How Matters has an interesting post about learning to embrace one’s own biases and positionality as an aid/development worker. However, the title of the post, “Confessions of a Recovering Neocolonialist on Martin Luther King Day“, is pretty misleading – it isn’t about neocolonialism at all, as best I can tell. Basically, the post picks up on the idea that aid/development workers are neocolonialists because a Zimbabwean staff member once dropped this blanket label on the expat staff of an aid agency. The problem is that the author of the post takes what might have actually been an interesting, trenchant comment about the role of aid/development, and those of us engaged in it, in the creation and perpetuation of a contemporary  global political economy that results in patterns of advantage and disadvantage that are quite similar to those once seen under colonialism (hence the term neocolonialism – a “new colonialism” enforced by things like trade rules, aid conditionality, etc.) and turns it into a discussion about ethnocentrism and myopia among aid/development workers.
Now, I am not decrying any discussion of either ethnocentrism or myopia in the aid and development community – it is there.  We all know it.  And being reminded of that – and being critically aware of that tendency in ourselves and others – is both important and valuable.  But this post misses the point of the Zimbabwean comment because it does not address how our work in this endeavor perpetuates the relationships of inequality that are often root causes of the symptoms we find ourselves addressing in the field.  This is hard to do – it not only requires self-awareness, but the time, effort and interest to trace the effects, intended and otherwise, that radiate out from our efforts.  This is the only way to discern whether our efforts are neocolonial or not.