The (Many) Problems with White Saviors

The (Many) Problems with White Saviors

The white savior trope in movies is one that's widely known. There are many videos making fun of how Hollywood is so obsessed with making white savior movies clearly aimed at making white people feel better about systemic racism. Not only that, but these kinds of movies about teachers often avoid actually key issues. I chose to discuss the chapter of Rethinking Popular Culture & Media titled Freedom Writers: White Teachers to the Rescue because the topic of white saviorism in teaching and how it's portrayed in movies and in real life is something I've thought a lot about this past year. So what is a white savior?


According to Savala Nolan, author of Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body and the director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law, white saviorism is "an ideology that is acted upon when a white person, from a position of superiority, attempts to help or rescue a BIPOC person or community. Whether this is done consciously or unconsciously, people with this complex have the underlying belief that they know best or that they have skills that BIPOC people don't have." As a member of Teach For America, I'm all too aware of their reputation for molding ambitious college graduates into white saviors and sending them into urban school distructs to "change the system." 

Movies like Freedom Writers, about a young woman who decides to work in an Los Angeles public school rather than go to law school are actually based on real teachers. But the reality of their experience, according to the chapter's author Chela Delgado, is largely exagerrated and the movies fail to address the actual reasons behind the systemic struggl
es of the public school district depicted in the movies. "I want a teacher movie where there aren’t cardboard heroes and villains, but there is a genuine analysis of how race and class play out in schools," said Delgado. There are also videos explaining why this trope is actually so harmful. The video Nice White Teachers, Bad Brown Schools underscores that "most of them aren't remotely concerned about critiquing the education system but what they all have in common is an overvaluing of trauma porn and poverty porn." Delgado provides a great example of this when she writes about a moment in Freedom Writers when the teacher gives a speech about discrimination."At the end of her speech, she asks the students how many of them have heard of the Holocaust. Only one—the white student—has. She then asks how many students have been shot at. Slowly, each student raises his or her hand (except for the same white kid)," said Delgado. This shows how students of color are exploited and retraumatized so that the white teacher can feel better about being there in the first place. It's like they need to be given constant reminders from the students that they "need her" because of their trauma.

Learning about this trauma should be seen as a privilege, not a right. However, white teachers seem blissfully ignorant of the power dynamics of expecting a student of color to open up to them upon request. Another issue Delgado raises is that people leave the movie thinking that they alone can be the change, when in reality the system and why it's failing is so much larger than one individual teacher. To gloss over this issue is to do a diservice to every viewer. "Racism can only be taken seriously, it seems, when it is championed by white allies, or by young people of color who can’t quite be held responsible for their plight," said Delgado. Fortunately, we're starting to see a change of heart in Hollywood. The recent ABC show Abbott Elementary has become wildly popular, in part because of it's accurate portrayal of issues plaguing inner city schools, it's many teachers of color, and the radical positivity that is pervasive in it's storylines. According to the

New York Times, "what becomes clear over the first season is how thoroughly [the show's creator] and her creative team have done the reading when it comes to American education, about both its eternal challenges and its of-the-moment dynamics." Shows like Abbott Elementary give me hope that we'll see more positive changes in television and film for years to come.


Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_RTnuJvg6U

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/arts/television/abbott-elementary.html

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LakonRFLM8mzZGiBBdQOi1Mut7ea0Uxv/view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1qYecnkrBk&t=1015s


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