Comic Relief Dilemma: white saviours secure donations

Real life moral dilemmas can be so much more poignant than thought experiments; they force us to consider what is genuinely salient, and, I would say, compel us to re-evaluate our moral codes which work great on paper, but aren't always real-life-friendly.

Comic Relief (and Sport Relief) have recently been criticised for their celebrity appeals for donations to help people in Africa. The Guardian suggests that such appeals "perpetuate Band Aid stereotypes" of "poverty-stricken mothers swarmed by flies, their children's stomachs swollen by hunger". The videos have been likened to poverty tourism as frequently, the celebrities in the appeals are white, rich, and although they do spend time talking to the local people in the videos, a substantial portion of the video appeals involve the celebrity talking to the camera (to us viewers) about the local people, in front of them. It doesn't take a PhD in Ethics to understand why this makes some people uneasy. People have criticised the "white saviour" mentality, and for the way that Comic Relief depicts Africans as one homogeneous, starving continent.

Ed Sheeran with some boys on a
Comic Relief video appeal

The 'white saviour' mentality is understandably objectionable, but it is not clear to me that getting black or other ethnic minority celebrities to do the appeals would be any better, and such video appeals would still seem to be objectionable on the voyeuristic 'poverty tourism' grounds.

I think the more poignant and interesting issue is one that has been raised by MP David Lammy. He has said that Comic Relief has "tattooed images of poverty in Africa to our national psyche" and that it does not depict a true picture of African life. He has said that Sport- and Comic Relief "should be helping to establish the people of Africa as equals to be respected, not as victims to be pitied."

There are millions of people in Africa who are highly educated, live affluent lifestyles in bustling cities, and are not in need of our financial donations. Meanwhile, there are other millions of people in Africa living in abject poverty, suffering with starvation, malnutrition, poor sanitation and disease. There are over 1.2 billion people in total who live in Africa, and it is a diverse continent in terms of climate, culture, wealth, health, and probably any other factor we care to think of. Comic Releif can't show the full extent of Africa, but they could show us a range of people in a range of circumstances. But should they?

An article in The Telegraph suggests that charities may lose money when the celebrity appeals for donations are dropped, and this raises a very interesting dilemma: should Comic Relief depict Africans as victims to be pitied (securing more donations to help people), or should it present a more balanced view which depicts Africans as equals (but in doing so, lose out on millions of pounds in donations)?

I'm suggesting that there is a dichotomy: either depict Africans as victims, or lose donation money. If this is a false dichotomy and there is some middle ground, a third option, or the possibility of depicting them as equals and securing more money in donations, then this dilemma is moot. But I think it is probably a genuine dichotomy: if Africans are depicted as diverse in their wealth and lifestyles, then as the CEO of Comic Relief suggests in the Telegraph article, there is a real danger that donations will lower as a result, and more people will suffer. If Comic Relief showed us videos of wealthy Africans living in comfortable housing and working in managerial jobs, this is truly unlikely to elicit the same knee-jerk generosity as does the image of a child with a distended stomach and flies on his face.

A consequentialist might suggest that although depicting Africans as homogenous in their starvation and poverty isn't the full truth, it brings about greater donations from the West, and this money can be used to help the people who are in the most dire need. But a Kantian or other deontologist might point out that the means doesn't justify the ends; that depicting all Africans as starving is disingenuous at best, and blatant lying at worst. This is what gives the dilemma its distinctive poignancy; it's a real-life consequentialism Vs deontology case study.

Frequently, I find myself in agreement with consequentialism, but I reserve the right to switch allegiances as and when I see fit, and this is one such occasion when I see fit.

Presenting false information in order to secure more donations is intrinsically wrong, regardless of the samaritanism which motivates it. The charity which lies in order to save lives is not doing a good deed at the point of donation, and this means that the money is being taken under false pretences; it could even be drawn out as theft by deception, and that detracts from the noble goal of the charity trying to save lives. People in the West or elsewhere deserve to know the truth, and if that means that they choose not to donate their money, then that is their right. Similarly, Africans have the right not to be depicted as one homogenous and starving continent; presenting this distorted vision is unfair and may serve to contribute to racial discrimination across the world. If, when we think of Africans, the images which spring to mind are those from the Live Aid and Comic Relief videos, then the West may come to see (or continue to see) Africans - and by extension, all black people living in the West - as inferior, or as victims. This cannot be endorsed even on consequentialist grounds, and if we are to move forward as a culturally diverse nation and as a planet, then we need to know the full reality about different ethnic groups, and that cannot happen if we are exclusively fed images of Africans as starving and homogeneous.

However, the dichotomy I mentioned earlier may not be quite as extreme as I implied; it is possible for Comic Relief viewers to be told that this particular group of people are starving or living in poverty, without the implication that all African people fit into this category. Charities such as the NSPCC manage to tug at our heartstrings by showing us that some children have been mistreated and are in need of help without suggesting that all children are in such a situation; Comic Relief ought to be able to do the same thing. Seeing people in need of help needn't come with the message that an entire continent is in the same boat. Will such a message lessen the amount of donations that Comic Relief would otherwise have received? Perhaps, but that may be the price that has to be paid for honesty.