White Saviorism in Media and Pop Culture

A few examples of the "White Savior Complex" I've seen in movies and in pop culture...

There is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be identified as a sinner:

“The White Savior Industrial Complex”, Teju Cole, 2012

For those who don’t know, the concept of white saviorism originated from Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem, “The White Man’s Burden”, a poem encouraging the annexation and colonization of the Philippine Islands. In this poem, Kipling describes the white man’s burden as the duty to civilize and help those poor unfortunate souls in non-white countries. He uses the poem to justify the colonization as a “civilizing mission”, similar to the philosophy of manifest destiny. Nowadays, white saviorism refers to the need to “rescue” people of color, for a multitude of different reasons, but usually due to the sentiment that they cannot help themselves. Such people often do more harm than good, without even realizing it.

1 
Take up the White Man's burden— 
    Send forth the best ye breed— 
Go bind your sons to exile
  To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
 On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
  Half devil and half child. 
2 
Take up the White Man's burden— 
    In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
    And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
    An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit,
    And work another's gain. 
3
Take up the White Man's burden—
    The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of famine
    And bid the sickness cease; 
And when your goal is nearest
    The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
    Bring all your hopes to nought.
4
Take up the White Man's burden—
    No tawdry rule of kings, 
But toil of serf and sweeper— 
    The tale of common things. 
The ports ye shall not enter, 
    The roads ye shall not tread, 
Go make them with your living, 
    And mark them with your dead! 
5
Take up the White Man's burden—
    And reap his old reward, 
The blame of those ye better, 
    The hate of those ye guard— 
The cry of hosts ye humour 
    (Ah slowly!) toward the light— 
"Why brought ye us from bondage, 
    "Our loved Egyptian night?" 
6
Take up the White Man's burden—
    Ye dare not stoop to less— 
Nor call too loud on Freedom 
    To cloak your weariness; 
By all ye cry or whisper, 
    By all ye leave or do, 
The silent sullen peoples 
    Shall weigh your Gods and you. 
7
Take up the White Man's burden—
    Have done with childish days— 
The lightly proffered laurel, 
    The easy, ungrudged praise. 
Comes now, to search your manhood 
    Through all the thankless years, 
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom, 
    The judgement of your peers. 

"The White Man's Burden", Rudyard Kipling (1899)

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1. Mission Trips / Voluntourism

“One song we hear too often is the one in which Africa serves as a backdrop for white fantasies of conquest and heroism. From the colonial project to Out of Africa to The Constant Gardener and Kony 2012, Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected. It is a liberated space in which the usual rules do not apply: a nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs satisfied."

“Known and Strange Things: Essay”, Teju Cole, 2012

Mission trips are trips people, primarily white Christian Americans, take to underdeveloped countries, often African countries, and evangelize. Honestly, the only thing I can compare it to is modern-day colonization. Writer Teju Cole coined the term “White Savior Industrial Complex” after the release of Kony 2012. In a seven-part Twitter (Now called “X”, but honestly who calls it that) thread, Cole says this: “5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.” (Cole 2012).

When people travel to these places, they do some good things — I cannot deny them that, such as building schools or healthcare centers, however, it’s often given in exchange for the promise of conversion, using those schools to preach their religion to the locals. Furthermore, they aren’t given the materials necessary to maintain these facilities, so after the mission trip has ended, they may have a hard time keeping the building running. A lot of the time, the people inserting themselves into the local spaces aren’t even qualified to do whatever they’re doing. For example, a white woman named Renee Bach founded a Christian mission in Uganda in 2009, intending to feed hungry children. However, by 2015, over 100 Ugandan children had died. More than 900 malnourished children would enter her care, some getting medical treatment that Renee Bach was not qualified to administer! Ugandan activists, lawyers, and volunteers started to scrutinize her, and she returned to the US. This is an example of how white saviorism, while well-intentioned, can lead to harm to the people being “helped”.

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2. “The Help”

“The Help” has to be one of my favorite movies, originally a book written by Kathryn Stockett in 2009. It’s a story about Black American maids working in Mississippi during the 1960s, however, in some cases, the Black Americans the story is supposed to be centering end up falling on the back burner. Skeeter, one of the main characters, is a journalist hoping to make her big break and to do that, she hopes to share the stories of the maids working in her community. However, the roles of the maids seem relatively small compared to the roles of Skeeter and the other white employers. Viola Davis, the actress of Aibileen Clark, says that she felt that the voices of the maids weren’t heard. “I know Aibileen,” she says, “ I know Minny (played by Octavia Spencer). They’re my grandma. They’re my mom. And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for the white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.” While The Help claims to be about the Black American maids of the time, it really centers the white leads, and it tries to use Skeeter as “one of the good ones”, she being the only one who cared about the maids and treated them like humans. Even so, their voices are muted by Skeeter’s centering, you rarely hear Aibleen or Minny’s opinions on working for racist white women, but you hear a lot about the white leads’ personal lives and issues. They don’t feel too fleshed out, even in their iconic scenes they aren’t the focus.

Ablene Cooper was a real nanny who worked for the Stockett family — Yes, as in the author, Kathryn Stockett. She was the blueprint for Aibileen, and filed a $75k lawsuit against the author after the release of the movie because her likeness was used without her permission. Cooper was also dissatisfied with how the book portrayed black maids.

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3. “Hidden Figures”

Hidden Figures was an amazing movie showcasing the brilliance of black female scientists who have been erased in history. However, Al Harrison, Katherine’s boss, played by Kevin Costner, is given historically inaccurate scenes, purely to make a good vs bad white person trope. In the scene where Katherine, played by Taraji P. Henson, gives her riveting speech about having to travel to use the black women's bathroom, located half a mile away, Al Harrison decides to tear down the “colored” sign above the bathroom, abolishing segregated bathrooms on campus. However, this never happened. Katherine stated that she just went to the white bathroom.

He also never “let” her in the control room to watch the launch, but the writer, Theodore Melfi, felt the need to include those scenes to, once again, enforce the trope of bad white people who oppress people and the good white people who save black people. Melfi even says "There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be Black people who do the right thing, and someone does the right thing. And so who cares who does the right thing, as long as the right thing is achieved?"… Yikes. In my opinion, it was only added to give the white people watching someone to relate to, someone they can point at and go ‘That would’ve been me! I’d have done the right thing,’

In an article on Vice about the film, Dexter Thomas writes this: “That’s the purpose of the White Savior trope — to provide a white character that allows white viewers to feel good about themselves. In this case, it means that a white person doesn’t have to think about the possibility that, were they around back in the 1960s South, they might have been one of the bad ones.”

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All in all, white saviorism is still alive and kicking, and you may have even witnessed an instance of it recently. This was an article hastily made at 1 am in a sudden burst of energy and a revitalized interest in the topic of white saviorism.