The white gaze is looking at the world through a white person’s eyes. In America it is everywhere. It is in history books, on billboards, on television, in films, in fashion magazines, on the Internet. It is the world as told by white people for white people.
Most White Americans do not see it that way: they are just presenting the world as it is, the way anyone would who was being fair, honest and open-minded. Any twist it might have is purely a personal one.
They fail to see how the colour of their skin colours their view of the world. That is for two reasons:
- Many live in such a white world that their white gaze is rarely challenged and so they do not even notice that it is there. Only certain black voices make it through into that world, mostly those of Rented Negroes.
- Whites like to believe “I do not see race” and “we are all the same”. In a colour-blind world there is no white gaze. They believe, want to believe, in a colour-blind world, which means the white gaze should not be, therefore must not be.
That is why certain posts in this blog seem to hit a raw nerve with white readers: they come from beyond the white gaze. Like the ones that say “whites have a culture” or “whites cannot know what it feels like to be a person of colour” or “most whites think so-and-so”. Whites are not used to being seen that way.
Some of what you can see in the white gaze in America:
- Most people as being white.
- Race as not all that important.
- America and Europe as advanced, Africa as backwards.
- Poor whites as going through hard times, poor blacks as screwed up.
- White women as beautiful, black women as ugly.
- People of colour presented as stereotypes.
- People of colour as being at the edges of things.
- White people:
- as important, as having lives that matter.
- as generally good and well-meaning.
- as ordinary, not strange.
- American society as pretty much fair and just.
- The police as upholders of the law.
From watching American television you would have no idea that:
- half of all black Americans are middle-class.
- honest, rich, hard-working black people with good educations live in Africa.
- Africa has had empires and great scholars.
- Africa and India are each three times bigger than America; China, four times.
- Most missing Americans are not pretty, young white women.
- The world is less than a fourth white.
It is a comforting, self-serving but false and racist picture of the world.
It is one that blacks in America cannot easily avoid since it is pounded into their heads every day: from school, from television, from advertising, even from other blacks. It is, in fact, what led to Black History Month.
Blacks do not have the same experience of America as whites do, so there is a black gaze too. But part of that black gaze is knowing that the white gaze is there.
See also:
What are “Rented Negroes”?
Yes, that universalizing thing. It’s so hard to get white people to see this.
I thought you summarized this particular common white perception especially well: “Poor whites as going through hard times, poor blacks as screwed up.” As in Katrina, where black survivor equaled “looter” and white survivor eqauled “forager.” Of course, a lot of this gets more complicated upon closer inspection; poor whites are sometimes dismissed outright as also “screwed up”–as inbreds, “kissing cousins,” etc. The white gaze is a useful concept, but it can also be an overly blunt instrument when we don’t factor in such things as the classist disdain for some poor whites. Which is why I hated that movie Joe Dirt, for instance.
Most people in the world are not white.
I only hope that the full realization of all the implications of this fact will dawn on my brethren in time.
“whites have a culture”
I have no problem with this statement. Whites, in fact, have built the grandest civilization in the history of the world.
Race as not all that important.
Whites appear to have a greater tendency towards universalist thinking than other groups. It’s both one of our strengths and — in the current climate — a potentially fatal weakness.
If anyone saw the Wife Swap TV show with Stephen Fowler – that is a perfect example of classest disdain for those perceived less valuable…and everyone envolved was white.
Right: a person’s view of something is affected not just by his race but also his class, country, sex, religion, politics and all the rest. This post is just about race.
nonserviam: your views and feelings about race are not those of most white people. For one thing you are not colour-blind. You think of yourself as white.
White universalism is a strange thing. It is more universal on paper than in practice. Like when Jefferson said “all men are created equal” while owning 200 black people.
nonserviam wrote: Whites, in fact, have built the grandest civilization in the history of the world.
Want a cookie? Talk about white gaze. Since white men invented such things as the airplane and the television, white people such as nonserviam walk around thinking that this bestows some special properties upon themselves, even though they have contributed nothing themselves except popping out of their white mommies wombs with white skin.
Keep your cookie. There’s nothing magical about being white, but the facts are the facts.
nonserviam: You come off as very smug and full of yourself.
How much do you know about the history of China, India, Mexico, Central Asia or Africa? How much of that history was written by white people? Are you getting what this post was about?
Further: By what measure is white civilization the grandest? Is it a measure that all civilizations would agree to? And how much of that grandness is due to race and how much to the accidents of history, to the advantages of coming last?
White civilization stands on the shoulders – and the necks – of the coloured world (using “coloured” in the old British sense of “not white”).
Hmmm.. apology??? NO FIRE HIS AZZ!
Go.
By what measure is white civilization the grandest?
By the most tangible measure of everyone in the world wanting to partake of its fruits — often without understanding where these fruits come from, and even with hatred and contempt towards their source.
This popularity is killing us, btw.
Keep your cookie. There’s nothing magical about being white, but the facts are the facts.
The facts are that you have personally contributed as much as most of the “darkies” that you look down upon. Takes a real “winner” to group himself with others in order to feel like they have done something.
nonserviam said:
By what measure is white civilization the grandest?
By the most tangible measure of everyone in the world wanting to partake of its fruits — often without understanding where these fruits come from, and even with hatred and contempt towards their source.
Not surprising after they screwed up the rest of the world.
India used to be rich, richer than Britain, before the British came and screwed it up. Is that the grand civilization you are talking about?
Not surprising after they screwed up the rest of the world.
Not buying this.
What’s with all the spittle-spraying, RC? You need to work on your debating techniques.
What debate? About your personal contributions to civilization? You need to work on your evading techniques.
Nice try to deflect attention off of yourself and onto my suppossed
“spittling.” But no one here is fooled. We know that you freeload of the genius of a few, just like 99.99% of humanity.
Again, what have you personally contributed?
It doesn’t seem to occur to you that one can defend a proposition based on its actual merits, rather than to fulfil some psychological need or out of naked self-interest.
I smell projection.
It actually did occur to me, but that is not the case here. I’m surprised that you didn’t nitpick at my typo of “of” instead of “off”. WTG!
I smell deflection.
I am on my way to make a living. When I pass homeless white men and black men in the street with a cup in their hands asking me for money, I will contemplate how much more or less of a contribution they have made as you are making.
What have you personally contributed again?
White gaze definitely exist. It was a Chinese-American friend who told me about the “forager” vs. “looter” designation. I hear it every day.
A black boy who gets in trouble with the law vs. a white boy who gets in trouble with the law. VERY different response.
–
For those who didn’t understand the meaning in the original post, India and China have populations of over one billion persons.
Great post. Don’t think that the white gaze only applies to America – in the UK where I live, it is prevalent and pervasive, especially in the BBC and in dramas, documentary and news media. Where were the people of colour in “Four weddings and a funeral”
If you believe in God and work hard, of what concern is it what this and that think about you? Honestly! All this black this and white that.
Ask a white working class person how they feel living as subordinates/slaves and slandered subtly in every area of their lives in the year 2010 and they also would bemoan their lot. And justifiably. It can be very unpleasant. An even more unpleasant situation that the ‘person of colour’ will not experience (excruciating term) is the white working class person not being afforded the luxury of ‘blame tools’. They can’t say they are the victims of racism because people would laugh. It is classic rich versus poor stuff. And the incessant victimisation that the poor white person feels cannot be attributed to skin colour and in this world, that means there is no problem. It is horrible. But they FEEL this injustice in the way white middle class people treat them in that very foreign and strange way (to the way they have grown up in poverty)
You will never change people’s minds by making them feel rubbish, but by acts that include people and inspire. Mandela and Martin Luther King are positive role models to the black community and the rest of the world indeed. Where, say, Malcolm X isn’t.
If it is a n y consolation, everyone feels marginalised in Western Society. It is the ‘secret’ of how it all works. I suggest you google ‘divide and rule’. Men, Christians, Children, Irish, Mexican, Working Class, Women and so on …
We are led to believe white middle and upper class men are inheritantly evil (many are rotten but all are not inheritantly evil!) but not all. In fact just think, the ruling class has had and does have the ability and means to incarcerate us all if they so wished. Even George W Bush and his cronies had the opportunity to use nuclear war heads … but they don’t.
A lot of ‘evils’ could and should occur but somehow they don’t. Perhaps one needs to look at these potentialities before brandishing people.
The real movers and shakers in history are those that refuse to acknowledge divisions and see the unity of all people.
You’ve got some way to go. But try. I will.
Akin Sankofa makes a good point and I too am based in England. Where were the ‘people of colour’ (looks like I’m forced to use this ridiculous term once again – sorry genuine people) In Notting Hill the film by the same people as Four Weddings And A Funeral there are no blacks at all. Incredible. Have they never heard of ‘Carnival’?!!
In fact there were no Albanians and Notting Hill has a very large Eastern European presence now. Films can be very misleading and omit the character of a place which I can understand if the place is not relevant but when the film is Notting Hill itself!!!!! it is a gross insult to all that live there.
??? Why is it we still haven’t heard back from nonserviam?
Black people make up 50 percent. The president is African. Why are all our men in jail???? White men are inferior. Why not through them in jail.
Stop writing every 5th word in bold, its irritating, meaningless and defeats the purpose of highlighting.
“Africa has had empires and great scholars.” — I literally cringed at this. I am African, there is not – I repeat, a single black nobel laureate in the sciences. Africa has great empires the same way the barbarians of Europe claimed to have built a great city after invading the Romand Empire.
There are hard working people in every continent, not entirely sure who isn’t aware that some of the wealthiest people are in Africa, but also in Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East.
@ Sherif
It is very difficult to see the truth of the greatness of Africa, and Africans,
looking through a European lense. I, as an African in America, descended
from the peoples who were victim of the greatest kidnapping, rape, robbery,
and enslavement in human history, once saw myself and people who
looked like me the same way Europeans did. The path to healing is
through an African-centered lens. If I see myself the same way my enemy
does, how do I expect to grow positively?
Africans run away from who they are, and Europeans are happy to push
their pathologies on to you, and put your face on it.
Here are a few authors I’d recommend:
“Yurugu” by Dr. Marimba Ani (her interviews are also featured on Youtube)
“The West and the Rest of Us” and “Decolonising The African Mind” by Dr. Chinweizu (Nigerian Scholar)
“Two Thousand Seasons” and “The Healers” by Ayi Kwei Armah (Ghanaian Griot, who has a lecture series featured on Youtube)
I’ll stop there for now. Those of us once conquered, enslaved, colonised,
exploited, and raped by Europeansare currently being “educated” about
OURSELVES from the SAME PEOPLE! Context is vital to understanding,
and as long as Europeans set the context for which we view everything, then
our mental illness as a Global Black Population (and increasingly non-Black
non-Whites) shall continue. All we have to do is be honest about EVERYTHING, which is rare and powerful at the same time.
That’s why I’m such a fan of this blog.
@ Abagond
Keep waking folks up!
Absolutly, Spokesman…..the genius of the Afro diaspora that comes from the ancient Africans , before Arabs or Europeans arrived, is very powerful and doesnt really show up in nobel prizes, and western standards of judging things…but, for those willing to search for it, there is unbeleivable treasure, knowledge ,spiritual force and life force
Glad you mentioned Dr Marimba Ani, who I was exposed to on this blog and really resonated with some things she said
A post on “Black Gaze” would be nice.
How about one on “Asian American gaze” as depicted by a non-Asian. Would love to see that.