Title: But I Meant Well
Subtitle: Unlearning Colonial Ways of Doing Good
Subject Classification:  Healthcare, Race and Racism, Society and Culture  
BIC Classification: JH, JFSL, JF
BISAC Classification: SOC070000, POL045000, PHI005000
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Publication date: 29 May 2025
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-184-8
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-185-5

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Description

Discussions of decolonization often only enable intellectualization of the topic, not action or transformation. But I Meant Well: Unlearning Colonial Ways of Doing Good, enables readers to see coloniality in their everyday lives, to confess their complicity, to begin to delink from colonial ways of doing good, and to detect emerging noncolonial ways.

The book is written for those who want to “make the world a better place”, to lessen misery and inequality through careers in fields like global health, humanitarian aid, nonprofit charities, and harnessing market forces for good.

The author, James Thomas, has worked in global health as an epidemiologist and ethicist in more than 40 countries. Not content to be just an academic, he founded an organization in East Africa that sought to provide an alternative to the typical donor-recipient model of nonprofits. Early in his career, he became aware that as a White male descendant of colonial settlers, many modern social systems, including those claiming to improve the world, were created by and for people like him. He came to see that he had uncritically adopted colonial narratives and methods. Inspired by Kenyan novelist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Thomas sought to decolonize his mind, a process he describes as unlearning colonial ways.

Those who read this book will be guided on a similar journey. Drawing from a wide variety of disciplines - including sociology, history, religion, philosophy, economics, psychobiology, and political science - Thomas presents a jargon-free narrative that draws the reader in. Students of public health, social work, medicine, nursing, business and more will find the journey not just informative but personally and professionally transformative.

Biography

Author(s):  James C. Thomas is an emeritus professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.

Reviews

"Jim Thomas has deftly opened a door that many of us in the global public health community – especially those of us from high-income countries – have never before seen. In his patient, thoughtful, compassionate manner, Jim challenges us to examine closely and challenge the most fundamental origins and motivations for our beliefs and actions. Using his own reflective journey as a guidepost, he takes readers down a path of delightful discovery. You may find yourself “woke” in the best possible sense of the word. I enthusiastically encourage you to take the chance. But I Meant Well: Unlearning Colonial Ways of Doing Good is a masterpiece, and essential reading for all who care about our world and its future."
- Suzanne Babich, DrPH, MS, Associate Dean of Global Health and Professor of Community and Global Health, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA

"It takes a true teacher to chronicle their life’s work in a way that lets others openly scrutinize their human decision-making, relationality and failings. In this book, Professor Jim Thomas gifts us a rare opportunity to do just that. This is a careful reflection on the colonial fictions echoing through Global Health that we can do our best to surface, but can’t outrun. Through unlearning practices such as questioning, confessing, and resisting abstraction and control, this book offers useful possibilities for working better together, for good."
- Linda Murray, Associate Professor, School of Health Sciences, Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa, Massey University, University of New Zealand

"James C. Thomas takes the reader on a deeply personal and intellectually rigorous journey of unlearning colonial ways of doing good. Through a compelling mix of approaches – incl. autobiography, narratology, history, and ethics – and enriched by transcribed conversations, the book invites reflection on, among others, cultural appropriation, global paternalism, and the entrenched narratives that shape a Western worldview. With wisdom drawn from a career in nutrition science and field epidemiology, James C. Thomas is offering an eye-opening interrogation of biases within the rationales of aid organizations and global health movement. A must-read for those engaged in aid agencies and global health, and an invaluable resource for anyone willing to critically examine and unmask the narratives they inhabit and perpetuate. Inspirational for one’s own acts of critical reflection and unlearning colonialism, this work is already worth it for its glossary and curated recommended readings."
- Dr. Peter Schröder-Bäck, Professor of Ethics, Institute for History and Ethics, University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration North Rhine-Westphalia (HSPV NRW), Germany