It is time for white supremacy to be rooted out of the Aid Sector

CSW’s response to the IDC report on Racism in the Aid Sector.

Written by Lena Bheeroo and Jon Cornejo

It’s finally happened. An official parliamentary report has acknowledged and recognised that the colonial legacy of the UK continues to shape the way the international development sector operates. But is this a radical recognition of how racism operates at the heart of the British state? Or is it just another performative black square moment?

Acknowledgement of colonial legacy is good

Two years after the murder of George Floyd and published a year on from the Government’s Race and Ethnic Disparities report concluding that there is no institutional racism in the UK, the Racism in the Aid Sector report from the International Development Committe brings together extensive evidence from those impacted by racism.

Whilst it is good to see, in an official report, the acknowledgement and recognition that the colonial legacy of the UK has, and continues to play a significant part in the sector, we would have welcomed more on what this means for both the work of the sector and the sector itself. 

But we need to talk about how colonialism has created the aid sector and still shapes its work

The full story has yet to be told. The story of how white supremacist ideals of superiority over African, Asian, Arab, and Native American people have shaped the ideologies at the heart of the development sector. How white saviour narratives created to bring “civilisation” and “help” to people across the colonies, created movements that erased the histories of many non-white people and caused irreparable damage to their ways of life. How wealth extraction throughout the colonial project created the material conditions for generations of Black and Brown people to live and die in extreme poverty. And how the development sector as we know it, provides for basic needs without dismantling the unequal power structures that would ultimately enable communities to control their own destinies. This full story of how colonialism still shapes the development sector needs to be told, and this report did not give us that.

There was space to go further and open out what the colonial legacy means for the work of the sector, for who does the work and for what this means for the future of the sector. For example, we are rightly seeing calls for independence and long overdue reparations from Commonwealth countries like Jamaica and Barbados.  This is a time to really think about what it would look like to quote Edgar Villaneuva, use “money as medicine”, and intentionally right the wrongs of the past. We can no longer hide our heads in the sand in our approach to racism in the sector. We can’t ignore what is happening in front of us whilst putting out empty statements about racism that don’t invest in radical and transformative change.

There must be engagement and intention to move towards a phase of reparations, and as Onyekachi Wambu Executive Director at AFFORD, describes the radical and holistic reform and repair agenda which can start to rectify the past wrongs, involving the 10 ‘Rs’ as a framework: recognition of the crimes; remembrance of the victims; restoration of dignity; restitution of artefacts and human remains; reparations and compensation; reconnections with the severed African world; reconciliation between the continent and diaspora, return as achieved by groups like Rastas; reimagining the future, alongside reconstruction of African societies.

Fire-fighting will not bring about transformative anti-racist change

The report also looks at the impact of racism in ‘shifting power’ and especially around creating equitable partnerships with countries NGOs work with. To actually ‘shift the power’ and redress the existing power imbalances, we will need institutions like FCDO, other government departments and donors to address the issue of racism within their own institutions. Yet we have a government that is actively denying systemic racism in the UK through the Race and Ethnic Disparities report. 

Instead, what we are seeing is the charity sector stuck in its classic ‘response’ phase, which sees it react to the latest and neverending challenges. For a year or so after the murder of George Floyd, racism in the sector was that latest crisis that organisations needed to respond and allocate resources to. But like with all sector crises, the commitments to anti-racism work dried up when a new crisis came along and racism was no longer in the spotlight. Even as these crises come to test the sector, charities must invest and commit to sorting out their cultures, as it is the very foundation that will make or break their reputation.

The report also spoke to the need to move to locally led development with decision making and funding going directly to community led organisations, for INGOs to no longer use white saviorism in their communications and in their fundraising storytelling, and the report called for public data on racism and diversity in the aid sector, and for more to be done to break down the barriers to entry to the sector.

We need accountability and action, not more recommendations and statements

These are all well and good for recommendations, however if there continues to be no accountability for charities not doing any of the above, what is the point? The FCDO, Charity Commission and other institutions and donors need to get involved in these conversations around racism, they can no longer just sit on the sidelines, because they too have work to do in their own houses. It is not enough to just talk about racism in reports, white power and leadership must actively work to dismantle white supremacy across the development sector.

The recommendation from the IDC to implement ‘policies that build and change culture and encourage diverse talent’ needs to be rooted in anti-racism and its approach needs to be intersectional. Allowing these gaps to continue, will not get us to where we need to be.

Although this report is later that we’d have liked, it is significant as it is the first time that a parliament led report has made direct calls to a government department to act on racism in the charity sector. This is a huge step from the Enoch Powell speech of 1968 when he stated that ‘soon the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’ if immigration laws were not changed. It is a step forward, and we wait with baited breath for the change that is so overdue. The way that leaders and organisations respond to this report will be key, and we must say it out loud and say it clearly - it is time for white supremacy to be rooted out of the development sector. The longer it is cast aside in favour of the current challenges facing the sector, the longer Black and Brown people are harmed.