11:44 PM
It has always intrigued me: the trope of a white person travelling
abroad to “find themselves.” Turn on the TV, open a magazine, look to
your left: there it is. Furthermore, despite being the minority in many
of these countries, white people still manage to inject their privilege
into every aspect of their experience, all under the guise of “exploring
and understanding.” This is called white guilt. The classic
Hollywood-spun tale of a group of Caucasians briefly changing their race
or cultural practices, but refusing to relinquish any privilege.
Films like Seven Years in Tibet, the Last Samurai, even James Cameron’s Avatar,
support the problematic view of the white man as the savior to the
savage peoples of the “outside” world. Often in these films, the
citizens of the country...
