Who Pays the Price of Peace Corps’ Diversity?
Before I say anything else, allow me to acknowledge that I am a biracial former Peace Corps Volunteer of Black and white American descent, and, depending on the space I’m in, I am not visibly BIPOC. Instead, I am more commonly mistaken as Latina, Roma, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, or Polynesian. I served in Ukraine for a few short months before some unfortunate safety incidents ended my service.
Like many governmental branches, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit firms, Peace Corps released a statement about the struggle and fight for Black people and its supposed commitment to support us in that aim. You can find the statement here.
This is my reflection on my own Peace Corps experience, from August 2018-March 2019. All opinions are my own.
When I interviewed for my Peace Corps position, I remember an emphasis on diversity recruiting. I didn’t think much of it then, but now I wonder, “What for?” Because after my own experiences and others that I witnessed during my service, there can be few reasons other than the interest of improving Peace Corps’ image. And that is simply not a good enough reason for the trauma.
What does a diverse Peace Corps look like? Volunteers of multiple racial, ethnic, gender, socio-economic, and regional backgrounds serving in countries all over the world where Peace Corps operates. In theory, this is a good thing — it represents more accurately what the United States is like. But in reality — Peace Corps does not emphasize the safety and well-being of Black and brown Volunteers.
The result? Peace Corps gets to appear to be diverse, while Black and brown Volunteers pay the price in the form of suffering racism, xenophobia, discrimination, fetishization, and even violent hate crime during our service. Furthermore, lessons learned by Peace Corps staff, both local and American, often come at the expense of Black and brown Volunteers’ emotional energy and patience.
So again, I ask, “What for?”
A large part of being a Peace Corps Volunteer is agreeing to serve “where you are needed most” and “under conditions of hardship if necessary.” There is much to say about the problematic mentality and resulting diction of being “needed” by a host country, because it assumes development from the position of what a nation lacks instead of what it has in abundance. Even more so, it assumes the United States is in a special position to “give” or “grant” a so-called solution to this “need” that locals are somehow “unable” to do themselves.
However, I will focus this article on how this statement can profoundly trouble Volunteers of Color and even more so Black Volunteers.
Peace Corps staff in any given host country are made up of majority locals, or Host Country Nationals (HCNs). The top positions in finance, programming, and the country director are all Americans. At my former post, these positions were all held by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs). To my knowledge, Ukrainians did hold positions of important decision-making, including but not limited to Volunteer host family selection and placement, site community placement, training community selection, training host family selection and placement, and program goals for Volunteer duties. All of that is Peace Corps jargon for this: they decide where and with whom we work, and they decide where and with whom we live.
In my time as a Volunteer, it was frowned upon to request a specific site or question your placement. And to a point, I understand this. Under the pretense of adaptability, flexibility, and resilience, Volunteers were expected to hand over every major decision for our lives with Peace Corps to people that we didn’t really know, and who didn’t really know us. This is a tall order for anyone, but turned out to be even more so at my post for visibly non-white, and especially Black, Volunteers.
Why?
Because one cannot assume that a host family, host organization, host community, or training community does not harbor racist sentiment. One cannot assume that Black Volunteers are safe with a host family that assumed they would receive a white Volunteer and are disappointed, to say the least, with their Black “not” American. One cannot assume that individuals within a host community do not participate in Neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups that actively target Black people with violence, both locals and expats alike. One cannot assume that there are not staff members within the Peace Corps office that harbor their own prejudice towards Black people.
So when Peace Corps asserts Volunteers must serve where they are placed without complaint, simply because they are “needed” there, it is either knowingly or unknowingly placing Black Volunteers in danger. When this danger is brought to Peace Corps staff’s attention, the reaction a Volunteer will get can vary greatly by who they report to. Is this staff member truly an ally? All one can do is hope so. Will this staff member gaslight me? All one can do is hope not.
Although I am often not visibly Black and am only mixed race, this reason and this reason alone caused me to wait months before I reported some crimes against me. Imagine how our Black sisters and brothers feel about addressing racial injustices they experienced on behalf of HCNs and fellow Volunteers.
All of this trauma is tied up in a bow with the second half of Peace Corps’ mantra: “under conditions of hardship if necessary.” Hear me this: Racism is not a “hardship” of Peace Corps service. Fetishization of the Black body and the brown body is not a “hardship” of Peace Corps service. Xenophobia is not a “hardship” of Peace Corps service. Violent hate crimes are not a “hardship” of Peace Corps service. Other (namely white) Volunteers calling Black Volunteers n*ggers for speaking up about their experiences is not a “hardship” of Peace Corps service.
Racism is a human rights violation that must be addressed globally, not just in the United States and not just in the Peace Corps. Everywhere racism exists, it must die.
Address it within yourself. Address it in your family, your friend groups, your colleagues, your institutions, your governments. Address it in people’s “jokes,” address it in microaggressions, address it in academia, address it in representation. Address it in self-described “woke” people and supposed “allies.” And go past addressing it. Take action by donating to racial reconciliation organizations. Educate yourself by reading about the Black experience from Black perspectives. Wake up. And start fighting.
Because for too many Black people worldwide, skin color is a death sentence. And for Peace Corps Volunteers, being Black can mean serving not where you’re “needed,” but where you’re hated.