Race, racialisation, and coloniality in the humanitarian aid sector

Is it possible to deliver ‘neutral’ and ‘impartial’ humanitarian crisis response? This chapter draws on available theoretical and empirical insights from the literature to argue that these dual pillars of humanitarian aid in fact represent a continuation of white saviour tropes that reinforce colonial logics. In this worldview racialised bodies are perceived to be unable to govern themselves, or only knowledgeable about their own local circumstances and communities, in turn reinscribing measures of a person’s knowledge and worth by the relative lightness or darkness of their skin. The analysis draws out the increasingly artificial distinction made between humanitarian action and development, arguing that in defence of these dual principles ‘neutrality’ and ‘impartiality’, humanitarian actors have continued to both centre and invisibilise (aspirational) whiteness as integral to the racial hierarchies prevalent in ‘aid’ chains and humanitarian work, with dire consequences for how we tackle the real and growing global crises we collectively face.