You’ve got ‘white saviour complex’, Strictly Stacey told after charity trip to Africa
AS a maker of hard-hitting documentaries, she is used to tackling tough and sensitive issues.
But Stacey Dooley has found herself at the centre of a storm over a charity trip.
Miss Dooley, 31, who won last year’s Strictly Come Dancing, has been accused of ‘ poverty porn’ and having a ‘ white saviour complex’ after she posted pictures of herself with children on Instagram while filming for Comic Relief in Uganda.
Below one photograph, which showed the smiling BBC star holding an African child, a critic wrote: ‘There’s something really wrong about this picture.’
In other photographs posted by Miss Dooley, she talks to locals outside a basic operating theatre while wearing a pair of £265 Grenson boots.
‘White saviourism’ is a term used to describe white people who act to help nonwhites in a way that could be seen as self- serving – for example to gain online followers or praise at home.
Several critics urged Miss Dooley, who is filming Comic Relief documentaries about neonatal clinics and malaria for the Red Nose Day appeal, to meet members of No White Saviours, a group set up to ‘decolonise’ aid work.
Others told her to educate herself, and accused her of ‘missing the mark’, while one said Africa was ‘riddled with middle-class do-gooders and the harm they do’.
She was also accused of misrepresenting Uganda and ‘perpetuating harmful narratives’. Based in Uganda, No White white visitors, Saviours especially encourages volunteers, to stop making themselves ‘heroes’ and to take greater care to show other sides of the story.
Miss Dooley, who has made films around the globe about sweatshop labour, sex trafphotos. ficking, child sexual exploitation and homelessness, defended her pictures.
She wrote: ‘I’ve had numerous photos with children. Last year I was with Roma kids in Hungary and no one had any issue with these Similarly, there’s pics of me on here with Iraqi kids living in a refugee camp. ‘The Ugandan families also asked to take pictures with us. The suggestion that I would stroll up to a child I don’t know … and would force them to have a selfie is ridiculous. I’ve been working in Africa for nearly 12 years, I ask the locals how I should behave. None of them here are upset with this photo.’
Comic Relief said the photo was a personal shot ‘taken at the request of the child’s family, and not part of any appeal film’. It agreed to curb the use of celebrities in charity appeals in 2017 after it was accused of ‘poverty porn’ by an aid watchdog.
‘Locals wanted pictures taken’