i literally laughed so fucking hard because omg

Is this true??

For clarification, there are a lot of articles and think pieces where a white person will “experience a different way of living” that entails things like wearing a headscarf for a day or working a low-wage job with Latinos or going to live in an impoverished area for “the experience”.

The problem with this is that it frames POC’s experiences as some kind of fantastic sensational otherworldly life, a costume almost, and dehumanizes them in the process. Instead, they could get a perspective by interviewing and talking to and EMPATHIZING with people that LIVE the oppressed experiences, but they focus more on LIVING it THEMSELVES as if that helps anyone. 

At the end of the day, they can take off the “costume”, go back to their lives as white (usually well-off) individuals; POC can’t. Hope that makes sense.

White people on safari

also those who go to “Poor” countries to volunteer for like 6 weeks and come back and go on about “finding themselves”

This is called ‘poverty tourism’. Started in 19th century London and is a huge market for white people with saviour complexes.
Allows these righteous people to go get feels by ‘helping’ POC for a short period of time while actually perpetrating and reinforcing the conditions that oppress them.

Adding on to that, y’all ever heard the saying, “you’ll go to another country to help but won’t look in your own backyard”? Yeah, that sums up poverty tourism. White people will use thousands of dollars to travel to a “poor” place when they ignore the SAME issues in their own zip code.

White students taking lavish trips with expensive equipment to “third world countries” and then feeling like they saved the world giving a poc child a small token, like a cross necklace or an extra expensive item they didn’t want to repack, and they come home feeling like they SAVED the poor poc kid.

But they sneer at the poc barista at the expensive coffee shop they frequent because “You should work FASTER and KNOW my order by now! That’s why you’ll never amount to anything.Fuck raising minimum wage you can’t even get my order right!” all while posting on social media how changed they are touching a poc child’s hand in another zip code far from their home country.

Sick isn’t it?