Blindsided by the Avatar: White Saviors and Allies Out of Hollywood and in Education Julio Cammarota

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew, to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free—he has set himself free—for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

—James Baldwin

Every week I assist a social studies teacher with the implementation of a social justice government course at a Tucson high school located in Arizona. My role is to teach students qualitative research techni- ques so they can ‘‘read the world’’—in the Freirian sense (Freire 1993). The teacher provides the students with terms such as ‘‘cultural capital,’’ ‘‘social construction,’’ and ‘‘white privilege’’ so they can express critically the complexity of what they are ‘‘reading.’’

As part of a lesson on white privilege, the teacher whom I will refer to as Juan Gomez decided to show a trailer to the film, The Blind Side as evidence of the ‘‘white savior syndrome.’’ This was the first time that I had seen this trailer, and I was struck by the affect of the actors. Sandra Bullock’s character was fierce, bold, and eminently determined to change the world in ways that mat- tered to her. Quinton Aaron, who plays a young African American

The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33:242–259, 2011 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2011.585287

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football player Michael Oher with many needs (i.e., housing, financial resources, emotional support), appears subdued, emotion- ally withdrawn, almost developmentally handicapped—with no real sense that he has the capacity to change the world in any way, shape, or form. Juan showed this trailer to demonstrate that Hollywood tends to make films based on this theme; young people of color can escape their predicament of marginalization through the guidance and agency of a lone white actor. Juan identified this theme as the ‘‘white savior syndrome.’’

After the trailer, we engaged students in critical media literacy (Alverman and Hogood 2000; Kellner and Share 2005, 2007). Students are often unaware of unjust representations and thus need critical media literacy, which cultivates ‘‘skills in analyzing media codes and conventions, abilities to criticize stereotypes, dominant values, and ideologies, and competencies to interpret the multiple meanings and messages generated by media texts’’ (Kellner and Share 2005, 372). Additionally, media is often how students learn about racial prejudices and privileges, as part of an encoded social logic of racist expression and exclusion.

We started our media literacy lesson by querying the students about their general perceptions of The Blind Side. We drew from Freire’s (1993) approach of ‘‘problem-posing’’ by suggesting ques- tions to the students and facilitating a dialogue about the problems of the film. To our general question about their perceptions, many responded that they ‘‘liked the film,’’ or thought it was a ‘‘good story about helping someone out.’’ Our facilitator roles allow us to offer our positions and take responsibility as educators to stimulate dialogue in critical directions. Therefore, I interjected and mentioned how I thought the trailer represented the white female and black male in extreme, polarized ways. I told the stu- dents that the white female seemed strong, capable, and effective while the black male appeared dilatory, dour and even, perhaps, mentally challenged. Some students immediately defended the film saying that the African American character did not appear ‘‘mentally challenged’’ and that it was ‘‘good that he was being helped.’’ One student stated that she saw the entire film and that it ‘‘focuses more on the football player than on her (the white female).’’

Juan reminded the students that the trailer represents the white savior syndrome in which a white person guides people of color from the margins to the mainstream with his or her own initiative and benevolence. The movement occurs through the ‘‘smarts’’ of

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the lone savior and not by any effort of those being saved. The white savior syndrome has the tendency to render people of color incapable of helping themselves—infantile or hapless=helpless victims who survive by instinct. People of color supposedly lack the capacity to seek change and thus become perceived as dispos- sessed of historical agency. Any progress or success tends to result from the succor of the white individual, which suggests that escaping poverty or ignorance happens only through the savior’s intelligence.

This assistance amounts to what Freire calls ‘‘false generosity’’ such that a white person may provide help to people of color yet help comes in the form of a saving action that tends to help a single individual or group. The focus on ‘‘saving’’ instead of ‘‘transform- ing’’ fails to address oppressive structures and thus the privileges that maintain white supremacy. False generosity is an ‘‘attempt to soften the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed’’ (Freire 1998, 46).

The teacher then contrasted his definition of white savior with white ally. According to Juan, a white ally is someone who does engage in what Freire calls ‘‘true generosity’’ by joining in soli- darity with people of color to struggle collaboratively against those institutions that maintain oppression. Solidarity involves sublimat- ing one’s ego and status so that people of color can provide empow- ered leadership in movements of liberation. A reduction of status requires challenging the very institutions and practices that proffer white privilege and power. Anything less would amount to ‘‘false generosity’’ such that support would at best make a difference to a handful of people as opposed to engaging in actions of solidarity that may lead to the dismantling of oppressive institutions and thus long-term change. True generosity requires of the oppressed ‘‘hands . . . extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become hands which work, and working, transform the world’’ (Freire 1998, 46).

Although we problem-posed several questions to the students, they also have equal opportunity to pose their own questions. When Juan completed his statements about the white savior versus the white ally, an African American male student expressed, ‘‘But Blind Side is a true story! How could you criticize someone helping another human being?’’

Juan and I do not argue against the veracity and value of white people helping people of color. Significant social change can and

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does happen with the assistance of white allies. However, we are concerned, through an Althusserian symptomatic reading (Althusser and Balibar 1979), about what might be missing or even implicitly assumed in films like The Blind Side. In such cinematic treatments of race, people of color appear to lack the agency neces- sary to enact positive changes in their own lives. The underlying assumption is that people of color, on their own, fail to enact resili- ence, resistance, and success—as made gratuitously evident in the representation of Michael’s family life. Any achievements in these areas seem to result from the initiatives of the white savior. Further- more, these Hollywood narratives often miss or ignore how people and communities of color do successfully resist and overcome marginalization through their self-initiated agency.

This article discusses how the white savior syndrome renders the misrepresentation of the potential of people of color to resist and lead the transformation of oppressive conditions within their own social context. Indigenous resistance requires endogenous (internal) leadership such that all social justice actions derive from and con- tinue to flow through communities of color and their leaders. White saviors represented in popular media overshadow the fact that people of color are part of and, most importantly, make history. For instance, the historical legend of Abraham Lincoln ‘‘freeing the slaves’’ eclipses the real efforts of myriad African Americans who resisted and fought against their bondage.

In the school context, I discuss Ruby Payne’s (2005) work to underscore pseudo-educational approaches that avoid building leadership in communities of color while continuing to label them as deficient. This negligence results from the impact of racism shap- ing the worldview of the savior. Acceptance of Payne’s approach depends upon internalized racism influencing the perspective of the ‘‘saved.’’ In contrast, I examine the virtues of white allies and how they can help promote leadership among people of color by challenging the privileges that provide them with superior social status and legitimacy. The article concludes with a discussion of how racial justice can occur with the oppressed in leadership posi- tions and the oppressor adhering to and following this leadership. The existence of white saviors may help some people of color but it will not result in long-term systematic change. White allies can contribute to systematic change by abdicating both privileges and superior status while cultivating leadership within communities of color and relations of mutuality and respect.

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WHITE SAVIORS IN HOLLYWOOD

The Hollywood industry is a proponent of what Giroux and Giroux (2004) call ‘‘corporate culture’’ that shapes active ‘‘[c]itizenship’’ into a ‘‘solitary affair whose aim is to produce competitive, self-interested individuals vying for their own material and ideological gains’’ (252). The needs and interests of the individual, particularly the white male who possesses market power (social and cultural capital), supersedes the importance of people of color struggling to gain collective rights. The neoliberal logic driving corporate culture demands that the market regulates all social and economic practices, and the overarching principle regulating markets is competition (Lazzarato 2009, 117). Corporate culture facilitates a social climate of competition by feeding and managing inequalities so that individuals with power and status can dominate and succeed over marginalized others.

In the competitive market, neoliberalism applies racial distinc- tions in the process of managing inequalities to ensure the dominant racial group maintains advantages and privileges in the practice of individualism. Goldberg (2009) asserts that neoliberalism shifts the focus of the state from public welfare to private concerns and ‘‘thus also ensures a space for extending socio-racial interventions— demographic exclusions, belittlements, forms of control, ongoing humiliations . . .’’ (334). This shift involves moving racial practices from the public to the private realm, thereby engendering a privati- zation of racism by securing racial exclusions, preferences, and privileges within the private world away from government inter- vention (Goldberg 2009, 339). Privatized racism is what Goldberg would refer to as ‘‘racial neoliberalism.’’ With the continued prevalence of racial practices promoting injustices, the neoliberal inclination toward individualism will proffer advantages to the dominant racial group in market-driven structures, such as capital- ism, private schools, and insurance managed health care.