How to Avoid the ‘White Savior Industrial Complex’
Ten years ago, the writer Teju Cole coined the term White Savior Industrial Complex to describe what he viewed as the all-too-familiar pattern of white people of privilege seeking personal catharsis by attempting to liberate, rescue, or otherwise uplift underprivileged people of color. “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice,” Cole wrote in a viral Twitter thread, which he then expanded on in The Atlantic. “It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about Cole’s critique lately. On the one hand, as a brown Muslim man from Iran, I’m deeply familiar with the White Savior Industrial Complex and the pernicious role it has played in my home country. On the other hand, my national hero and the subject of my new book, An American Martyr, happens to be a white evangelical man from Nebraska who went to Iran more than a century ago to convert my fellow countrypeople to Christianity—that is, a literal white savior.
