Promoting justice, justly

It is Gonzafrica week here at Gonzaga University, an opportunity for students to learn about, celebrate, and promote justice for various African cultures. It also offers us the occasion to reflect on the underlying attitudes and views that inspire our social justice efforts as Westerners.   

There are a number of questions to consider for those who may want to get involved with African relief and awareness clubs on campus. The most central of these questions must address the ethnocentrism and deep-rooted feelings of cultural superiority that are too often a destructive factor inherent to aid programs. Many well-intentioned organizations go into Africa with a presumptuous understanding that they know what is best for them because the same means prove effective in our culture. They consequently waste their efforts, resources, and the respect and hope of the people they are trying to benefit.

Gabe Olson, founder of Gonzaga's Kenya Relief Club, experienced this personally. "An organization built a very nice well, and because the native people were not taught how to use it or how it fit into their culture, a small part had broken and the well was being used as a clothes hanger." He reflected on his experience that many Africans he met had much better attitudes with very little material wealth, than most of us Americans who have so much.

To the contrary, it can often be equally useless and more destructive to simply give money to African governments, because it rarely reaches the people that it was originally intended to help. Martine Kulesa, a CCASL employee and past service volunteer in Ghana, emphasizes this point, saying, "Sending a large amount of financial aid to a country without the structures to actually put it to good use can end up having a negative (or at least not positive) effect."

The moral motivations and practical efforts that constitute social justice efforts in African nations are rife with these sorts of difficulties. When it comes to what works and what doesn't for the African people, it is exceedingly difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Luckily for us at Gonzaga, our school itself is a product of one of the original and most successful globalist organizations.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Jesuit missionaries to Asia were beside themselves in their discovery of what is termed by historians as "the other" – millions of unconverted Indian and Chinese peoples with cultural structures and mores distinct from European ones. Initial efforts to convert the native people were unsuccessful and disappointing. Later missionaries discovered that the key to converting Chinese and Indians to Christianity was to immerse themselves in their culture, language and customs. This was a culturally humbling and doctrinally troubling experience. There was a twofold sense in which, on the one hand, Jesuits realized the Western world was just a small part of the greater human experience, and on the other, universal Catholic doctrine would have to be adapted to the particular cultural milieu if they were going to be successful. The Jesuits had to ask themselves what was essential to the Catholic faith, and what things were merely cultural practices that could be tossed.  

We face the same issues today in our efforts to promote justice in African nations. Like the Jesuits, we must make the concerted effort to humble ourselves and realize that our way of life, despite whatever evidence we may put up for its defense, is just one way of living; there are many millions of people who live differently. Perhaps more difficult, we must also question our fundamental value system. What are the essential values we must insist on, that probably inspired our efforts in the first place, and what can be replaced with their own cultural values? According to the Jesuit model, this twofold cultural and ideological revision is necessary for social justice efforts to be effective and an ultimate benefit for Africans.

At Gonzaga we don't have to go far for inspiration and a guide if we hope to promote justice and peace for African peoples.