities, rather than a consequence of colonialism. Post-Racial Humanitarianism There is certainly a significant body of scholarship that centres the critique of humanitarianism as whiteness. However, scholarship on and advocacy for humanitarianism and development tend to ignore racial thinking and race, define structures of difference and inequality in other terms, or, indeed, overtly reject racism as a contemporary problem. Rieff (2002, p. 50), for instance, contends that “though activists sometimes claim otherwise, [the difficulty of empathizing] is at most only tangentially a matter of racism.” Rieff rationalises the failure of 5 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 the Northern burden to care for suffering in Congo or Afghanistan as a lack of connection, the quality the people of these countries share with the potential Northern humanitarian is only the “brute fact of their humanity”: “these tragedies simply take place at too great a remove. From the unfamiliar countryside or urban landscape to the unpronounceable names of the people, warlords and refugees alike” (p. 50). Ironically, these are precisely codes of racialised difference, and indeed the characterisation of the wars in Congo and Afghanistan as “tragedies” seems to ignore their historical contexts, and specifically the role of Western economic, political, and military intervention. Rieff is by no means alone in disregarding, or at least minimising, the significance of race and racism to the humanitarian endeavour (Jefferess, 2011 p. 78; 2012, p. 20). Significantly, though, Rieff’s concern focuses on the insufficiency of the ideal of a shared humanity to effect action, and hence the difficulty of enacting a humanitarian post-racial ethic. While humanitarian agencies define their work in different ways, the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality—among the core principles of the International Committee of the Red Cross—reflect the long-standing post-racial ideal of humanitarianism. The obligation to care for those who suffer cannot be limited by notions of difference. As Barnett (2011, p. 64) contends in narrating a history of humanitarianism, early Christian missionary interventions should be seen as rejecting “biological theories of race, [for] they believed in a fundamental unity of humankind.” Barnett critically engages with humanitarianism’s history of paternalism, but he does not engage with its historical associations with whiteness or with the way it has been informed by racial thinking. Indeed, Barnett’s analysis is marked by some of the key features of the post-racial ideal, namely the attribution of racial thinking and racism, today, to those who are in need of aid. For instance, a key failing of Médicins sans Frontières (MSF) in the lead up to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, he argues, was that they were “purposely oblivious to the politics of ethnicity” (p. 202) in Rwanda. The politics of ethnicity (read: racial thinking) is presented as informing Rwandan social realities but not international relations, or the policies and practices of Northern international non-government organisations (INGOs). As a number of critics have suggested (Dirlik, 2008; Gilroy, 2000; Goldberg, 2002), contemporary racism takes on a different form from earlier manifestations; indeed, the new rhetoric of racism does not mention race (Williams, 1997, p. 41). While there are a number of ways of defining this colour-blind politics, and it is important to be attentive to the way in which postracial ideals are situated in particular national or regional contexts, Mamdani (2005) characterises contemporary international politics in terms of “Culture Talk”, wherein racial categories have been replaced by the categories of the ‘modern,’ the ‘not-yet-modern’ (to be saved) and the ‘anti-modern’ (to be defeated). The ‘modern’, here, is associated with apparently race-neutral concepts such as democracy, meritocracy, equity and multicultural inclusion. Hence, Australia can be constructed as race-blind, having transformed from a white settler colonial state to an inclusive and tolerant pluralist society (MoretonRobinson, 2004). Or, the United States can be portrayed as “a post-racial nation in which all the promises of black civil rights struggles have been fulfilled” (M’Baye, 2011, p. 6). So, post-racialism literally connotes the idea that racialthinking, debunked as a biological theory of essential difference, has been relegated to the past, replaced by new structures of relation and inclusion. It also 6 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 reflects the way contemporary racism is attributed to individual attitudes rather than structures and institutions. So, within a post-racial frame, overt articulations of white racism can be condemned but not structures of white privilege. As such, it emphasises individualism over collective identities (M’Baye, 2011, p. 6). Within this post-racial rhetoric, the not-yet-modern or anti-modern subject is regarded as limited by their own affiliation with group identities, their monoculturalism, and their inability to be inclusive or to be included (Melamed, 2011). For instance, in the humanitarian encounter, racism is identified as something experienced by white volunteers in their interactions with people in Nicaragua (Goudge, 2003, p. 52, 79). The new civilising mission, then, is defined overtly in the terms of post-racialism, as development connotes moving from group to individual identities and from monocultural patriotism to multicultural global citizenship. In this issue, Christiansen specifically addresses the way in which the moral authority of humanitarianism is reliant upon constructions of Danish pluralism and inclusivity. The presence of celebrity spokespeople with African roots as part of the annual Danish aid telethon reinforces Danish national pride, as an inclusive multicultural community, and provides testimony to the effectiveness of aid. Humanitarianism needs to be seen as inclusive and as modelling colour-blindness rather than the ‘white man’s burden’, which is why Kony 2012 was so much more controversial than the myriad of other normalised initiatives and organisations that speak for and on behalf of the suffering of the world. Humanitarianism provides a key manifestation of post-racialism, in addition to the sorts of institutions and attitudes that Melamed and M’Baye attribute to the idea. Humanitarian identification provides a “signature of modernity”, differentiating the caring subject from those who are cared for, both in the material terms of capability and the ethical terms of benevolence (Jefferess, 2011). My attempts to theorise post-racial humanitarianism have been indebted to a range of critical interventions into humanitarian discourse, including Kapoor’s The Postcolonial Politics of Development (2008), Fassin’s Humanitarian Reason (2012) and Chouliaraki’s The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism (2013). Significantly, however, racial thinking and racism are not central to these analyses. For instance, Kapoor (2008) frames his critique of foreign aid, as gift, in terms of constructions of the “generous nation.” Similarly, while Fassin (2012) acknowledges the distinction between the foreign staff of humanitarian organisations, who are “almost always Western and white”, and local staff (p. 240), his theorisation of the complex ontology of inequality at the heart of humanitarianism does not acknowledge racialisation. Fassin’s humanitarian “politics of life” differentiates between the humanitarian subject, who risks their life in the cause of care, determines whose lives can be saved and who must be sacrificed, and speaks of and for those who suffer, against those whose lives can be saved: “Physically, there is no difference between them; philosophically, they are worlds apart” (2012, p. 231). As significant as the work of Fassin, for instance, has been to revealing the ethical paradox of the humanitarian endeavour, there is a potential danger in the universalisation of the modern humanitarian subject as beyond race. Recognising the privilege of the Western citizen humanitarian because they hold a British, Canadian, or Danish passport, is crucial, as it reflects the way race, and 7 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 specifically whiteness, is tied to specific institutional structures of privilege, and that sometimes these privileges are not only held by bodies that are racialised as white. However, racial thinking continues to play a part in both the different motivations for, and experiences of, humanitarianism that differently situated subjects may have. For instance, Magubane (2008) contrasts her analysis of Bono and Oprah with Don Cheadle, an African-American actor who has been at the forefront of a number of humanitarian initiatives, including the Save Darfur Coalition, and for whom racism is identified as a key condition of the suffering he seeks to alleviate. In an interview, Cheadle discusses how African American commitments to alleviating suffering in Africa may be understood in terms of shared experiences of racism and disenfranchisement, as well as the way Africa figures as a homeland (pp. 17-18). These motivations may be contrasted with narratives associated with white benevolence, which often dehistoricise the burden to care through the ideal of a shared common humanity or the responsibility of the ‘fortunate’ to ‘give back’ or ‘sacrifice’ in order to help the ‘unfortunate.’ In a different vein, Charania (2011, p. 362) reflects on how women of colour from the Global North may feel affiliation and solidarity with the struggles of people in the Global South, but it is important to grapple with “our own complicities as racialized Northerners in North-South relations.” While Fassin’s argument for the humanitarian “politics of life” may largely hold true, the humanitarian encounter is a racialising experience. Ahmed (2002, p. 562) argues race is not an essential identity but that racial differentiation is produced through specific encounters. For instance, because development expertise, knowledge, or simply access to material goods has been associated with the white body, humanitarian actors of colour may be met with disappointment by “local counterparts” or their knowledge and expertise devalued “in the field” (Kothari, 2006, pp. 16-17). In other encounters, expatriots who are racialised as not white in their home country may be characterised as European or white in the development context (Zimmerman, 1995, p. 1016). This encounter has impacts for bodies that are racialised as white as well, as their value increases simply by crossing borders (White, 2002, p. 409; see also Goudge, 2003). For some, this may be a destabilising experience, as they feel much more visible or under scrutiny due to their race, sometimes having to acknowledge their racialised identity for the first time. This experience is often articulated in terms of white guilt and the disconnect between Western ideals of individual responsibility and the recognition of historical and structural relations of privilege and value. In this issue, Gross takes up the complicated experience of white women volunteers. Working in Kenyan and Tanzanian development projects, these women must grapple with their hypervisibility as white Northern citizens, embodying the foreign, material privilege, and mobility. Contending with theories of the normative construction of whiteness in the North, Gross shows how whiteness functions as a transnational site of privilege, figuring the model to which others must aspire. For the white volunteers, this encounter can be experienced in a way that attributes racial thinking and racism to the nation-sites of humanitarian and development projects, in contrast to the perceived colour-blind or multicultural ‘home.’ Racial differentiation, however, continues to be indicative of the humanitarian encounter, itself. Warah, for instance, reflects on her experience working with the United Nations in Afghanistan. Because of her appearance she is read as a local rather than a fellow development worker by other ex-patriots 8 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 (Warah, 2008, p. 18). Similarly, while humanitarian workers from Western/Northern countries increasingly reflect the racial diversity of these countries, the institutional structures of development NGO’s often continue to affirm whiteness, particularly in leadership positions, and do not model the diversity of their humanitarian ideals (Ojelay-Surtees, 2004; Ohri, 1997). In this issue, Christiansen and Gross each examine various kinds of humanitarian encounters, wherein racialised identities become crucial to the articulation of what it means to be humanitarian. In contrast, Leonard argues that facebook activism subverts the possibility of encounters between people of different racialised positions, serving to affirm the colour-blind ideals of white supporters of the Kony 2012 campaign. * * * In closing, the four articles in this special issue provide a diverse range of engagements with the racial politics of the development project, and particularly how humanitarianism continues to affirm whiteness, despite the association of humanitarianism with post-racial ideals. One significant thread that ties them together, and which marks an intervention in scholarship in racial thinking and racism within humanitarianism, is the way that they each situate the post-racial ideals of humanitarianism within particular social contexts. Leonard situates the humanitarian ideals of Kony 2012, as a social media phenomenon, against the reality that black civil rights have not been attained in the United States, and specifically in relation to twitter campaigns exposing police violence against young black men, including social activism that has formed under the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Christiansen analyses the annual Danish aid telethon, Danmarks Insamling in terms of the cultural imaginary of Denmark, which she contrasts with that of the United States or the United Kingdom, which often are posited as representing the North more broadly. Gross analyses the experiences of white women volunteers in the context of structures of racial and gender identity in Kenya and Tanzania in a way that brings into greater visibility the expectations, and indeed entitlements, of race and gender that the women experience in their home countries. And, finally, Burnett, Hay and Chambers argue that contemporary Canadian government nutrition and health initiatives in northern Indigenous communities reflect ongoing settler colonial ideology. As these articles reveal, the ‘white man’s burden’ has taken on new guises in the twenty-first century, and the racialised structures of humanitarianism and development are more complicated, and tenuous, than in the cultural imagination that Kipling’s poem reflects. Author Note David Jefferess lives in the traditional and unceded territory of the Syilx people. He is a non-Indigenous scholar who teaches in the areas of decolonisation and global inter-relationships at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. His current research focuses on humanitarian discourses, and the particular way in which they imagine social relations of power. 9 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the many referees who provided assessments of the submissions for this special issue, and who shared such constructive and valuable insight to the contributors. I would also like to thank Holly Randell-Moon for her support and keen critical insights throughout the process of putting together the issue, as well as to Stevie Jepson for her meticulous copy-editing of the articles. References Ahmed, S. (2002). This other and other others. Economy and Society, 31(4), 558-572. ----. (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(149), 149-168. Barnett, M. (2011). Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Charania, G. (2011). 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Third World Quarterly, 32(2), 315-33 11 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies www.acrawsa.org.au/ejournal Volume 11, Number 1, 2015 GENERAL ISSUE Editorial Holly Randell-Moon University of Otago Alongside the collection of essays on whiteness, humanitarianism and international development are general essays by Maria Elena Indelicato, Saladdin Ahmed and Scott M. Schönfeldt-Aultman. Indelicato considers how the ‘Colombo Plan’, an initiative of Australian governments to provide ‘aid’ for international students, is premised on the discursive, structural and geopolitical exercise of goodwill and benevolence towards Australia’s Asia-Pacific neighbours. Such benevolence rearticulates the colonial imagining of these neighbours as ‘lacking’ in the cultural and pedagogical attributes of local students, a lack that crucially constructs non-English speaking migrants and Indigenous peoples as likewise educationally inferior. She suggests that international students ought to find ways to link their contestation of their differential treatments under the Australian education system to critical reflections on the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty as the basis upon which citizenship rights in Australian are made. Ahmed focuses on the notion of culturalisation “as a common new-racist method of de-politicising the Other’s affairs and surrounding socio-political phenomena” (p. 1). Such uses of culturalisation have resulted in Leftist political rhetoric and practice becoming complicit in new racist discourse which entrenches, rather than contests, ‘cultural’ attributes as intrinsic to non-white ethnic peoples and communities. The essay offers a provocation to think beyond the world’s communities as fundamentally different via culture and to build a common platform for justice that also attends to local specificities of difference and inequality. Finally, Schönfeldt-Aultman considers the defensive rhetorics deployed by ex-patriot South Africans to de-legitimise contemporary and historical articulations of racism and white privilege in the United States and their former home. Together with this special issue, these papers reveal the pedagogical implications of the ways in which white benevolence is supported and given valence through various institutional contexts. Author Note ISSN 1838-8310 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2015 Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 11.1 Holly Randell-Moon is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Otago, New Zealand, located in the traditional lands of the Ngāi Tahu and other iwi. She has published on race, religion, and secularism in the journals Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, borderlands and Social Semiotics and in the edited book collections Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences (2008) and Mediating Faiths (2010). Her publications on popular culture, gender, and sexuality have appeared in the edited book collections Common Sense: Intelligence as Presented on Popular Television (2008) and Television Aesthetics and Style (2013) and the journals Feminist Media Studies and Refractory. She is the editor of Critical Race and Whiteness Studies. Acknowledgements I am grateful for the support of the ACRAWSA Executive and Stevie Jepson for their assistance in helping to put this special and general issue together. 13