When GoFundMe Gets Ugly
13th October 2019
What doesn’t fit neatly into GoFundMe’s salvation narratives are the limits of private efforts like Matt White’s. GoFundMe campaigns blend the well-intentioned with the cringeworthy, and not infrequently bring to mind the “White Savior Industrial Complex”—the writer Teju Cole’s phrase for the way sentimental stories of uplift can hide underlying structural problems. “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice,” Cole wrote in 2012. “It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”
The project you’re funding had also better be something that appeals to ‘progressives’ or you will be de-platformed in a heartbeat..