The Privileged Guardian Angel: An Examination of White Saviour Complex in Western Media

Abstract

Many Critical Race Theorists today are focusing not on overt forms of racism, but instead on subtler, insinuated perpetrations. These include but are not limited to visual microaggressions. Microaggressions are embedded in everyday interactions within society and serve as subconscious visual reminders to People of Colour of their inferiority and hierarchical subjugation. I argue in this paper that the White Saviour Complex (WSC), typically seen in an imperialistic sense in the West versus Africa dichotomy, can also be studied in the visual mainstream media of Western countries. Therefore, representations of WSC in media act as visual microaggressions towards People of Colour and reinforce racial and intersectional hierarchies present in Western colonial societies. This is argued in examining three case studies from USA, Australia, and Canada. This paper then addresses possible criticisms and critiques of this position through an examination of allyship in relation to WSC.