This paper exposes how INGOs’ claims to anti-racism often sidestep the centrality of race, allowing Whiteness to remain the unspoken architect of development discourse. By failing to centre African diaspora experiences and the realities of racialised power, development communications risk reproducing the very inequalities they seek to dismantle. Our work demands a more honest, transformative reckoning with race at every level.
Dr Edward Ademolu, Lecturer in Cultural Competency
30 April 2025
Non-government organisations fail to acknowledge role of Whiteness in entrenching racism, says new paper
A new paper argues that international non-government organisations (INGOs) need to confront the role of Whiteness in their history and work to become truly anti-racist.
Dr Edward Ademolu, Lecturer in Cultural Competency in the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, and Dr Eilish Dillon, Associate Professor at the Maynooth University Department of International Development, explore how INGOs take a ‘colour-blind’ approach to communicating anti-racism by not examining their organisation’s own role in perpetuating colonial and racist stereotypes and structures.
In ‘The Proverbial Elephant in the Room: ‘Raceless’ Antiracism, Development Communications and African Diaspora Invisibility’, published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Dr Ademolu and Dr Dillon pose that INGOs' refusal to engage meaningfully in discussions on race means that the role of Whiteness is ignored.
As development organisations grapple with the urgent challenges of global inequality and poverty in the face of aid cuts, right-wing protectionism and conflict, racism is often overlooked. Even more so is any questioning of their role in perpetuating racism and White supremacy in their communications of these challenges and in their work to address them. This article builds on research undertaken by the authors in Ireland and the UK which shows that organisations need to take racism, their role in it and its effects, far more seriously in everything they do.
Dr Eilish Dillon, Associate Professor at the Maynooth University Department of International Development
Dr Ademolu and Dr Eilish also argue that this unwillingness to put race at the centre of discourse in the development sector enhances the marginalisation of diasporic African communities in the UK and Ireland, who consistently see portrayals of Africa in crisis.
While many INGOs have shifted towards decolonial and anti-racist approaches since the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the paper suggests that there has been no real effort to challenge racialised hierarchies in the sector, which govern knowledge production, funding, and institutional authority.
These efforts – though ostensibly progressive – fail to confront the deeper racial logics underpinning development discourse itself. Instead, they prioritise representational shifts over structural change, avoiding the core issue: the continued dominance of Whiteness as the unmarked, authoritative force shaping development’s epistemologies, narratives, and institutional cultures.
Dr Edward Ademolu and Dr Eilish Dillon in ‘The Proverbial Elephant in the Room: ‘Raceless’ Antiracism, Development Communications and African Diaspora Invisibility’
Although some INGOs now use more ‘positive’ portrayals in their communications, their work still fails to engage critically with legacy dynamics. Challenging this requires development to abandon its colour-blind pretence and interact with the realities of racialised power, including recognising historical links with colonialism.
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Lecturer in Cultural Competency