“Like many other humanitarian or social movements, the aid industry has failed anti-racist work, as part to include in their strategies. This is very problematic. On the one hand direct they focus on the inequality between North and South. They focus their work on the Injustice between those who have colonized and those who have been colonized. At the same time, their entire campaigns are based on promoting colonial strategies and therefore also on the perpetuation of racism. And that is absolutely incoherent. This is a Contradiction: addressing inequality but at the same time creating inequality through all the work .” Grada Kilomba in white charity
March 21, 2013
Dear VENRO Executive Board, Dear DZI Employees,
The self-organizations of Black people in Germany have been concerned for many years with the billboard advertising of development policy organizations in public spaces. In our opinion, racist images and structures are reproduced in it almost throughout. For example, we observe that Black people are portrayed as fundamentally “different” from white people on posters, thus perpetuating the basic racist principle of division into an “us” and the “others”-a hierarchizing perspective Also, Black people and People of Color are almost universally associated with deficits and lack by being portrayed as “backward,” “poor,” “uneducated,” “sick,” or “original. But the alternative portrayal as exotic and full of life, like the deficit portrayal, is also based on colonial stereotypes. Moreover, they are usually not portrayed as subjects who can speak for themselves, but are constructed in their role as passive recipients of help. White people, by implication, are thus portrayed as modern, educated, healthy, individual, and subjects-as givers who appear consistently positive, morally upright, active, and empowered to make decisions. While the white majority society in Germany can thus feel confirmed in its constructed self-image as superior, the donation advertising hurts and humiliates Black people, people of African origin and People of Color and triggers disappointment, trauma and alienation. It thus makes an active contribution to the perpetuation of racism, inequality and exclusion in our society. Ultimately, for us, development fundraising is almost universally apolitical, even though it serves a social function. It does not even begin to address the fact that there are global economic and structural connections between the realities of life in North and South and that Germany has helped to cause global problems and continues to be involved in them. Moreover, it ignores the historical background, e.g. the common colonial history. Instead, developmental fundraising advertising conveys the sense that aid is the only link between North and South.
In the VENRO Code of Conduct on Development Public Relations as well as in the guidelines of the DZI Donation Seal, you address some of the points mentioned above. We have heard that VENRO and DZI are currently working in a joint process on the further development of the DZI guidelines. We very much welcome this initiative, as in our opinion both the VENRO Code and the DZI Guidelines are not far-reaching and vaguely formulated at crucial points. Despite the existence of the Code and Guidelines, we continue to perceive discriminatory and racist fundraising and therefore see a great need for action.
Therefore we demand, networks and umbrella organizations of Black people in Germany:
– an active confrontation with racism-critical analyses of donation advertising1 and with it that VENRO and DZI become aware of their responsibility as an umbrella organization and quality seal awarding institution and ensure that advertising as it is currently used will no longer be possible. We ask you to articulate more clearly what you mean by dignity and being a subject, and how in practice to ensure that discrimination can be avoided in developmental text and image production2. An important point here would also be that racism and colonialism are addressed as central power relations in the North-South context and do not disappear behind general formulations such as “dignity”.
– that Black people, people of the African Diaspora and People of Color in Germany as well as representatives of partner organizations from countries of the Global South are involved in the process of further development of the Guidelines and the Code and that their knowledge and experiences regarding discrimination and racism are taken seriously. Since many Black organizations and networks, including us, have to work on a volunteer or precariously funded basis due to a lack of funding programs, we demand that participation be rewarded financially as well and not assume that Black people will willingly volunteer in the process.
– the establishment of an independent arbitration board to which individuals can also submit complaints against discriminatory billboard advertising. Central to this would be that people who feel discriminated against by donation advertising are heard and respected. The “partnership” you call for presupposes, of course, that representatives of partner organizations from countries of the Global South as well as Black Germans and People of Color also participate in the Arbitration Board. In the process, the power to define what “can be understood as discriminatory” must be relinquished by mostly white developmentalist organizations.
We eagerly await a response and remain with kind regards, the undersigned organizations
P.S. For documentation purposes, we reserve the right to publish the correspondence.
– AfricAvenir International – info@africavenir.org
– Pan African Womans Liberation Organization – PAWLO – mandoballe@aol.com
– Association of African Students at Heidelberg University – VASUH info@vasuh.org
– Working Group Pan-Africanism Munich -AKPM -sekretariat@panafrikanismusforum.net
– Umbrella organization of African associations and initiatives in Berlin and Brandenburg -The Africa Council – info@afrika-rat.org
– Black Women in Germany – ADEFRA – info@adefra.com
– Migration Council Berlin-Brandenburg – info@mrbb.de
– ISD Federation e.V. Initiative Black People in Germany – isdbund@isdonline.de