Ethics on the job

I had the oppurtunity to hear author and pastor Shane Hipps speak at my college recently. His story was particularly interesting. He was an advertising guy, and was really good at it. He worked on a few businesses you’d know, and things like anti-smoking campaigns.

Then he realized that what he was doing was manipulating people, and really was not helping people. If a campaign was successful, people thought that he was helping them, but in reality he wasn’t.

I could go on about what he said about advertising techniques, but that’s not the point here. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore, and realized that he couldn’t live out how he saw his faith while doing his job. Ethics were just not taken into account at his job. So he quit his job and became a pastor.

Now in no way am I trying to put this across as “Oh look, the heathen ad salesman did a 180 and is a Man Of God now.” What I was impressed with was his willingness to change his lifestyle drastically in order to do something good for the world. I’ve often wondered if I could work for MTV(the scapegoat for bad TV), with a goal of changing it form within. But as I noted in Monopoly, people within systems have a hard time becoming better than the system, as they go along the path of least resistance.

So this is why I want to be intentional about the work I do, realizing that my choices are not necessarily best for everyone, but necessary for me.

Constructive Racism

Today I was eating lunch with Rich, a person who works a lot with Christian Peacemaker Teams. They’re a group who accompanies people in the midst of violence- currently they are working in Iraq, Hebron, Canada, US/Mexico border, Columbia, and more. They? made news when 5 CPTers were abducted in Iraq last year (Wiki article). One was murdered.
Rich was talking about how they struggle with the use of Constructive Racism when they are working in high pressure environments. For instance, they are planning on going to Uganda in November to accompany internally displaced peoples who are returning home. The presence of white U.S. American people will probably keep these refugees safe as they return home.
So these teams, Rich said, realize they have incredible power and privilege. They are largely white, and have U.S. passports. This can REALLY help underprivileged people as they go through a tumultous time.
But at the same time, does this “Constructive Racism,” perpetuate the power structure more?
I made a case previously that I now am calling the “Superhero’s Question,” about using powers for good or for evil. How does it work when the Superhero’s name is “Whiteman”?

As I work towards doing Socially Aware Media, this is something to think about.

SAMedia

After a conversation with a friend last weekend, we decided to make a place for people to network about Socially Aware Media. It’s just getting started, so if you’re interested in discussing socially aware media, and then actually doing it, join up.

This should be interesting.

My Developed Eyes

I’ve done videos in four developing countries: churches overcoming apartheid in South Africa, immigration from Mexico, poor coffee producers in the Dominican Republic, and currently a woman’s group doing education in Honduras. This trend (as well as some articles I’ve read) have led me to think about who am I, a middle class person from the United States, and how does this affect my work?

In Granta magazine, Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, describes satirically “How to Write about Africa.” “Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. (…) Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.”

This demonstrates pretty clearly a case of what happens when developed world eyes look at underdeveloped places, in what some are calling “development pornography.” In many cases, it is exploitation to gain money (supposedly for a good cause). AlertNet, a service of Reuters, put out this article, Aid workers lament rise of ‘development pornography’, explaining how a picture of an emaciated famine victim often only serves to “perpetuate a colonial idea of incapable Africans waiting passively for help from their white saviours.”

I, as a middle class white male from the U.S., see a situation differently than the Honduran teenager with AIDS, living in a two room house, that I interviewed last week. How can I tell her story, instead of my interpretation of her story?

A couple things I have done have worked towards alleviating this.

First, as with Convite, I lived with one of the families featured in the video. This helped me become part of their story, so that I could understand it better. Granted, I was still an outsider, but I attempted to see from their point of view.

Second, I have tried to have people talking for themselves as much as possible. Any government official or scholar may be able to give some overall statistics, but they can not tell the true story of a person who immigrates to feed their family, as in Fuerza.

Third, I have learned to have someone from close to the same situation actually be the one to interview. This arose mainly as a problem of language barriers, but I’ve learned this extends to class barriers as well. It helps people to give a more real interview of their life. I’ve had a middle class interviewer laugh at a lower class interviewee during the interview because of their less refined language. I can’t use anything from this interview.

Fourth, in the DR, I worked with a student who was interested in making documentaries. I had experience from making other documentaries, and could share that. He had the cultural insight I lacked. He now can make other documentaries, without my help.

Will I ever be able to show the world through someone else’s eyes? No. But I do think I can do my best to reduce my developed eyes in my work

Development and Immigration

Sorry for the long time without posting. I was at the MCC Mesoamerica Retreat, in Sambo Creek (near La Ceiba). It was great- we were at a decent hotel (i.e. hot showers and air conditioning!), right on the beach. It was a good time of meeting the other MCC workers, with daily workshops on the theme of immigration. Since most people at the retreat were development workers, this shaped the conversation on immigration in some interesting ways.

First of all, a developed community will encourage people not to immigrate. Also, immigration will slow development, as people with the potential to help better the situation leave behind a less hopeful situation. One exception: education (which is development, right?) will also cause immigration, in that there are not jobs for highly educated people in underdeveloped communities.

So therefore, if community development is the basis for action, people in underdeveloped communities should not be educated, in order that they do not leave the community, and so the community will eventually become developed.

Luckily, the basis for action is not (should not be) community development. The basis must be the goal of meeting the basic human rights. How to achieve that, however, is another question.