Why Toxic Positivity and the Spectacle of Suffering Are Slowing Down Social Justice
In Uplift and Empower, I praise the “partnership model” as a higher quality of help when compared to the paternalistic policies that have dominated poverty alleviation work in the past. Although I wrote about partnerships, I didn’t spend as much time discussing what it means to be a partner. In this article, I’m going to draw an important distinction between being an ally and being a partner; but before I do that, I’ll be unpacking the two extremes within attitudes about poverty: toxic positivity and the spectacle of suffering.
Dr. Samara Quintero and Dr. Jamie Long, both practicing clinical psychologists at the Psychology Group, define toxic positivity as, “the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations.” Positivity itself isn’t harmful, but its excess can be dangerous and silence people’s lived experiences. Within the context of poverty alleviation, toxic positivity can look like minimizing the narratives of individuals living in poverty in favor of optimistic soundbites, shaming people who highlight anything other than a hopeful perspective, or falsely representing numbers to encourage generosity and optimism.
Source: https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/#:~:text=We%20define%20toxic%20positivity%20as,the%20authentic%20human%20emotional%20experience
Toxic positivity makes ignoring the harsh realities of poverty more convenient and popular because it favors individual comfort over acknowledgment. As Dr. Quintero and Dr. Long share in their article, “By disallowing the existence of certain feelings, we fall into a state of denial and repressed emotions.” Toxic positivity is not only harmful to the individuals that are suppressing their true emotions, it is also harmful to the people around them and the communities their work influences.
We need to be more honest with ourselves and ask this crucial question: is framing everything around “hope” a distraction from the issues at hand? Beyond that, why do we feel so uncomfortable thinking about global problems? I noticed this over the summer when the Black Lives Matter movement went through a surge of popularity globally. Despite the amplification of black voices and experiences, many people were still in denial about the persistence of racism in 2020. This denial of racism can be paralleled with a denial of human experiences outside of one’s understanding. It’s a helpful insight into why some people hold tightly to the ideals of toxic positivity in the face of human suffering. To break out of this harmful mindset requires engaging with people facing these problems and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. No one can create sustainable solutions solely based on assumptions.
However, only focusing on negativity is not a useful answer to toxic positivity. When Hannah Arendt, a German political theorist, wrote about the “politics of pity” she differentiated between the “sufferer” and the “observer.” The physical distance between the two, especially in the context of modern media, creates what she defines as the “spectacle of suffering.” Professor Charlie Beckett at the London School of Economics describes this spectacle succinctly: “unfortunate people are observed by those who do not share their suffering, who do not experience it directly and who, as such, may be regarded as fortunate people.” Those fortunate individuals observe all of the hardships but are often not in a position to fix the problems they see. This distance leads to the mindset that nothing can be done.
Despite more people being able to see extreme poverty on social media, in advertisements, and more, commonly believed stereotypes about the attitudes and opinions of people living in poverty have persisted. Observation and understanding are very different. More often than not, focusing on the suffering of poverty as a source of spectacle does nothing but maintain stark divides between income levels. In reflecting on this idea, I recalled my own experiences being referred to as an example of the “diversity” within a club or program. For me, it was never an empowering position to be in. I felt used, and it made me doubt my self-worth. Those emotions are the reason why exercises like the “privilege walk” are being exposed as unhelpful for the underprivileged. I even shared an example of that in Uplift and Empower. I participated in the exercise during a leadership program, and my lasting memory came from those who were behind me—the underprivileged. Nothing about who I saw in the front—the privileged—was surprising.
People living in extreme poverty should not be used as pawns to make donors feel guilty or to “open people’s eyes” to the horrors of poverty. Those kinds of actions make donors feel superior to recipients. This suppresses the very individuals who should be uplifted. People living in extreme poverty have opinions, perspectives, and ideas that should be valued and front-and-center in conversations that lead to real change and real poverty eradication. No amount of research in a comfortable classroom can make up for the lived experience of a person who struggles to survive daily—a person who doesn’t have a supervisor to call when an environment doesn’t feel safe or another country to flee to when there is civil unrest.
By now, after seeing decades’ worth of photographs, videos, documentaries, and more centered on poverty, we know what injustice and inequality look like. Continuing to exploit people’s lived experiences only serves the “observers” and distracts from the much-needed work of uplifting and empowering individuals suffering in extreme poverty.
Rather than succumbing to the pitfalls of toxic positivity or the spectacle of suffering, Dr. Quintero and Dr. Long suggest that we “aim for balance and the acceptance of both good and bad emotions rather than all-or-nothing thinking.” We need to be more open and truthful about the authentic experiences people face at every income level. Erasing narratives is just as unhelpful as exploiting them.
Reshaping conversations about a more balanced view requires thinking critically about who the “observers” are and who the “sufferers” are. In Uplift and Empower, I spent the majority of my time writing about the “sufferers”, the 700 million (and counting) people who are living in extreme poverty daily. Now, I’m going to write about the “observers.”
In May 2020, Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey wrote an article called, “De-centering the ‘White Gaze’ of Development.” Her writing delves into the narratives that commonly shape international development. She calls attention to her professional experiences researching and working within the international development space and how they made her realize that “Africans have thoroughly internalized the ‘white gaze’ of development.”
What is the white gaze of development? Dr. Pailey describes it within the paper as such:
“The ‘white gaze’ of development assumes whiteness as the primary referent of power, prestige, and progress across the world. It equates whiteness with wholeness and superiority. The ‘white gaze’ of development measures the political, socio-economic, and cultural processes of Southern black, brown, and other people of colour against a standard of Northern whiteness and finds them incomplete, wanting, inferior, or regressive. In essence, white is always right, and West is always best.”
As an example of this concept, she noted how her white colleagues of similar experience and rank were able to self-promote themselves in the same organizations she worked in because, “the levers of power over development — be it in policy making, practice or scholarship — are still mostly controlled and sustained by white people.” Within the context of race, the demarcation between “observers” and “sufferers” is even starker. Westen whiteness is seen as superior to anything considered “other.” Even the words we use to describe the world are centered around this white gaze (e.g. the West and the rest, developed vs. developing, etc.) and the hierarchy is clear—white and Western ideas, scholars, and solutions are always valued over the voices of those facing the problems. As Dr. Pailey writes,
To reshape the narrative around poverty alleviation and poverty as a whole, we need to change who holds the pen and tells the stories in the first place. Allowing toxic positivity to cloud our judgment is willful ignorance. To distance yourself from the discomfort of poverty is to deny yourself the ability to address it. Poverty and discomfort are synonymous. It’s harder to pinpoint the cause if you’re unwilling to acknowledge it in the first place. Essentially, if you only focus on the glass half full, and never acknowledge the empty part, you’ll never think to pick up a water jug and fill the glass.
So, how does this context relate to allyship or partnership? To be an ally is to be an advocate and a supporter. As an ally, a person can be a voice for the voiceless and use their privilege as a tool to uplift the underprivileged. However, allies (in their positions of privilege) can more easily succumb to the extremes within attitudes about poverty. When your core role is one of support and amplification, rather than collaboration, there’s an inherent separation from the issues at hand. You’re constantly reacting based on observations.
Rather than settling for allyship, I propose that people aim to become partners. In the business world, partners are “two or more individuals who share management and profits.” In the context of poverty alleviation, partnership looks like giving as a form of exchange. For example: offering someone living in poverty a job rather than a handout or investing in someone’s business, education, and skills training rather than settling for surface-level help. A partner is more likely to understand and react to the rationale behind the behavior and decision-making of their partners because they have a closer relationship.
To provide quality help to someone requires stepping outside of yourself, your experiences, and your limited perspective and pushing yourself to be in the other person’s shoes. As an illustrative example, consider the act of someone’s hand touching a stove. An ally would understand the stimulus (the stove) that caused the reaction (moving a hand). Meanwhile, a partner would understand the rationale (the heat) that led to the decision. Partners have a vested interest in the success of the individuals they work with because they benefit when their partner does. It’s a more active form of help that requires a higher investment of time, money, and energy; but it’s the future of poverty alleviation.
I’m not alone in my belief that partnerships are the key to substantive change. In Dr. Pailey’s aforementioned paper, she calls attention to Derrick A. Bell’s critique of American school desegregation after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, she summarizes his argument as follows: “[Bell] argues that reforms to racist policies and practices, such as the ‘separate but equal doctrine’ of school segregation, tend to occur through ‘interest convergence’— when the values and selfinterests of marginalized groups (for example, persons of colour) align with that of dominant groups (for example, white people) on a particular issue. I use Bell’s analysis to argue here that the ‘white gaze’ of development will likely only be eradicated if this is viewed as important and necessary for both development actors of colour and their elite white counterparts.” What has worked to improve the lives of people of color in the US could, and likely will be, applicable in the world of poverty alleviation. Real change will only occur when the interests of the “observers” and “sufferers” are aligned. Handouts aren’t profitable. When handled and structured properly, hand-ups (or rather) partnerships can be.
Now that you have this information to work with, consider what’s happening in your community. Based on the resources available, what could the rationale be behind the factors that maintain poverty? From there, you can consider how to effectively support the subsections of your community that need the most help. This reflection can and likely will lead to uncomfortable conversations that could intersect with race, country of origin, and more. You can’t single-handedly fix every problem in your community, but you can ensure that the people in your communities that need support have clear pathways to access it. So, how can you uplift and empower someone today?
