Paris Hilton will travel to Rwanda (apparently ‘a troublespot of notorious proportions,’ according to one celebrity magazine) in November this year. When asked why she’s going, Ms Hilton responded:
There’s so much need in that area, and I feel like if I go, it will bring more attention to what people can do to help … I want to visit more countries where poverty and children’s issues are a big concern …
You can’t make this stuff up.
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Time for a coinage: “consumer imperialism.”
Or perhaps what we want is “therapeutic racism.”
Whatever it is, there seems to be no limit to the ego of the white American do-gooder. The African (unspecified, and as yet unknown) is a convenient foil for the internal urges of the consumer imperialist. Newsweek’s cover really is a perfect illustration of “the African as object of pity,” which seems to be the only role the African is permitted to play in the world’s current discourse.
The Newsweek cover is also disrespectful in the way it undresses the unnamed (and stand-in) mother and child.
I’m Rwandan-Nigerian. I got my maternal family in Rwanda and I went to visit for a few months, 3 years ago.
Rwanda is NOT a troublespot. In fact according to the Ibrahim index, Rwanda is one of the safest countries on the continent.
If Paris really wants to do something for Rwanda, then why doesn’t she get her rich daddy to do like these Americans are doing?
It is important to have the cover models unnamed because they are not there as themselves but as representatives. They are ciphers of abjection. Who they really are, the details of their lives and kinship, is irrelevant. In fact, to name them and to make a journalistic investment in their story would weaken the kind of story Newsweek is trying to tell, which is all about generalized benevolence.
Likewise, given that the full humanity of black Africans remains debatable, unsexualized nudity is permitted them. It’s an extension of the policy on network television to ban frontal nudity with the sole exception of when Africans are involved.