Why Do White People Want To Visit Slums?
Poverty Porn is Wrong, But We Can Learn From It.
When I came to India for the first time, I was twenty, privileged, entitled, and accustomed to my colour being the default. But looking back, I think the most problematic attitude I held was that towards great poverty.
I felt a need to see it, a burning desire to enter a slum and comprehend the reality that was the everyday life of so many people throughout the world. I wanted to help, and because of my deeply ingrained white saviour instinct, felt like I had a lot to bring. So I joined an NGO working in the slums, teaching kids. I don’t speak Marathi, they didn’t speak English, and I’m pretty sure the only thing I brought them was a good laugh, seeing a strange white girl being awkward and strange in their classroom.
Entitlement
Since then, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on that need to see poverty, and why I, and a lot of white people from privileged countries, feel that way.
On the one hand, maybe it is an anthropological curiosity to see the life of our fellow humans, to bring some degree of understanding to the incomprehensible. I remember growing up, watching the (also very problematic) Comic Relief clips every year, showing just how little people had, and how hard it was…
