If we were to guess why so-called “elites” are so disliked by others, we might suggest that we look to the habit of defining the reality of others and making neat little rationalization packages that insult the protagonists, then creating prescriptions for their betterment, thank you very much. The comfortable do-gooder creates stories about why things are the way they are, and then decides that one or another intervention will be just the thing to turn the situation around. A book (or twenty) is written, creating a self-reinforcing field; and two or three generations later, the same people are thanking one another for their service, and basic dynamics of social and economic subjugation remain intact.
Elites have cordoned themselves off, and their subjects are in the process of doing the same—much to the discomfort and surprise of those elites—and why not? What self-respecting person would allow herself to be diagnosed by another with no experience of her situation and with no consultation? Much of the philanthropic and nonprofit sector should be brought up on charges of experimenting, without consent, on human subjects. As Edgar Villanueva writes in one of the articles to come: “Philanthropy, honey, it’s time for an intervention.”
There is a reason why the words narrative and colonization keep popping up lately in movement circles. Until the narratives about the “disadvantaged,” “underserved,” “dependent,” “at risk,” “opportunity” folks are shaped, relanguaged, and owned by those same folks, the tales told about them will be mostly absurd and will drain power from the building of a strong, sustainable, shared future. As James Baldwin wrote in The Devil Finds Work: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim; he, or she, has become a threat.”
[For more on this story by NONPROFIT QUARTERLY, go to https://nonprofitquarterly.org...he-nonprofit-sector/]
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