This is white privilege right? It's not just me? [View all]

I have pretty much isolated myself from the world (depression) so I don't have any friends or acquaintances to ask for feedback, which is why I am posting here - I hope that's ok.

So I belong to a bunch of "progressive" facebook groups and this video popped up and everyone was falling over themselves on what an amazing guy this person was. And all I kept thinking was "this is a bunch of condescending crap"

https://www.facebook.com/noticie/videos/1359513527434631/


oh for those who don't want to click on an outside link I will try to sum it up without swearing:

It is about an Argentinian man named Pedro Opeka who became a priest, traveled to Madagascar and "saved half a million people from poverty".

Ok so technically he is not "white" but he is pretty light skinned, has a beard and as a nice touch was a carpenter (oops learned construction from his father). He saw how poor the people of Madagascar were and decided at age 20 something to stay and save them. The video goes on to show him surrounded by young African children as he smiles and walks with them. The video ends with him talking about he wanted to show them how hard work made everything possible and social assistance made the poor people of Madagascar feel hopeless.

It just reeks to me of the trope of how one white man can save people of color. There was no mention of the hard work the people themselves did, or how they grew up in an environment of disease, malnutrition and lack of education so they didn't start off on the same footing or have the same advantages maybe?

I am part Hispanic and a lot Scandinavian and I showed this to my husband and he just right away said oh what a nice story. And I said wait - don't you see how it is framed as a story of one white man, not of half a million Africans?

I get the idea behind it - how one person can make a difference, but all I see is a repeat of those Feed the Children commercials with Sally Struthers and naked African kids covered in flies.

Am I seeing reading too much into this? Like I said, I'm pretty isolated (no work/few friends/ mainly just me, my dogs and my husband) so maybe I need to just step away from the internet for awhile because I am really upset.


Edited to add: I am not at all trying to take away from the work Pedro Opeka has done. I am sure he is a wonderful man. He is not my issue. It is just how the video was packaged and presented that really struck me. It just seemed to me as condescending.