the white gaze
On the Concept of the 'White Gaze'
Here, different voices from scholars and writers and their take on the notion of "white gaze" are presented. There is a plethora of academic articles on the subject matter as well, which would, however, go beyond the scope.
Definition
In his book Black Bodies, White Gazes (2008) the scholar George Yancy describes "white gaze(s)" as an effort "to explore the Black body within the context of whiteness" (xv).
Known as one of the most famous (African) American authors, Toni Morrison speaks on her and her fellow African American writers and the challenges they face by writing about "racialized" people within a white-dominated space, that is the States.
Snippet: Toni Morrison in Interview with Charlie Rose (1998)
“I have had reviews in the past that have accused me of not
writing about white people. [...] And one day, she, meaning me, will have to face up to the real responsibilities and get mature and write about the real confrontation for black people, which is white people. As though our lives have no meaning, have no depth without the white gaze."[...]
I’ve spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.
At this link, you can watch the entire interview between Morrison and Rose, which touches also on other specificities that African American writers in the United States face.
Also - Toni Morrison is such an inspiring and eloquent person, who definitely worth watching, and learning from!
'White Gaze' and Its Representations/Realizations
In this section, there will be two different categories in which the 'white gaze' portrays, transforms and characterizes the Black man*. These are historical as well as contemporary representations/realizations that further a devalorization of Black people and their bodies, hic Black men* and their respective bodies in particular.
The Black Man as "Savage/Dangerous"
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
The movie - originally called The Clansman - directed by D.W. Griffith is oftentimes associated with all the important and ground-breaking technological boundaries of filmmaking it has pushed. It is based on the (1905) by Thomas Dixon Jr.
Beware of the "White Gaze"
The white gaze is omnipresent. White people must hold themselves accountable when consuming Black content.
[...]
"This gaze occurs when viewing Black creations under the scope of white ethnocentricism. Pretentious music critics and old plantation overseers both share this socio-cultural lens." [...]
"The white gaze represents the relationship between the Black experience and its context in [U.S.] America."
[...]
"It is important that both Black and white people are cognizant of the white gaze and its negative effects. The white gaze serves to limit the cultural expression of Blacks by way of white ethnocentricity. White people must understand their own white gaze and actively combat it. White people must acknowledge it when interacting with Black culture to not impose their ideas of what Black culture should represent. This mindfulness will help protect Black cultural sovereignty and identity."
In this article, the author picks up on the interview between Morrison and Rose - and highlights once again, what questions and scrutiny Black writers face in what they are supposed to write about/on.
Further, it describes the life of a Black artist called Noname, who decided not to perform in front of white-majority crowds. It lays bare in what way this is an explicit action for the artists - to not need to include the "white gaze" in her art and not produce with a white audience in mind.
It ends with a general view on the "white gaze" and its impacts and suggestions on BIPoc in the States - but also of its white population.
From only these two snippets, one can see that this film was realized within the ideological framework of the KKK. It has served to propagate an image of Black people as threats to "white America".
Indeed, as the first clip showcases the Black man - here a white actor in Blackface - is oftentimes positioned in relation to the white woman, with a latent threat of rape omnipresent.
The second clip exhibits the prevalent racist associations (of that time) of the Black man as a savage, uncultured, ape-like entity. The Black man is dehumanized and stripped of any favorable attributes. In so doing, the movie suggests in what way Black people - here again, white people in Blackface - do not fit in white America, let alone in its political sphere.
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The following two articles published in The Guardian and on CNN.com exhibit in what way the trope of the "dangerous Black man" is still relevant in contemporary America.
This concept of the "dangerous Black man" is often related to the police - and the systemic problem of police brutality. There is a section on that very issue on our page "The Generational Talk"
Subversion of 'White Gaze'
There are and always have been people - writers, producers and activists - that have gone against the 'white gaze' in their texts. One of the most prominent person doing so is, again, Toni Morrison. Below you'll find two articles that further present people and their methodologies in combating and divorcing themselves from the omnipresence of the 'white gaze'.
“The little white man that sits on your shoulder and checks out everything you do or say. You sort of knock him off and you’re free,” said Morrison, who is seen flicking the imaginary figure from her left shoulder in the documentary.
'Now, I own the world. I can write about anything, to anyone, for anyone.'"
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This article not only highlights the position of Morrison in the combat of the "white gaze", but also suggests and brings to the forefront that this attitude has already been employed in people's texts, with authors from the African continent, like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head and Ngugi wa Thiongo, "who wrote their stories on their own terms, without needing to explain them or define them in contrast to someone else’s perspective." Indeed, Morrison does credit African writers in various interviews and their 'unapologetic' way of writing and how this has influenced her writing.
Further, there are seven books featured that "stare down the 'white gaze'" and have helped expanding Morrison's 'mission'.
In order to not only highlight the beautiful work of Toni Morrison, the contributors of this page have decided to simply list the seven books and their authors in chronological order - and prominently feature these oeuvres:
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Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara (1972)
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Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed (1972)
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Look What They Done to My Song by John McCluskey (1974)
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Generations by Lucille Clifton (1976)
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Dessa Rose by Sherley Anne Williams (2005)
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Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2007)
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The Coming by Daniel Black (2017)
"By placing Chris [the Black protagonist] at the center of his narrative, Peele disavows the white gaze of its privilege. From the very beginning, he tears the veil between the reality of blackness and how it is imagined through the gaze of whiteness. The story begins and ends with Chris. His identity is the locus of the film." (London, par. 5)
"For not only must the [B]lack [hu]man be black; he must be black in relation to the white [hu]man.”
Frantz Fannon in Black Skins, White Masks
"When race is signified via the white gaze, narratives involving people of color are otherized." [...]
"When the white gaze is privileged, all other identities are jeopardized." [...]
"Through artful storytelling and Peele’s decolonized lens, Get Out exposes the white gaze for what it truly is: a pervasive threat to black survival."
On the basis of Jordan Peele's movie Get Out (2017), this article's detailed analysis describes moments in which the director/producer breaks with the "Hollywood"-tradition of instrumentalizing the 'white gaze'. The very premise of the movie and Peele's choice of protagonist, and his contrast to the Armitage-family, clear representatives of white supremacy, are modes in which the breaking of the 'white gaze' is realized. Indeed, at the end Peele breaks with another trope of the horror-genre, that of the Black person dying first, with turning this upside down: the Armitage's demise and death alongside the escape of Chris and Rod (Chris' Black friend) severs the "tentacles" of the 'white gaze'.
The author also positions Get Out as a successor of Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) and Ganja and Hess (1973), all illustrating what is possible when the 'white gaze' is subverted and its intentions are exhumed
This quote of the article summarizes this sentiment best:
"Chris’ ability to dismantle, deconstruct, and defract white supremacy and the solidarity he shares with Rod is ultimately what saves him."
Snippet: "56 Black Men: 'I Am Not My Stereotype'"
A very striking initiative and campaign that combats the bias against Black men.
"This started as a visual campaign documenting 56 black men who are doing something other than what is widely plastered about black men across various forms of media. Championing the idea that “I am Not My Stereotype”, in 2018 Cephas took a series of 56 portrait images of black men all wearing hoodies."
"The campaign looks to challenge the lazy and dangerous stereotype of ‘the black man’ and the negative connotations and stigma attached to the cliché image of a black man wearing a hoody."
Here, you'll find an article on the campaign as well as the webpage of the campaign itself:
The Black Man as "Exotic/Fetishized"
"BBC"
The prevalence or as has been already touched upon in "Hypersexual" ... Black men are reduced to their penis - and its size and girth in comparison to that of their counterparts from different backgrounds. This reduction and objectification is part of a fetishization of the Black body - here, the Black male body.
This article published in The New York Times thematizes the problem American society has with the Black penis:
"A black penis, even the idea of one, is still too disturbingly bound up in how America sees — or refuses to see — itself."
"The black penis is imagined more than it’s seen, which isn’t surprising."
"Expectation of a banana, a cucumber, an eggplant, something that belongs to either a farm animal or NASA. He was expecting the mythical Big Black Dick (which, online, people just call “B.B.D.”)."
Here, an academic paper as well as articles (rather personal) on the fetishization of the Black male body:
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Movie (1971)
The protagonist of the movie is a male prostitute who performs Black masculinity through the act of sex.Throughout the course of the plot the protagonist has numerous sexual encounters with women which, on the one hand, highlight his personae as being depicted hypersexual(ized) and, on the other hand, indicates how his sexual prowess becomes a signifier for his masculinity and, beyond that, a powerful tool to freedom.
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[Sweetback] was seen (correctly I believe) as the first in a long line of so-called Blaxploitation features..." and goes on to say that Van Peebles was "one of the first artists to bring not only compelling but realistic images of Black Americans into mainstream cinemas, breaking with decades-long traditions ..."
-Robert Reid-Pharr
The Black Man as "Less/Inferior"
The trope of the Black man as "inferior" - and by extension any Black bodies from the African continent - was perpetuated through pseudo-science and entertainment, in order to legitimize the enslavement of African people.
A pseudo-scientifc illustration that attempts to differentiate between white and Black people, and simultaneously dehumanizes Black individuals comparing them - or rather equating them to Orang-outans.
"This ancient hierarchical paradigm—encompassing all living creatures, starting with the simplest organisms and reaching to humans, angels, and ultimately to God—became for the advocates of slavery a perfect reflection of the realities of inequality that they had created. The physical differences of Blacks and Indians became the symbols or markers of their status. It was during these times that the term race became widely used to denote the ranking and inequality of these peoples—in other words, their placement on the Chain of Being."
This article analyzes the construction of the myth and puts it in its historical context, whilst still presenting its impact on the perception of Black individuals today:
"The Original Jim Crow" - a racist, stereotypical and biased performance of "the typical Black person" by Thomas D. Rice is another instance, in which the Black community was rendered inferior to their white counterparts.
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Here, you can find some more information on Rice's "Original Jim Crow":
This paper by L. Scott Miller also analyzes the myth and its lasting impacts on today's African American popultation:
"In many respects this effort and the apparent need to denigrate the intellectual capabilities of African Americans continue today."
'White Gaze' - Where Elsewhere Can It Be Found? Where Elsewhere Is It Challenged/Contested?
Task #1
You're now at the very end of this section of the Black Masculinities* page - we would be interested in people somehow contributing to this page; make it collaborative.
Which texts, that is from literature to art to film do you know of that employ the 'white gaze'?
Contact us and send us your input on characteristics that come with said lens.
Task #2
Here, more or less the same applies, but this time around we're interested in texts that go against the 'white gaze'. Challenge it or even employ what has been described as the 'Black gaze'.
How is this representation of BIPoC different?
Contact us and describe the characteristics that come with the subversion of the 'white gaze'.
The material on this page was compiled, created, and arranged by Amna Anwar, Sena Konçak, and Artan Islamaj.
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