Racism, colonialism and whiteness in development: insights from Pacific professionals following repatriation of white staff during Covid-19

Abstract

The sudden departure of foreign, mostly white, development staff from Pacific countries in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, created a ‘natural experiment’ where local staff continued to work but without the accompaniment (and oversight) of their foreign counterparts. This paper reflects on evidence from the lived experiences of 12 experienced local development staff during this time. They detail how the absence of foreign staff led to increased opportunities for local staff, greater cultural sensitivity and relativity in the workplace, and the successful on-going operations of programs left in the hands of local workers. We position these experiences in relation to broader issues of racism, neo/colonialism and the centring of whiteness in the development industry to highlight the on-going structures that inhibit black and brown colleagues, and to provoke white development actors to work to redress on-going injustices in the industry. We specifically recommend white development actors openly discuss racism in the industry, enhance their knowledge of local cultures and politics, and work to cede space to local staff.

Keywords:

• Colonialism
• locally led development
• post-development
• power
• racism
• whiteness

Introduction

When the COVID-19 pandemic made its way around the world in early 2020, most of the foreign, mostly white, staff of development organisations based in the Pacific Islands returned to their home countries. As a result, a ‘natural experiment’ occurred with local staff continuing to work but without the accompaniment (and direct oversight) of their foreign counterparts. Commenting on her experience of this, Mere¹ who was working at a multilateral organisation in her home country of Fiji, said: ‘I’m now being trusted to do work, because the international staff aren’t here, that I wasn’t trusted to do when they were here’. She rhetorically followed up, ‘Why is that?’, indicating a belief that local staff are not valued as equals nor trusted to make decisions and work autonomously.

How does it serve us to frame an exploration of the effects of the withdrawal of white staff as an issue of race in international development? If there were no structural issues around race in international development, the withdrawal of some staff from particular parts of the world and the remaining of others would not be a topic for discussion. It is a topic for discussion, however, because authority, control and leadership in international development are strongly aligned with whiteness and colonialism.

Utilising the natural experiment provided by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Pacific, we suggest that moments of crisis and disruption can shine a light on shifts in dynamics as well as illuminate past practice. The withdrawal of most foreign staff from development agencies provides a unique window into the everyday racialised experiences of ‘local’ professionals in the development sector. We particularly examine whether new spaces for the emergence of local leadership emerged and associated shifts in power did or did not occur. In so doing, we provide an account of the relationship between day-to-day practices and relationships, organisational policies, and structural issues of power and race. We recognise there is some irony here, given that we write as white academics and development practitioners. However, our intention is not to speak on behalf of our Pacific counterparts, but rather to report on the lived experiences they shared with us through interviews, drawing out implications for development agencies and those who work in them. We see this reflection and critique of the power dynamics of whiteness in development as legitimate work we can and should do in our part of the development ecosystem.

Calls to decolonise development and acknowledge the structural racism of the aid and development sector are growing (Ali and Murphy 2020; Khan, Dickson, and Sondarjee 2023; Pailey 2020; Tawake et al. 2021), including in the Pacific (Meki and Tarai 2023; Taylor and Middleby 2023). While neocolonial and postcolonial critique has a long pedigree in development scholarship (Crush 1995; Escobar 1995; Goudge 2003; Kothari 2006; White 2002), appeals to ‘#shiftthepower’ have gained traction in the last ten years (Nwajiaku-Dahou and Leon-Himmelstine 2020; Slim 2020). These calls echo broader societal debates on the decolonisation of knowledge and universities (Chigudu 2020), as well as the Black Lives Matter movement (Ali and Murphy 2020). At the same time there has been a growing push for ‘localisation’ in the humanitarian sectors. including commitments made in ‘the Grand Bargain’ agreed in 2016 in Istanbul which included increasing local leadership in aid and development interventions for swifter, more efficient and better outcomes (World Humanitarian Summit 2016). Similarly, both scholars and practitioners emphasise the need for ‘locally led’ development (Booth and Unsworth 2014) which is deemed to be more effective than current practice, not least because if development processes are not locally owned and tailored to the context they tend to fail (Andrews, McConnell, and Wescott 2010).

Despite the increased frequency and volume of calls for decolonisation and localisation within development, progress on localisation, decolonisation and the systemic racism of the sector has been slow (Nwajiaku-Dahou and Leon-Himmelstine 2020; Slim 2020). For example, recent evidence indicates that direct funding to local and national development actors² is about 1.2% of total humanitarian spending, despite the 2016 Grand Bargain commitment of 25% (Development Initiatives 2023). These processes are of course linked, suggesting that systemic racism in the sector helps explain the reluctance to make progress on localisation. As Slim (2020) observes:

I think we members of the white humanitarian elite should now be more direct and speak about a racist gaze that still exists in humanitarian action and the system of white privilege that governs Western humanitarian resources.

Other explanations also exist for this lack of progress including the persistence of bureaucratic, administrative and program management processes which do not enable the kind of flexibility, adaptation and autonomy which locally led development requires (Craney and Hudson 2020; Honig and Gulrajani 2018; Faustino and Booth 2014); the invisibility and lack of value associated with the day-to-day relational work which many argue make for effective development practice (Eyben 2010; Peters 2020); and the vested interests of the aid industry and the broader political economy of the aid sector (Corbett 2017; Yanguas 2018) which incentivise the status quo. Yet these processes, values and interests are themselves underpinned by a set of worldviews, which reflect assumptions about race, class, and gender. These worldviews are embodied in day-to-day practices, business processes and organisational policies but remain largely undiscussed (Pallister-Wilkins 2021; Roche and Denney 2019, 23). As Taylor and Middleby note in their methodical critique of development aid provided by Australia to the Pacific, ‘it is beset with, operates on, and reproduces significant, complex, and historic power imbalances’ (2023, 7; see also Meki and Tarai 2023). Further complicating discussions about how to transfer power and enable localisation and locally led development practices is a lack of critical engagement with honest questions of race and the power of whiteness in the development sector.

In this article, we utilise the natural experiment that arose from the border closures of 2020 to reflect on the normativity of ‘whiteness’ (see Du Bois 1920) in the Pacific development sector and the ways that whiteness undermines efforts by foreign development actors and organisations to facilitate locally led development. We argue that local staff actions are often controlled by processes and daily interactions that embed ‘white’ ways of being and knowing, denying local leadership and professional development opportunities. We further offer that the undermining of the autonomy, agency and expertise of local staff is steeped in the perpetuation of colonial mind-sets that view local staff as less capable and trustworthy than foreign staff. To do this, we draw on evidence from the lived experiences of local Pacific development practitioners to explore the articulation between day-to-day practices, organisational authorising environments and structural drivers and the recursive relationship between them. In this way, we add to a growing literature documenting the experiences of local development actors working within a development system that continues to centre whiteness and white ways of working (Kamruzzaman 2017; Khan, Dickson, and Sondarjee 2023; Kumi and Kamruzzaman 2021; Sou 2022; White 2002). This article makes an original contribution beyond these works by examining the practices of local workers in the Pacific responding to the sudden departure of white colleagues due to Covid-19, documenting their ability to maintain the functioning of their workplaces and creating opportunities for the development of leadership skills among local staff.

In the next section, we situate ourselves within this discussion. We then discuss the context of the departure of foreign development professionals from the Pacific during the early stages of Covid-19 and the opportunity this offers for analysing race relations within the development industry. This is followed by a discussion of our methods and recruitment of participants. We then document the experiences that our Pacific counterparts reported to us about their experiences working with white colleagues before and after the onset of the pandemic, detailing the on-going influence of colonial mind-sets, power imbalances between white professionals and black and brown professionals, and how local practitioners adapted in the absence of their white colleagues. A discussion of these experiences in light of literature examining race, colonialism and whiteness – and framed with relation to the racist and colonial undertones implicit in ‘capacity building’ within development – is followed by a conclusion that suggests where white leadership may most be needed in the development sector is in working to remove its entrenched power.

A note on authorship and terminology

We, the authors of this paper, are white Australian academics and development practitioners, with a long history of engaging in the Pacific. We each have over a decade’s experience in Pacific development as scholars and practitioners. Collectively, we have held frontline and management roles in government and non-government development organisations, been short-term advisors to development programs, designed and evaluated development programs, and worked as ‘pracademics’ providing research support to bilateral, multilateral and non-government development programs. If there is systemic racism in the interaction between the indigenous Pacific and ‘outsider’ components of the system, we are part of that problem. We are conscious of this and seek to redress these problems in our own, admittedly small, spheres through three principles that guide our practise.

Firstly, our work is centred on building strong, trusting and respectful relationships with our Pacific colleagues and counterparts, recognising that relationality is at the heart of Pacific cultures (see Anae 2019; Wendt 1996). Secondly, we aim to co-create knowledge, rather than impose ideas upon those we are working with. This can be as simple as partnering with a local counterpart in each country we work through to co-designing, facilitating and/or managing projects. A consequence of these first two tenets of our work is that we seek to build relationships where our Pacific colleagues and counterparts feel comfortable and confident to tell us when they believe that our thoughts or actions are wrong, and to have frank discussions about structural challenges in the sector. It is in these discussions over years that our black and brown colleagues have shared with us their experiences of systemic racism within development and prompted us to address this issue in our spheres of influence. Thirdly, we recognise that we are privileged to have time and space to think, reflect and write, and that we carry certain social and intellectual capital owing to our positions, experience and qualifications. As such, we try to use our positions to provide ‘secretarial’ support where we can (see Gibert 2021), such as by coordinating forums to share ideas, taking responsibility for writing reports in officialise expected by donors or acting as mediators between white donor staff and black and brown implementing staff, relieving our Pacific colleagues and counterparts of some of the ‘interpretive labour’ (see Taylor and Middleby 2023) that so often weighs down local development actors. We recognise that our existence within the sector – and even our criticism of it – carries significant contradictions and hypocrisy. Rather than looking at problems of racism, colonialism and whiteness in development and deciding to leave the sector, we have determined to try to use our positions to advocate for and create greater opportunities for local actors in all settings that we work in, Pacific and beyond.

In writing this paper, we considered whether it should be co-written with Pacific Islanders. We decided that although the empirical component of the paper relates to the everyday racism our Pacific colleagues and counterparts experience within development, the orientation of the paper is a discussion of how we, white development actors, can improve our anti-racist and decolonial attitudes and practices as an industry. In that sense, this paper is a contribution to the work that the white development community needs to do amongst ourselves. The real experiences and perspectives of our Pacific counterparts should inform that work, but we consider that asking ourselves tough questions and having difficult conversations is our work to do, not theirs. We discussed this framing with our interviewees, who expressed comfort that the framing did not feel extractive or exclusionary. Full drafts of the paper were also circulated with all participants requesting feedback and online feedback sessions offered, with four interviewees attending. Their feedback has been incorporated where appropriate.

It should be noted here that following the second round of feedback, one participant withdrew their involvement as they were not in agreement with the general framing of the discussion and did not believe the paper to be constructive. This contrasts with the majority position that urged the paper to be more strident in a call for action to white development actors, as noted in the conclusion. That 12 of our 13 participants felt comfortable with the framing suggests that the opinion that structural racism and embedded whiteness need to be directly confronted in development is not isolated in the Pacific. Nonetheless, the position is not universally held, either.

We acknowledge that our use of the term ‘white’ may be jarring for some readers and lack nuance in describing structural power imbalances within the development sector. There are many people of colour working for international development bodies, including at senior levels. However, we also acknowledge white development actors often do not recognise the everyday power and influence of race experienced by our Pacific Islander colleagues because the structural dominance of whiteness obscures our racialised experience and assumes our ways of being and knowing as normative (see DiAngelo 2018, 53). To address systemic racism we must, at the very least, recognise our own racialised identity. The term ‘expatriate’ is also not appropriate as many expatriate Pacific Islanders are working in countries not their own, including interviewees in this research. So, with an acknowledgement of the limitations of the language, we use the term ‘white’ throughout the paper to describe individuals from non-Pacific countries working internationally in the Pacific, within the development ecosystem.³ We acknowledge that some readers may dismiss aspects of our discussion as virtue signalling or performative allyship (see Ekpe and Toutant 2022) but if the prospect of such criticism discouraged us from exploring these issues, it would only contribute to current silences around the complexities of white people working to shift the power dynamics of a sector that disproportionately reflects our ways of being and knowing.

We also use the terms ‘black and brown’ and ‘local’ in this paper to refer to our counterparts from the Pacific. We recognise that referring to ‘locals’ risks universalising the experiences of people from the Pacific – or Global South more broadly – but our broad usage of this term should not be read as suggesting homogeneity in the cultures, backgrounds and perspectives of the region. ‘Local’ is only used in acknowledgement that conceptions of locally led development in the Pacific can be flexible to at times incorporate staff who are citizens of one country in the region working in another. We also acknowledge that efforts at promoting ‘localisation’ and/or ‘locally led development’ can be used to whitewash superficial efforts to decolonise the development sector by homogenising non-white experiences as well as promoting the ideas and opportunities for black and brown professionals who are seen as likely to act in alignment with interests that maintain the status quo and/or reinforce power imbalances at the local level by supporting elites (Craney 2020; Roepstorff 2020; Tawake et al. 2021). ‘Local’ is applied here in the sense applied by Mac Ginty (2015, 851), where it relates to a geographic imagination ‘likely to be comprised of networks, individuals, social capital and community resources that stretch across territories’, partly in recognition that our Pacific counterparts regularly delineate pan-Pacific ‘locals’ from non-Pacific outsiders. Similarly, ‘black and brown’ is used as a more general term that centres the racialised experiences that our counterparts speak of in this paper and in recognition that some of those people interviewed do indeed work in development interventions located outside of their home countries. The overt centring of race – and use of terms ‘white’ and ‘black and brown’ – has been discussed by Tawake et al. (2021, 6) as necessary to illuminating and seeking to address systemic racism within the development ecosystem. Our take on this issue is informed by this work.

Covid-19 and the creation of space to critique the effect of whiteness in development in the Pacific

As the scale of the global threat of Covid-19 became apparent in early 2020, many professionals who were citizens of other countries returned to their countries of origin. Whether driven by organisational directives (Tierney and Boodoosingh 2020), fears related to the shutting of international borders (Roche and Denney 2021) or other concerns, the exodus of foreign staff significantly altered the ecosystem of development work. As our Pacific counterparts reflect below, with white foreign staff disproportionately holding senior management and executive positions, their mass departure naturally created conditions where local staff were granted greater autonomy over their work, individually and collectively.

Race is still a largely invisible element in the analysis of international development, whether in terms of the relationships between individuals, the function of organisations, or the design of systems and processes. Even dialogues around localisation and decolonisation often fail to address race, despite decades of recognition of the existence and pervasiveness of unequal race relations within the development sector (Crewe and Harrison 1998; Heron 2007; Kothari 2006; White 2002). As Crewe and Fernando (2006) articulate, development thinkers and practitioners have forced consideration of inequalities such as those based on gender, ability and geography into mainstream policy and programming decisions within the development industry yet have paid little or no attention to inequalities of race within the sector.

In order to participate meaningfully in discussions on localisation, local leadership, or decolonisation, we have to be willing and able to tackle the issue of race and racism in international development. Willingness is the first challenge for white development practitioners as racism has come to be understood in societies of the global north as a choice that an inherently ‘bad’ individual makes rather than a systemic reality which all individuals are born and trained into (Bhopal 2018). Racism and whiteness are not simply reproduced through discrete actions or the skin colour of an individual authority figure; they are the systems and structures that underpin ideas and practises of what is appropriate and possible. The insidiousness of racism and whiteness does not take place in single acts of visible aggression but in the hidden and invisible mental models that shape power (Miller et al. 2008). Therefore, opening up the wound of racism in international development, and acknowledging one’s role within it, is inherently challenging to white development practitioners who often define themselves in terms of their personal and professional commitment to equality and fairness. The ability to directly discuss and address racism is also a challenge for many white development practitioners, including us.

As the post-development literature has established (e.g. Escobar 1992; Esteva 2010), the whole apparatus of international development is premised on a racialised system and structure: the ability of the developed (largely white) world to positively influence and guide the trajectory and future of the developing (largely black and brown) world. Given this systemically racialised definition of the development agenda, it is an on-going problem that the issue of race is still so taboo, so untouchable, in the design, management and analysis of the development project. A more open discussion of race, and acknowledgement of race as a factor in the work of international development, will be important to any meaningful work being done on localisation or decolonisation.

Methodology and participants

For this research, we interviewed thirteen⁴ Pacific Islander professionals working in organisations managing development programs, with one withdrawing their involvement later. The remaining participants included six men and six women, in their thirties, forties and fifties, working across six Pacific states. Although not an exhaustive sampling, their testimonies emphasise and add colour to the existing literature. Interviews occurred over Zoom and were audio recorded, transcribed and manually thematically coded. The interviewees are mostly mid-career professionals in project management or middle management roles, with six working on region-wide programs, and six working on programs with a single-country focus. Between them, the group has experience working in Pacific regional government organisations, national public service, United Nations and other multilateral organisations, non-government organisations, donor-funded development programs, and in bilateral donor organisations. Many of the interviewees have experience working with multiple different organisations within the development ecosystem in the Pacific.

All of the interviewees are university-educated, and many have studied overseas. They all live in their capital cities and would generally be considered part of the urban middle class. Ten of the interviewees were personal contacts of the interviewer (Author 1) and agreed to participate in the interviews based on personal relationships and trust built up over several years. The other three interviewees were recruited into the research by members of the initial group of ten. All thirteen agreed to participate because they have an interest in informing the practice of organisations working in international development in the Pacific region, and the behaviour of individual foreigners in management and leadership positions within those organisations. They are all deeply committed to the development of substantive leadership opportunities for Pacific Islanders in development programs.

Local experiences of working with white people in development, before and during the pandemic

White development workers exercising power over locals

The most apparent manifestation of power imbalances reported by interviewees related simply to how white staff seek to impose accountability measures on local staff in a manner demonstrating a lack of faith in their professional competence. These were evident not only in Mere’s anecdote that opened this article but also repeatedly remarked upon by our research participants. Samu from Fiji shared an anecdote of recommending to his Australian management counterparts that they trial having some local staff work from home as the seriousness of Covid-19 and the possibility of border closures and lockdowns became apparent only for two members of his organisation’s executive to ask, ‘How do we know they will be working?’ Samu reflected that this interaction was painful for him, to have the Australian executive members saying they did not trust the Fijian staff to do the right thing. He commented: ‘If it’s coming from two members of the exec[utive] team then we have a big trust issue’. Samu further offered that the template for the relationship between white management and local staff was based on control and that when people started working from home, international staff felt they no longer had that control over local staff. This is directly contrasted with the experiences of white workers not only be trusted to work remotely but, following repatriation, from thousands of kilometres away. As we discuss below, the departure of white staff created freedom for local staff. Marika from Fiji reported how local staff could think more deeply about their work without ‘having someone peering over your shoulder’, adding, ‘There’s less of the hovering’.

Assumptions of greater competence in white staff also manifests in how opportunities to undertake various roles and responsibilities are differently allocated. Mere shared experiences prior to Covid-19, including:

‘we had a young [white] UNV [United Nations Volunteer] volunteer recently, she was immediately given stakeholder management work that should have been handled by someone with on-going relationships and experience. We also see it in the treatment of local consultants, whose work is scrutinised much more intensively, and criticised more, than the work of international consultants’.

Even as an experienced development practitioner, Mere reported that her white managers only trusted her own capabilities when they were no longer able to physically supervise her. This was contrasted with a perception expressed by multiple interviewees of white staff being able to demonstrate incompetence with general impunity. Paul, a Samoan working in Fiji shared that, ‘Some of our international colleagues have been winging it for a long time’, noting white colleagues’ ‘inability to grasp the kind of work that is going on around them’. Ruth from Fiji similarly discussed that some foreign staff are highly skilled while others are ‘really crappy… [and] aren’t up to the standard expected’. She further commented that hiring rules at the United Nations limit the engagement of skilled local staff as ‘the rules are framed in such a way that Fijian staff can’t apply for Fiji-based international positions’. Estelle from Papua New Guinea (PNG) contrasted this with a recent, but still embryonic, shift in bilateral aid programs facilitated by managing contractors in employing a small number of Pacific islanders in leadership positions. These experiences of different standards being applied to black and brown development professionals in comparison with their white counterparts echo those reported by Sou (2022) in interviews with senior civil servants in Antigua and Barbuda who also spoke of the incompetence of white consultants, particularly in formulating culturally relevant responses. As we discuss below, ignorance of cultural norms surrounding ways of working often involves dismissing the role of religion and the multiple and intersecting family and community obligations at the heart of the everyday lives of Pacific people, seeking the appearance of efficiency over the relational work that leads to effective social change outcomes in the Pacific (Roche et al. 2020).

The professionals interviewed have clear and strong feelings of being undermined by their workplaces within the development sphere and the white staff to whom they are accountable. They are also acutely aware that the power imbalances that create and reinforce these structures also limit their capacity to openly critique them. As Litiana from Fiji notes, ‘Pacific Islanders who are growing their careers, and want to safeguard their careers, might not push back’. Black and brown development workers’ silence is not complicity, it is a means of livelihood security. Cultures within development programs that result in internalised silence from local staff not only undermine the supposed ‘capacity building’ ethos of development – itself steeped in assumptions of skill deficits of black and brown peoples (Craig 2007) and colonial overtones (Ife 2010; Pierre 2020) – but limit the developmental potentials of those organisations. As Sanga and Reynolds write, ‘critique is its own form of development, a conversation which, if respectfully conducted offers opportunities to honour origins and protect legacy’ (2017, 201).

Estelle explicitly identifies the dichotomy of opportunities being denied to experienced local professionals but seemingly gifted to inexperienced white practitioners as a manifestation of structural racism. Having worked in bilateral and multilateral development programs she asserts that the denial of opportunities to local staff in Pacific development spaces is widespread. She reflects: ‘In the last couple of years, I really had to force myself to accept that it really is systemic racism. To suspect that your expatriate colleagues might be practicing systemic racism is a rude shock’. Furthering her critique, she offers: ‘Even in management, management themselves support that kind of systemic racism. Maybe unconsciously. It’s so easy for them to not support increased weight of influence of national staff. It would be easy for them to disregard senior national staff’. Paul further noted that policies and procedures designed outside of Pacific spaces reinforce a hierarchy of values. He said:

‘in our organisation we have been brought in as Pacific leaders. But the policies in our organisation, HR, financial delegation, decision making, hasn’t been adjusted to our capabilities or the type of work we were brought in to do… Our own working manual doesn’t give any recognition of who we are as Pacific Islanders who brought a host of social and cultural capital. It’s expected that our professional experience would be sufficient for us to adjust [to the white world]’.

On reviewing drafts of this paper, Estelle noted the imposition on local staff to take on interpretive labour (see Taylor and Middleby 2023) to actively demonstrate their competence in ways that are visible to white leadership and act to assist white professionals in their leadership. Baguios (2022) terms these forms of racism and neo-colonialism within development as ‘microdominance’ perpetuated through a complex set of interactions that empower white development practitioners to marginalise their black and brown colleagues through a combination of judgment, universalisation, control, devaluation and alienation.

At a deeper level, research participants reflected on how limited cultural understanding from white staff can undermine the motivations behind how local staff can act at times, as well as how they connect their work with their broader cultural context, including their personal roles within such context. Relationality is at the heart of Pacific cultures (Anae 2019; Wendt 1996), acting as guidance for how Pacific peoples engage with the world and informing everyday decision-making. Davis of Vanuatu spoke of the need for white staff to embed themselves in their communities and those of their local colleagues, building trust through attending nakamal,⁵ church and functions such as weddings. The implication is that they do not. Samu spoke of how white colleagues have little or no appreciation of his obligations beyond the workplace to his family or village. Paul reflected on his experience negotiating the expectations of his workplace that he separates his work from the rest of his life that, ‘There isn’t the understanding of your personhood outside the office’. Elaborating on how his work is connected to all aspects of his identity and his community he added: ‘I don’t sit in any room by myself. Emotionally, spiritually, socially; I never sit in any room as an individual’. The expectation that local workers detach themselves from their family and community obligations between 9 and 5 reflects assumptions rooted in whiteness associated with ideas of efficiency and work ethic that clash with values of relationality.

Colonial mind-sets perpetuated in and through the development sector

A common theme raised by interviewees related to their local colleagues assuming inferior capabilities to their white peers. Notably, they discussed this as being evident in staff who had limited socialisation with white people outside of the development sector. Brendan from Solomon Islands said simply, ‘For some of us who have been exposed more, it’s not an issue, but for the majority, they look down on themselves’. Marika from Fiji echoed: ‘Those of us who’ve lived in western countries have had white people de-mystified. Others don’t have the same sense. There’s some reverence’.

In the eyes of those interviewed, there is a direct correlation between the colonisation that marks the histories of most Pacific states with the structures that reinforce notions of white superiority in areas of work ethic, management skills and even intelligence. Litiana speaks of how local competence is minimised in Pacific peoples from childhood, speaking of assumed western pre-eminence as being ‘part of our socialisation. Through our schooling, all the way’. Estelle from PNG similarly stated, ‘I was raised with this colonial mind-set that Australians always know better because they were our colonial masters’. Even from locals within the development industry, she noted that her advocacy for locally led development could be criticised as her ‘forgetting my place’. Both Litiana and Marika referred to how assumptions of greater skills and capabilities of white staff create a sense of ‘dependency’. Similarly, Brendan from the Solomon Islands shared that: ‘Always the attitude [is] that if someone is coming in from a developed country their ideas are more advanced. That thinking is common in the Solomons’. Explicitly challenging the benevolence superficially associated with the development industry and connecting it with ideas of neo-colonialism, Paul reflects: ‘That struggle of decolonisation that our ancestors went through is still there. It just manifests in different ways. And now it manifests in ways, which are harder to see and understand. It’s framed as development, as, “We are here to help”’.

Even when local staff believe in their own capabilities, some of those interviewed mentioned pressure felt to demonstrate capabilities in a way that white staff take for granted. Brendan revealed that ‘The local staff is more conscious of their abilities, or worries about that more, when the boss is international’. Manifesting slightly differently how white staff take their perceived superiority for granted, Miliana from Fiji spoke of minimising herself in interactions with white professionals. She said, ‘A lot of times when I go out and have meetings, I would let the white lady in the room do the talking’. And, as Colin from Fiji noted, local staff can feel compelled to affirm the ideas of white colleagues even when they know they are flawed:

‘When we are talking about country/local context, international staff might be proposing a way of doing things [and] I know there are so many levels of work involved in what they are proposing, and they don’t know that. I have to constantly make sure I’m not just saying yes, when I know it can’t be done’.

These insights echo literature that highlights the impact of colonisation on asserting the eminence of western thought and action gradually inculcating mind-sets of inferiority within colonised peoples, including among local elites (Sou 2022). It is the need to recognise the fallacy of white superiority that is at the heart of calls from Pacific scholars for decolonisation to begin ‘in the mind’ (Banivanua-Mar 2016; Thaman 2003; Smith 2012). Even Paul’s insights about development covertly continuing the colonial project through a veil of benevolence reflect longstanding arguments made by Pacific thinkers such as Ravuvu (1988) and Hau’ofa (1983, 1985).

Marika shared that he has made a point of encouraging local colleagues to be more confident of their own skills and more judicious in their assessment of the skill levels of white colleagues. He shared the kind of blunt phrasing he uses to challenge his peers: ‘You guys need to stop worshipping these white people. Stop treating them like they’re special. They’re people just like us. God didn’t dust them with any special angel dust’. He notes, however, that overturning these deeply imprinted ideas takes time and effort, saying, ‘De-colonising the mind takes ages. It’s never really over. Just because you tell someone over a two-year period that they can do this, that doesn’t mean people will think they can do it’.

After the exodus: autonomy, opportunity and enjoyment in the absence of microdominance

It is easy to forget just how chaotic the immediate period around the mass border closures of 2020 was. There was no planning for a smooth transition of management and professional roles. People packed bags and said goodbye to colleagues not knowing if or when they would see them again before jumping on repatriation flights. The departure of white management provided greater opportunity for local staff to demonstrate their skills as they took on extra responsibilities within their country offices. They did this partly out of necessity but also because a greater number of opportunities arose for them to voluntarily take on new roles and tasks than would have been available had white staff been present. For Samu, new opportunities arose in public engagements such as appearances at public forums and on talkback programs discussing Fiji’s recovery – opportunities that would previously have been offered first to white executive managers of his workplace. Mere noted that, ‘we have been able to demonstrate that we are more than capable of taking on tasks which we would never have done if international colleagues were around’, offering examples of hosting presentations and stakeholder meetings. Mere even added that she was able to encourage a colleague to facilitate a workshop, commenting: ‘She was fantastic. We would never have known she had those skills, she would never have had the chance to do the work, if the international staff were there’. Multiple local staff remarked on how minimal the impact of the removal of white staff was on the effectiveness of workplaces. For example, Litiana noted: ‘[I] haven’t seen any work significantly disrupted. Everything has gone ahead in the absence of the international staff’. Likewise, Natasha from Vanuatu shared that ‘program team leaders have all left, but the programs haven’t stopped’.

Although research participants recognised the positive possibilities of local staff being exposed to a wider range of roles and responsibilities, a number identified that this extra work was being poorly acknowledged within their organisations. Brendan commented that,

‘While the current situation presents a lot of opportunity … the scope of the work has also broadened and the remuneration doesn’t reflect the work you are actually doing. International staff are getting their normal packages while we are running here doing the work that keeps the organisation going’.

Mere similarly posited:

‘Senior international staff still get most of the credit for the work. They’ll Zoom in for the opening of a workshop, or the discussion section of a meeting, and get credit for outcomes even though local staff have done all the legwork in their absence… it’s not necessarily empowering. Rather, it’s felt like doing lots of extra work but not getting the credit’.

The departure of white staff also resulted in more relaxed, joyous and culturally grounded workplaces. Interviewees reported that they felt more comfortable to be able to focus on actually doing their work, rather than being hypervigilant about appearing to be working. Mere commented: ‘It’s a relief to not have them there, [we] feel like we aren’t being checked up on as much, it’s been a relief to just be able to work, without having… bosses constantly checking in, checking up’. Miliana offered a particularly interesting observation as she works in a program staffed and managed mainly by locals that shares office space with a program managed by white people. She pointed out that the shared workplace became more welcoming when the white staff departed, stating, ‘You can sense a different atmosphere when you walk into the office. It’s a bit easier, a bit more free-flowing conversation. Basic things like feeling free to have a laugh in the kitchen’.

The experiences of local staff feeling more comfortable in their workplaces following the departure of white staff and being better able to focus on their work rather than being hypervigilant about presenting as completing high-quality work in the eyes of foreign managers can be read as individual reflections on the on-going structures of power imbalances between foreign staff from countries and cultures associated with donors and local staff associated with being development ‘beneficiaries’. Indeed, these experiences cannot be decoupled from broader structures associated with colonisation and postcolonialism.

Another common experience amongst those interviewed was an increased confidence in the capabilities of local staff to adapt and lead. Litiana noted that the absence of white staff forced local staff to step up demonstrated to a number of her colleagues how capable they were. She spoke of these staff ‘being able to do the work and do it more confidently over time. The confidence wasn’t there automatically but was built because there was no other choice but to do it’. Similarly, Natasha reported following the departure of white staff: ‘I feel much more comfortable putting myself out there and representing the program’. Meanwhile, Marika has seized the chance to build the confidence of local colleagues as they have taken on greater roles and responsibilities, saying, ‘I told people, “Now’s the time to push yourself into decision making spaces”’. Marika reflected that this assertion was supported by others in his organisation: ‘One of the senior program managers, said, “Now’s the time for us to step up and show them. We just need some remote support, not in-person accompaniment”’.

‘Capacity building’ reinforces racism

The experiences of black and brown Pacific development practitioners prior to and following the evacuation of foreign white staff in response to the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrate how colonialism and the unspoken assumptions of whiteness continue to impact and be experienced by black and brown development practitioners. Workplaces police local actions, minimise cultural relativity and assume a lack of capacity within local staff while seemingly absolving white staff from consequences connected to their capacity deficits. Combined, these conditions constrain the advancement of local people within the industry at individual and structural levels, and reinforce neo/colonial ideas of black and brown inferiority.

Detailing their experiences in managing increased workloads and responsibilities, as well as creating more culturally relevant workplaces, our Pacific counterparts demonstrated the skills and capabilities of local staff in direct contrast to structural reproductions of assumed deficits. The diminishment of local capacity – and presumption that it doesn’t exist sufficiently – that is inherent in the ‘capacity building’ agenda (Craig 2007; Ife 2010; Pierre 2020; Taylor and Middleby 2023), is fortified through the multi-layered assumptions imposed on local staff that speak to a lack of faith in their abilities when free from the intense gaze of white management. As Baguios (2022) has outlined, black and brown development professionals globally are subjected to ‘microdominance’ informed by racist attitudes that see local staff as a homogenous group. This compares unfavourably to white practitioners who are regularly provided with opportunities beyond their professional station and overlooks the gap in cultural competency between local and foreign staff (Redfield 2012). Again, this appears to be a global phenomenon, with the testimonies of Mere and Paul mirroring those of senior civil servants told to Sou (2022) in Antigua and Barbuda and echoing the work of Spark (2020) and Peake and Spark (2021) in Port Moresby.

How can it be that foreign white development workers can dedicate their professional lives to a field supposedly premised on social justice while engaging in practices that reinforce racial hierarchical imbalances? There is likely no single answer although the literature offers two compelling suggestions. The first is based in the defence and reproduction of power systems that privilege white bodies that Kapoor writes of: ‘Development discourse is armed with an (unconscious) ideological apparatus premised on white supremacy and fantasies of Third World subordination, which predispose it towards racist domination of the Other’ (2020, 241). The second is based in ignorance, wilful or otherwise, that extends Du Bois’ notion of the power of whiteness in a way that renders it raceless (Kapoor 2020, 243, 245; Kothari 2006; Loftsdóttir 2009; Pailey 2020; White 2002), seen in claims of colour-blindness from white development practitioners.

It is important to explore these and other possible reasons that limit reflexive critique of whiteness, racism and neocoloniality within the development sector. Even without the testimonies presented here, it is impossible to deny that issues of race disproportionately impact black and brown practitioners. Meanwhile, as Pailey notes in repurposing Kothari (2006), ‘the silence around race allows Western practitioners [and I would add Western scholars] of development to avoid being accountable for the powers, privileges and inequalities that continue to flow from whiteness’ (2020, 732, brackets in original). If white development professionals are truly committed to creating a more just world, they need to be active in efforts to decolonise the development sector, including in ways that may diminish their own power. As Tawake et al. note, ‘Some of the hardest work is work that white organisations and staff need to do internally, with and for themselves, to consider their own historical, positional, and racial power’ (2021, 3).

We recognise that calling for the evacuation or exile of white actors from development is, at the very least, practically infeasible. Instead, we implore white actors to recognise their own racialised identities and embrace a relational approach to personal and professional interactions between them and their black and brown colleagues, as well as the communities they work with. We encourage white actors to consider themselves as part of the genealogy of the spaces in which they work: to, in the words of Pacific Studies scholar Teaiwa (2014, 47), ‘contribute to advancing the best interests of the region [or community or country or culture]’; to try to be good (non-kin) ancestors to the future generations in the communities, countries and cultures with which we work. Practical steps to diminishing the power of whiteness in development that white people can take include forging deep and authentic connections with the people, cultures and communities they work with, both as colleagues and service providers, to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of everyday sociopolitical realities of place; speaking against policies, procedures and informal actions that diminish local capacity, privately and publicly; dismantling gatekeeping practices and creating pathways to step back from opportunities and positions, and then promoting local people to occupy these opportunities and positions; right through to vacating the field, particularly when not invited onto it by local colleagues.

Conclusion

Systemic issues arise from human worldviews and actions. The experiences of the Pacific development professionals canvassed for this article indicate that the worldviews and actions of too many white, foreign development staff – particularly in management – reflect and perpetuate racism within the sector. Black and brown professionals are routinely undervalued for their technical competence and local ‘small p’ political acumen. In contrast, white staff are regularly given opportunities to expand their professional development and management experience regardless of qualifications or sustained demonstration of competence.

It may be uncomfortable for white development workers to be confronted with evidence that their local colleagues experience racism steeped in whiteness and colonialism on a daily basis. This discomfort should be used to agitate for change, though, not ignored. As one of our interviewees noted when reflecting on the first draft of this paper, these discussions are uncomfortable but we all need to ‘build the muscle’ to move through discomfort into action.

Some argue that decolonising the development sector requires a radical restructuring in order to be genuinely able to incorporate multiple ways of being and knowing (e.g. Jakimow 2022; Tawake et al. 2021; Taylor and Middleby 2023). Others suggest that the sector is irredeemably and structurally unable to accommodate such shifts in power, and therefore should be decentred in the search for post-development alternatives (see Ziai 2017). Either way, the push for locally led development, for decolonisation and anti-racist international cooperation is not going away. In an online feedback session following a review of the first draft of this paper, three interviewees expressed that this paper needed a call to action for white development scholars and practitioners to undermine the racist and colonial structures that continue to underpin the development industry. After all, the propagation of white privilege and the concurrent centring of white ways of being and knowing are problems for white development actors to address in meaningful ways, such as openly discussing racism in the sector, working to deeply understand local cultural and political norms in their countries of work, and embedding transfer of roles – technical, administrative and management – to local people in programming. Doing this requires white development actors to not only acknowledge their power within current systems but to use it to expose and undermine the arrangements in their own institutions which perpetuate white privilege and systemic racism.

Ethics statement

This project was approved by the La Trobe University Human Research Ethics Committee on 24 June 2020 (ref: HEC20210). Research participants were informed of the nature of the study, the intended use of data and the right to withdraw consent. All provided written consent to participate and have their data published, with one participant later withdrawing, as discussed in the paper. Initial drafts of this paper were shared with research participants in 2023 and their feedback has been considered in later drafts. All efforts have been made to anonymise research participants.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank our research participants for their generous time and detailed insights, both during the interview and review phases of this project. We also wish to thank Gordon Peake for his helpful suggestions on the initial draft of this paper and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful insights and suggestions. Any errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yeshe Smith

Yeshe Smith has been working as a partnership broker since 2008 and as an Authorised Practitioner Trainer with the Partnership Brokers Association since 2012. Most of her working life has been in international development, working across a wide range of areas including governance, civil society, private sector engagement, youth, education, and health. She has lived and worked long-term in Papua New Guinea, Ghana, and Fiji. In recent years, as well as on-going international work, Yeshe has participated in partnership work in Australia, primarily in education, health, and the community sector. Yeshe has a particular interest in racial dynamics within partnerships and across teams, and a focus on managing race-based issues openly and honestly during partnership processes.

Aidan Craney

Aidan Craney is a research fellow at La Trobe University on the ARC Discovery Project, ‘The future of the Pacific: Youth leadership and civic engagement’. A development scholar, anthropologist, and social worker, his research looks at youth civic engagement and livelihoods in Oceania, and the practical and philosophical challenges for aid donors in supporting locally led development practices. Aidan has worked with development initiatives in the Pacific region on how to integrate local values systems into developmental reforms and advised youth activists in Australia and the Pacific on thinking and working politically. He is the author of Youth in Fiji and Solomon Islands: Livelihoods, leadership and civic engagement (ANU Press).

Chris Roche

Chris Roche is Professor of Development Practice at La Trobe University and Director of the Centre for Human Security and Social Change. Prior to joining La Trobe in 2012 Chris worked for over 25 years for International NGOs as a project manager, evaluator, policy researcher and as a director. Chris is particularly interested in understanding the practice of social change processes and how those involved might be more effectively supported. He is the author of Impact Assessment for Development Agencies: Learning to Value Change (Oxfam), and co-editor of Ethical Questions and International NGOs (Springer) and The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development: Playing the Game to Change the Rules (Practical Action Publishing).

Notes

1 Names of research participants are pseudonyms.

2 We use the term ‘actors’ to signify that the development ecosystem involves paid and unpaid individuals working across a range of fields towards positive social change, some of which may not be classically considered as ‘development’ work.

3 In our experience, our black and brown counterparts in the Pacific use the term ‘white’ to describe a set of behaviours and privileges displayed by colleagues from Western countries, no matter their racial origins.

4 Seven Fijians based in Fiji, one Papua New Guinean in Papua New Guinea, one Samoan/New Zealand citizen who was evacuated from Fiji to Aotearoa/New Zealand, one Solomon Islander in Solomon Islands and two ni-Vanuatu in Vanuatu. The details of the participant who withdrew their involvement with the paper are not shared here. We acknowledge that there is a majority Fijian presence and this risks contributing to perceptions of Fijian hegemony of Pacific development, however this also reflects the reality of Fiji as the regional hub for development organisations in the Pacific, including being home to the two largest autonomous Pacific multilateral organisations: the Pacific Community and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.

5 Kava houses.