They’re onto us. They’ve figured out what we really want out of all our traveling, mission work and volunteering in soup kitchens, and we need to do something about it.
They believed for long enough that we do all those things to widen our horizons—to gain a more global perspective.
They thought we wanted to welcome other cultures into our minds. They really believed it.
But something changed.
They figured out we wanted nothing to do with their culture, only to watch and admire their quaintness.
They welcomed us, as missionaries, into their homes and living spaces and let us rebuild their disaster-stricken communities—this time with more churches. They were shocked when we didn’t want anything in return.
They watched as we toured their undeveloped backyards with our cameras. They smiled when we took photos of their plants and wildlife. They dropped their grins when we took photos of them in the same shoot.
They welcomed us into the kitchen, the one to which they barely make it every Saturday. They smiled as we poured them soup and offered bread. They wondered why we did not eat with them.
They did not realize we only travel to vastly different cultures because it is the privilege of our social class to stare agog at the living conditions of those below us.
They thought we wanted to help further their designs, when we only ever wanted to see our own designs on different paper.
We knew it was racist. We spread the idea that travel cures racism to deflect criticism. It worked for long enough.
We covered up the fact that our travels and our volunteering are nothing more than cultural voyeurism, born of a deeply ingrained sense of wealth- or class-based superiority.
We recognize that Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” is racist, but we don’t know why.
But our entire façade is under attack now, as more and more non-ethnocentric Americans stick up for the minorities we so delight in observing.
Unnecessary and empty phrases such as cultural appropriation make their way into the dialogue to deter us from indulging in the glamorous aspects of other cultures.
We remind them that there is such a thing as reverse racism, but our reason goes unheard. They say reverse racism is, in itself, a racist term. So we don’t use it as much, but we still think it.
We need to do something to restore our privileges—nay, our rights as middle- to upper- class citizens to travel the world for the sake of judging it through our own cultural lens.
Part of our culture requires we travel and make ourselves feel good and global—we’re supposed to read Eat, Pray, Love and not want to go to India? But how can we again make people think we aren’t acting out of class superiority?
Perhaps when we travel, instead of building churches or taking pictures of people in their natural habitats, we should try to fit in—or at least make it look like that.
We should do as the Romans do, without beforehand looking around at our friends and saying, “Do as the Romans do, I guess, ha ha!”
My fellow travelers, we should do our best to hide the fact that our culture is better. When we travel, let’s behave as though we want to become a part of the culture we’re invading.
We must never let them hear our thoughts or know how we perceive them. We must not let them know we are only visiting because we read Eat, Pray, Love. We must hold every urge to tell them about the joys of Christianity as we help rebuild their devastated cities. We must hold every urge to tell them how awful their lives are by our standards.
Instead of staying in five-star hotels in countries marked by ever-increasing rates of poverty, instead of expecting the locals to know English so we might get around better, we should do our best to be anything but inconvenient.