Charity organizations are strange,
often scandalous things. It seems that every other week one non-profit or
another is being exposed for unethical practices and incredibly rich CEOs. Dean
Spade brought up how neoliberal society has created this phenomenon of “professional”
social justice, something we also discussed briefly in Wednesday’s class. Ever since
I started developing my identity as a feminist, working for a rape crisis
centre or women’s shelter has been on the list of desirable career steps. It’s
not that I never thought about the moral gray areas working for charities or
non-profits, but it never fully occurred to me that to be working for a women’s
shelter meant also profiting from rape culture.
I get it in my head that this
is how I could really make a difference working in a place like Kindred House.
That’s not to say I couldn’t, but it is to say that Dean Spade definitely make
me re-think why I think it’s okay to be paid for work helping marginalized
people.
I would love to make my
living helping other people, but to join in with the current system the way it
is means that I would be relying on women being beaten, raped, abused, and
living in poverty in order for me not to have to join those same women in the
river valley overnight. How much are you really helping those people if you are
making money because of their suffering? How do you work in these jobs in a way
that is not contributing to trickle-up social justice?
It’s the same thing with
feminists and scholars and feminist scholars and social justice activists who
write all these terrific books and articles full of great ideas and valuable
insights and then go on to become rich and famous. And the whole reason they
are rich and famous is because the world is fucked up. Using your privilege as
a platform to speak for the oppressed and marginalized is a very noble thing to
do, I think, but as Dean Spade said, we have to centre the voices of our most
vulnerable, and non-profit social justice work doesn’t do that. The government
hands out awards for excellency in community service, but the people who are
being helped are still sleeping in the river valley, still being abused. We listen to the voices of
those given awards and prestige but we don’t listen to those who are being
harmed by the system. We listen to the ones profiting from it.
I want to leave this on a few questions that Spade himself asked that I think are also relevant to my
central question (and I’m sorry this post doesn’t offer any answers, I’m hoping
you all might have some):
Does the industrial non-profit system “divide our
community by leaving out vulnerable people? Is this incremental step
conveniently eliminating the people who are easiest to eliminate in our
community?” And maybe most importantly, “Does this invite backlashes that will
harm our most vulnerable?"
My family has always been big on helping others. It's almost like a family motto. At least on my mum's side. I don't see my dad's side but I digress. My dad has for the past 5 years sat on the YESS board and spent countless hours of his limited free time working to assist them. He has a full time job and yet I see him volunteer more than the average person would. Our society is built on the idea that no matter how hard we try someone will be at the top and someone at the botton. As sad as it is to say this I doubt that will change. Whether or not it eliminates the lowest is silly as once you eliminate one row on the bottom of your pyramid you work on the next row. Does it invite backlash of course will we be abke to stop it unlikely. Our world is a real place and idealism easily gets lost. We just need to do the best we can to help our fellow human beings.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post relates a lot to what I’ve been thinking about this week as well. I also want to make a living helping people, preferably in the non-profit sphere. I think we have that in common with a lot of WGS students, since it is certainly a major surrounding social justice and activism. One thing I notice when I tell people I want to work in non-profit, is that I automatically become “brave” in their eyes. Of course, I believe there are a ton of brave and incredible people doing important work, but sometimes that assertion being made toward me makes me a little uncomfortable. I suppose because it dismantles the idea that my desire to do non-profit work can be entirely altruistic. I want to do my part to change the world, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t want any kind of credit for doing so.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, this work still needs to be done. Although I hate that we live in a capitalist, neoliberal society, I also know that I can’t personally afford to do all of my activist work for free, unless I have some other kind of day job. Furthermore, I can’t shake off the idea that I have to be “the best I can be,” so having a job that isn’t meaningful to me in order to be able to afford to do non-profit work for no personal profit at all, just won’t work. I definitely see that this is an aspect of neoliberalism that I’ve internalized, but I don’t know that I’m able to simply dismiss this belief just because I know where it comes form, and that it’s problematic.