I have spent a signifiant amonut of time as a teenager volunteering to build schools, hospitals, etc. My parents immigrated illegally to the phillipines when i was 6, by over staying their tourist visas. My little sister was a missionary families anchor baby.
My Mother and Father's boss was an embarassment to them. Which is a hilarious story, and better suited for its own post.
All my digging through bed rock witba pick axe as a teenager, giving me a way to get out of the humdrum bordom (that results in violence) in the winters and summers outside Detroit in the slightly more rural areas between there Lansing that could be triangulated by Jackson Kalamazoo or Flint [if you're familiar with the "Mitten" or look it up on gmaps .
My familiarty with the subject made me love love love "White Savior Barbie" memes.
This post is an antithesis - However, that anti thesis is linch-pinned to the truth behind the "social Justice Ken" and "White Savior Barbie" memes that tell the story of how the residual effects of institutional racism in the cognative dissonace left from calonialism continues to under mine the innocent good intentions of young people [both poor, wealthy, and middle class etc] who happen to be born into or within social arms reach of the ability to fund raise and go try to do some good.
Very much like the urban legend of the extremely rich white teen in the Portland Oregon Occupy camp coming once a week to the camp, calling out a mic check [how someone at the occupy camps got the whole camps attention] and yelling the paraphase <I was born wealthy in the 1%, i dont know what else to do to make this right> and is rumored to have then each week start tossing hand fulls of hundreds and fiftys into the air in like someone tosses confetti, flower pedals, colored powder, or rice.
If he is real, he was trying his best to be a Buddha sitting under a tree, while he figures out what to do next.
Often, when poor folks or anyone else travels to humbly help they social and enequality has an even larger gap.
Often volunteers come disproportionately from former hotbeds of colonial terrorism that cannot stand the test of time, of the moral scutiny of the collection of individuals talking with moral hind sight.
Social Justice Ken, and White Savior Barbie memes are a great way for the volunteerism community to further shake off the curses of colonial influence on cognative dissonance.
Running a Capoeira nonprofit organisation - off recycling donations to our 501c3 - to raise funds for everyone in our crew to be able to travel and play the game - and how do we share that ability to be mobile with as many folks as we can by not just using our by laws (created as the result of easy access to the internet), and our well organized recycling system (created by the residual benefit of colonial organization - even if growing up poor in the USA/EAU gave me the insight to not turn my nose up to the extra lata (fiat being intra latta in this context) resource.
All that comes together in thw schema while working on making the npo work for my local, regional, national [and if i work hard enough international team mates of all skill levels.
Everyone deserves to shake the shackles of their local naiborhood foot print.
So, while I have found White Savior Barbie and Social Justice Ken insightful, hilarious, truthful and very necessary as a voice - this caveat came to mind while i ate breakfast at one of our recycling donation institutions:
When no one else is willing to bridge the gap, often sometimes we need 'social justice barbie'. Even if (like the rest of us) she is flawed and growing as a person, and will make huge mistakes. This is how everyone the world over becomes a wise person.
So, if social justice ken, comes with the accidental oversight of representing the economic resources, back lead them into a place of wisdom.
And social justice kens, barbies, kenbies, & barkens... remember you're new on the dance floor: recognise when your dance partners that you are working with know more then you do and that you are simply a conduit transfering energy frombone place to another. Thats it.
For all the good intentions of European missionaries trying to get people to sit on a toilet, rather than squat over it: it turns out that squating is the best method for the digestive track to expell bile, not sitting. Period.
Kept hoping that you noticed the person who wrote the barbie savior was a missionary her self. Nothing you wrote her shows that you didn't pick up on that. Just as a I read I kept questioning that.
Going out and teaching in another countries depending on placement can leave you teaching for 30 minutes of the day while the remaining work hours are filed with learning from the culture you are there to "help".
I have an image for this article. But, I can't get photobucket to load.
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