Opinion: Don’t let that headline fool you – I bat left. I don’t believe Donald Trump is the real American president; I do believe abortion is a woman’s right; I’m sure the Covid vaccine doesn’t rot your brain and I know that climate change is real and alarming. I bat left but I can switch-hit. When my team comes up with a terrible idea, I say so. When it comes up with two in a row – read on.
The first dumb doctrine has been around New Zealand and much of the planet for way too long. The notion that so irks me is – heavy sigh – appropriation.
Appropriation means that if you’re a writer, as I am, and you have the temerity to create a character from an ethnicity or identity that isn’t your own, you’re appropriating, aka, stealing someone else’s culture. And that, my friend, is a sin.
Why is this such an awful notion? Here are three reasons:
- Writers are supposed to create characters; that’s what we do. I’m writing a kids’ book based on an American city’s brave response to hate crimes. It has three young heroes: Chip is a local white kid heading for trouble, Stevie is a Jew who just moved to town and Quinelle is the black catcher on the school baseball team. If I believed in appropriation, two of them would have to go.
- The writers most limited by appropriation are those from minorities. Should Lin-Manuel Miranda write only about Puerto Rican Americans and not King George [in Hamilton]? Should gay writers limit themselves to gay detectives, Ngāi Tahu to Ngāi Tahu whānau, Palestinians to Palestinian lovers?
- Thanks to “appropriation” in the arts, the world is a better place. Titian painted beautiful women. On Modern Family, straight Eric Stonestreet played a wonderful gay parent. And Kiwi Paula Morris wrote the hilarious novel about New Yorkers, Trendy But Casual.
So, in my writerly opinion, appropriation is not only dumb, it’s deeply dumb. Ah, but wait – there’s something even dumber. And, for society, much, much worse.
I’m talking about the white saviour complex. The accusation of “white saviour” is hurled at any member of the majority – usually a white majority – who tries to help someone from an oppressed minority – usually, but not always, a darker-skinned minority. Need an example? The best-known literary white saviour is Atticus Finch, the white lawyer who risks his own life defending an unjustly accused black man in Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Surely, Atticus would escape the wrath of the anti-mob? Nope. Here’s but one from a long list of denunciations; the title tells it all: Goodbye And Good Riddance To Atticus Finch And Other ‘White Saviors’. In it, Laurel Raymond in 2015 shoots down the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird and exposes his racist underbelly.
What makes this not just dumb but awful? Because, making a better world starts with kindness, and the denigration of the white saviour discourages and disparages kindness – especially that most important sort, kindness to the downtrodden. Need examples of notable white saviours? The white Americans who hid escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad. The Christian family who hid Anne Frank and her family in their attic. The non-Muslim New Zealanders who embraced the Muslim community after the Christchurch mosque attacks. All white saviours. All models for a better world. All heroes.
We need more white heroes, not fewer. To make this happen, we should praise these heroes, not transform them into self-serving, secretly racist villains. If we are going to make a better world, my fellow lefties should be leading the charge.
Jules Older is an executive consultant, medical educator, crisis counsellor and writer.
