







































Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Kuperus, Decolonizing Global Development Theory and Practice through “Centering” the Work of Robtel Neajai Pailey 97 

 

Decolonizing Global Development Theory and 

Practice through “Centering” the Work of 

Robtel Neajai Pailey 
 

by Tracy Kuperus 
 

 
 

This essay discusses the contributions of Robtel Neajai Pailey, a Liberian scholar and activist, to the 

decolonization movement within global development. Some of Pailey’s scholarship centers on directly 

critiquing the “White Gaze” of development. She points to how development practice and scholarship 

remain beholden to Western, White knowledge and power dynamics. For this reason, Pailey urges 

both scholars and practitioners to reverse the White gaze of development. Pailey does this with her 

scholarship on Liberia. She also offers ideas for practitioners. The essay concludes with how Christian 

scholars and practitioners might engage with the decolonialization movement. 

 

 
 

In 1992, my husband and I spent nine months in 

South Africa, where I was engaged in dissertation field 

work on the Dutch Reformed Church’s contribution to 

the theology of apartheid, and my husband taught short 

courses in engineering at the University of Cape Town. 

Halfway through our time in South Africa, we felt the 

need to “give back.” We were living a comfortable life 

in the southern suburbs of the Cape Peninsula--on 

graduate student salaries no less--and felt the tug to help 

those less fortunate. The church where we were 

worshipping supported a crèche (day care center) in the 

South African township of Guguletu. Upon arriving at 

the crèche, the director showed us around the property, 

introduced us to the staff and the children, and invited 

us into her office.   

“Tell me a little bit about yourselves and why 

you’re here?” she asked. 

We answered: “We’re Americans living in South 

Africa for about nine months and feeling unsettled 

about our life in the White suburbs. We’d like to 

discover how the ‘other side’ lives in South Africa, and 

we’d like to help out at the crèche in any way we can.”  

The director responded, “What do you really 

know about how the other side lives in South Africa? 

How can you possibly come in and help, knowing next 

to nothing about the people we serve and our 

community?”   

This was my blunt introduction to the “White 

savior complex.” Certainly, I have witnessed it from 

other angles. The church I attend in Grand Rapids, 

Michigan sent a youth group to Guatemala several years 

ago. The teens painted a home and ran a VBS 

(Vacation Bible School). They returned with good 

vibes. The video they shared with the church afterwards 

showed how much they had helped the community, 

and they reveled in the happiness of the people they 

served despite their living in abject poverty. It was 

unsettling, but I had been in that same place two 

decades prior. 

The White savior complex is a large part of the 

“White gaze” of development and its colonized hold on 

the field. Robtel Neajai Pailey, a Liberian scholar and 

activist, offers some astute reflections on this reality. In 

her article, “De-centring the ‘White Gaze’ of 

Development,” she states, “In its crudest form, 

development has traditionally been about dissecting the 

political, socio-economic and cultural processes of 

Black, Brown, and other subjects of colour in the so-

called Global South and finding them regressive, 

particularly in comparison to the so-called progressive 

Global North” (2020a, 729). She goes on to urge her 

readers to de-colonize the field and turn “the colonial, 

‘White gaze’ on its head” (2020a, 729).  

Critiques about development are nothing new. 

Dependency theory, world systems theory, feminism, 

and post-developmentalism represent a few of the 

critical development theories that have centered on 

mainstream development’s flaws. What, then, makes 

the decolonization critique unique, and why should 

Christians pay attention? More importantly, how 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Kuperus, Decolonizing Global Development Theory and Practice through “Centering” the Work of Robtel Neajai Pailey 98 

should Christian scholars and practitioners working in 

development respond?    

According to Pailey, the decolonization critique is 

unique because it acknowledges the “proverbial 

elephant in the room of development: race” (2020a, 

729). Readers of this journal are likely aware of the 

development field’s uncomfortable relationship with 

religion, and we may even be familiar with Kurt Ver 

Beek’s (2000) excellent article pointing to the field’s 

avoidance of the topics of spirituality and religion. 

Sadly, the situation is similar when it comes to race. 

Pailey herself searched conference proceedings, journal 

articles, and non-governmental (NGO) reports, and 

found that references to race are perfunctory. She then 

observes that “in its constant negotiation of poverty, 

power, politics and privilege, development continues to 

be structured in hierarchies of race and place” (2020a, 

730). Pailey’s scholarly and activist work adroitly 

exposes the problematic White gaze of development 

within the context of empire and colonization.  

Pailey joins other scholars, like Edward Said 

(1978), Uma Kothari (2006), and Paul Zeleza (2009), 

who note that the racial hierarchy of colonization--

where White Westerners are equated with being 

civilized, while Black, Brown, and other subjects of 

color are understood to be uncivilized--is alive and well. 

In the development field today, the same countries and 

peoples are still considered developed. They are the 

standard by which so-called “Third World” countries 

and peoples are measured and found lacking. “In 

essence,” Pailey notes, “white is always right, and West 

is always best” (2020a, 733). Finally, the “White gaze” 

of development maintains the racial coloniality of 

power through systemic inequality and injustice while at 

the same time suggesting that Western agents in the 

development process are benevolent and altruistic.  

Pailey provides plenty of examples of “epistemic 

colonization” in development. She notes that “the 

levers of power over development--be it in policy 

making, practice or scholarship--are still mostly 

controlled and sustained by White people” (2020a, 

735). Certainly, change is happening. More progressive 

people of color are entering the field of development, 

but she notes that the majority of institutions that 

scaffold what we know as development, from 

international financial institutions like the World Bank 

and the World Trade Organization, to prominent 

NGOs like Oxfam, and international development 

departments at academic institutions like the School of 

Oriental and African Studies, all continue to reinforce 

rather than subvert the White gaze of development. 

And Pailey gives many more examples (Ibid., 736). 

International migration patterns show how the White 

Western world tries to keep out Brown and Black 

people. World leaders argue that Black and Brown 

people lack the willpower, intelligence, or character to 

contribute positively to the development of Global 

North countries. Better to keep them out with fortified 

walls, fences, and executive bans. Or take the charity 

appeals of many non-governmental organizations--these 

White savior-based calls for financial contribution rest 

on the assumption that Whites know best how to guide 

people of color who lack agency.  

Pailey is an academic as well as a public scholar, 

whose scholarship and writing range from opinion 

pieces on a variety of topics to personal stories to make 

her points. For example, her op-eds for outlets like The 

Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Post dissect 

how Liberia is still not free of colonialism’s hold. Its 

existence as a state is rooted in the American 

Colonisation Society, an organization made up of 

influential Whites who wanted “to rid the U.S. of free 

blacks” (Pailey, 2020b). This disturbing origin story 

contributes to the country’s ongoing racial tensions. 

Indeed, Liberia’s lingua franca of Liberian English, “a 

mix of American twang, Caribbean patois, and West 

African pidgin,” is another pervasive colonial legacy 

(Pailey, 2020b).  

Finally, her scholarship offers personal stories that 

buttress her points about the White gaze of 

development. Shortly after graduating from college, 

Pailey served as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s special assistant 

for communications. Within weeks of working in the 

offices of the Liberian presidency, Pailey noticed how 

the advice of three White, male colleagues, deployed to 

Liberia from Great Britain, was regarded with the 

highest respect. Their counsel was rarely questioned or 

dismissed. Indeed, their suggestions were taken as 

expert advice even though they had no post-war 

managerial experience. Whiteness, Pailey noted, 

wielded “structural power and privilege in development 

corridors” (2020a, 731), and Africans themselves, in 

kowtowing to this so-called white expertise, “have 

thoroughly internalized the ‘white gaze’ of 

development” (2020a, 732).  

Pailey’s work is as much a critique of the white gaze 

of development as it is a call to action. She provides 

many ways for both scholars and activists to challenge 

and subvert it. She directs most of her attention to 

scholars. They can ‘reverse’ the White gaze of 

development by acknowledging structures of racial 

domination in colonial and post-colonial contexts. 

Many academics have already done this. The work of 

Edward Wilmot Blyden, W.E.B DuBois, and Frantz 

Fanon exemplifies early epistemic decolonization, 

while the scholarship of Chandra Mohanty (1988), 

Kalpana Wilson (2012) and Sylvia Tamale (2020) are 

more recent contributions. All of us writing in the 

development field need to read the work of these 

scholars and take it seriously. 

In short, "scholarship that “centers” the 

perspectives and experiences of Black and Brown 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Kuperus, Decolonizing Global Development Theory and Practice through “Centering” the Work of Robtel Neajai Pailey 99 

peoples in the Global South help subvert the 

development field’s White gaze. This would include 

academic work, by way of example, that highlights 

indigenous knowledge systems, “South-South” 

migration, or India’s role as an upcoming development 

actor. Pailey herself (2016, 2021) has produced 

scholarship that explores how Liberia’s “socio-

economic development is mediated by race and 

citizenship” (2020a, 741). Liberia is one of only a few 

countries where Black personhood is centered. A 

“Negro clause” in its 1986 Constitutions confers 

citizenship to Blacks only. This challenges the colonial 

White gaze of development. It also upends the 

understanding of citizenship as grounded in White 

liberalism. This development, though, is not without 

problems. For example, it excludes Brown Southern 

migrants from citizenship, including Lebanese and 

Indian migrants who dominate Liberia’s service and 

retail sectors. Still, Pailey’s work illustrates the centering 

of “black and brown people as active subjects rather 

than passive objects of scholarly inquiry” (2020a, 742).  

Pailey has less to say to practitioners, as her world 

is mainly occupied by the academy, but she does call on 

everyone in the development field to pay attention to 

grassroots social movements like #Black-LivesMatter or 

the Senegalese activist movement, Y’en a Marre (“Fed 

Up”) that automatically de-center the White gaze of 

development by asserting Black and Brown 

personhood as the norm. These movements also 

expose the structural violence that privileges Whites 

and undermines people of color.  

One way development practitioners can subvert 

the White racial frame is by recruiting “radical rabble 

rousers who challenge and dismantle the status quo” 

(2020a, 742). Pailey cautions against hiring people of 

color to fill the diversity quota. Only “emancipatory” 

recruitment efforts can center development offices with 

the insights and perspectives of people of color. 

Moreover, White development workers (and scholars) 

must “confront how they benefit from the racial 

hierarchies that underpin this field, and actively work to 

upend their unearned privileges” (2020a, 742). 

Finally, development projects can decolonize the 

field by mainstreaming race into project analysis the 

same way they do gender, human rights, or class. NGOs 

could also form “evaluation advisory groups” (EAGs) 

that decenter the White gaze of development “through 

the direct involvement of community members as 

advisors to, and even employees of, the evaluation” 

(Johnston-Goodstar 2012, 111). EAGs would have a 

better handle than NGO staff members on whether the 

needs and desires of the community are being met by 

the development project. The locally based actors 

serving on EAGs could also add invaluable insight and 

historical perspective to the evaluation process. 

Should Christian scholars and practitioners pay 

attention to the decolonization trend? Absolutely. It is 

an excellent reminder of the reality of race, hierarchy, 

and hegemony endemic to the field of development. 

More importantly, it can inspire an even deeper 

transformation of the development field--helping us 

decenter the role that White, privileged Christians play 

within it.  

One of the features that distinguishes Christian 

development scholars and practitioners is a conviction 

that faith conditions our global service. Our theology 

tells us to care deeply about the well-being of God’s 

children throughout the world, a commitment rooted 

in a desire to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 

10:27). If our neighbor fails to flourish due to natural 

disasters, injustice, famines, or government corruption, 

we feel the call to respond, even if it means reaching 

across cultural and religious lines to help our neighbors 

achieve human and community flourishing.  

While this theology is sound and the commitments 

well and good, have we stepped back and 

acknowledged how much race and colonialism have 

factored into the ways we engage with relief and 

development? Bryant Myers’ (2011) classic Walking 

with the Poor helpfully explains the ubiquity of the god-

complex in the development process. Prompted by 

Pailey, one cannot help but notice that absent from 

Myers’ definition of “god-complexes” is any mention of 

how race factors into it. Race does not even appear in 

the book’s index. Too often Christian scholars, like 

secular scholars, have more or less ignored the 

proverbial elephant in the room; we too have adopted 

a “color-blind” outlook.  

To avoid the White gaze of development, 

Christians in the development field must grapple with 

the following foundational questions: How can we love 

our neighbor in a development context when Christian 

White privilege is dependent on the marginalization of 

others and in which the work of faith-based 

organizations (FBOs) gives White practitioners 

additional opportunities and status? How can we love 

our neighbor in a development context in ways that are 

gracious, mutual, and helpful while also acknowledging 

the structures of privilege and power based on race and 

the legacy of colonialism? Should love of neighbor, if 

we acknowledge the reality of race and colonialism in 

development, compel churches and FBOs to directly 

apologize for development appeals based on “White 

savior”-based messages? Finally, though churches are 

seen by many as the central institution of FBO 

development work (Slimbach 2023), it is important to 

recognize that there are still churches over which 

Western missionaries exert significant control. This 

neo-colonial situation begs the question—should we de-

center the hold of churches on the execution of 

development projects due to the replication of a 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Kuperus, Decolonizing Global Development Theory and Practice through “Centering” the Work of Robtel Neajai Pailey 100 

“civilizing” mission targeting change for people of color 

in the Global South? In its place, the faith-based 

development project must build up local participation 

and empowerment and partner with organizations that 

root out systemic injustice, challenge corruption, and 

undermine the White gaze of development (Ibid.). 

 

References 

Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Black Skin, White Masks. New 

York, NY: Grove Press. 

Johnston-Goodstar, Katie. 2012. “Decolonizing 

Evaluation: The Necessity of Evaluation Groups in 

Indigenous Evaluation.” In Evaluation Advisory 

Groups: New Directions for Evaluation, edited by 

Ross V. Roholt and Michael L. Bazerman, No. 

136. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 109-17. 

Kothari, Uma. 2006. “An Agenda for Thinking about 

‘Race’ in Development.” Progress in Development 

Studies 6 (1): 9-23. 

Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. “Under Western Eyes: 

Feminism Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” 

Feminist Review 30: 61-88. 

Myers, Bryant. 2011. Walking with the Poor. 2nd ed. 

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. 

Pailey, Robtel Neajai. 2016. “Birthplace, Bloodline 

and Beyond: How ‘Liberian Citizenship’ is 

Currently Constructed in Liberia and Abroad.” 

Citizenship Studies 20 (6-7): 811-29. 

Pailey, Robtel Neajai. 2020a. “De-centring the ‘White 

Gaze’ of Development.” Development and 

Change 51 (3): 729-45. 

Pailey, Robtel Neajai. February 9, 2020b. “This is Our 

Country.” Warscapes 

http://www.warscapes.com/literature/our-country.  

Pailey, Robtel Neajai. 2021. Development, (Dual) 

Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The 

Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York, NY: 

Pantheon Books. 

Slimbach, Richard, “Asking Tough Questions about 

Transformational Development.” Christian Relief, 

Development and Advocacy: The Journal of the 

Accord Network 4 (2): 51-63. 

Tamale, Sylvia. 2020. Decolonization and Afro-

Feminism. Ottawa: Daraja Press. 

Ver Beek, Kurt. 2000. “Spirituality: A Development 

Taboo.” Development in Practice 10 (1): 31-43. 

Wilson, Kalpana. 2012. Race, Racism and 

Development: Interrogating History, Discourse 

and Practice. London: Zed Books. 

Zelesa, Paul. 2009. “African Studies and Universities 

since Independence.” Transition: An International 

Review 101: 110-35. 

 
 

 

 

 

Tracy Kuperus is a professor of political science at 

Calvin University. She has published articles on 

religion, citizenship, and democratization in edited 

volumes and journals, and recently co-authored the 

book African Urban Youth: Challenging 

Marginalization, Claiming Citizenship (Cambridge 

University Press 2023). 

 

Author email: tlk5@calvin.edu 
 

http://www.warscapes.com/literature/our-country
mailto:tlk5@calvin.edu

