Dr. Claire Stewart-Hall writes about holy whiteness, a contemporary take on saviourism
Savioursm is active across many national and international domains but in this blog I am interested in the individual urge some white people experience to default to saviourism as a means of relating to Black and Brown people and from whence that habit originates. As anti-racists engaging in cross-racial dialogue, this habit of constructing the other as less whole or requiring rescue prevents genuine connection and authentic exchange.
The term White Saviour Industrial Complex was popularised internationally by the writer Teju Cole whom, in 2012, wrote:
“the white saviour supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon and receives rewards in the evening. The white saviour industrial complex is not about justice. it is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”(Cole, 2012)
It has been developed by Saad (2020) who explores the work white people must do to be cognisant and active in dismantling white supremacist behaviours in our lives.
Does saviourism work towards prevention of future injustice? Hardly. Saviourism as a mechanism judges and implies who is deserving of ‘help’ and at the same time sustains multiple benefits to the provider. Once we add in racial hierarchies, systems create more processes through which race technologies can be operationalised and reproduced.
Majority White Groups in Institutions
The moral imperative for white staff to construct ‘the other’ as requiring rescue is pervasive across British institutions. Whilst people use public institutions to access services, saviourism turns a right into a favour or charity. These dynamics can be seen in institutional cultures whereby the binarised roles of ‘provider’ and ‘service-user’ are fiercely defended and demarcated. Support comes with conditions and hierarchies attached. This is of importance to white anti-racists trying to get to the bottom of how our own behaviours are contributing to sustaining whiteness.
At its worst, saviourism spies an opportunity for people to mask a desire for internalised dominance. Often, this pattern of ‘helping’ or constructing oneself as ‘in service’ to others by proxy constructs someone as ‘needing’ defence, as requiring rescue.
Saviourist dynamics: a long colonial history
In early European culture, the concept of saviourism is based on early protestant beliefs and ethics about working hard, giving, and being rewarded in heaven. People ‘giving’ and ‘helping’ became weaponised as a form of control, eventually industrialised and rooted in colonialism and Western notions of Christianity, legitimised as not simply as help being given (as love) but being necessary for salvation.
Industrialised across the genocidal project of colonisation, the idea of philanthropy was a means of excusing and distracting people from atrocities and genocide being committed on the other side of the world. This remains as alive today as in the past. The good feeling gained from societal reward was learned as a virtuous, pious way of being in British culture. This continues to be evidenced through philanthropic and charitable foundations that are the bedrock of British-led international charities. Even now, Britain’s resistance to repair from colonialisation is shaped around charity and philanthropy; the giver maintaining control of resources and the receiver, expected to be grateful, avoiding any opportunity to negotiate terms – which is the preferred dynamic of the giver, who maintains superiority and dictates the terms upon which to give.
Constructing the ‘other’ as requiring help
For white supremacist cultures in the global north, constructing any ‘other’ as in need of ‘help’ is an effective way of maintaining superiority whilst dehumanising, boundarying and de-legitimising someone’s rights to resources and access. This ‘holy whiteness’ is sustained because it gives a temporal high to both parties – the ‘superior’ giver is rewarded with virtuous feelings and is culturally validated, whilst the ‘inferior’ receives the reward or funding which is fleeting but critically is without any recourse to change the terms of reference.
The saviourist dynamic uses the existent tracks of colonialism. The dynamic is familiar to people both in the global north and those socialised and colonised into Christian ideologies; to some white people it can be familiar and comfortable, even, as with so many other colonial logics are that underpin British culture. Giving to maintain superiority intersects across class, race and gendered norms and is normalised as part of culture.
Many white people find cross-racial dialogue and connection awkward because we are influenced by racial stereotypes and adopt saviourism as a response. For some white people, forming connections based on equity means resisting existing neural pathways that promise cultural reward. Being available to engender genuine connection across racialised groups can feel unpredictable and frightening for some white people. Many people, of all racialisation, have grown up being socialised into believing that an extension of being white is to be superior. Saviourism, therefore, is a means of being whiter or practising ‘whiteliness’ (Tate and Page, 2018).
A practice in whiteness
As Saviourism is a central practice of whiteness that perpetuates racial hierarchies, we must ask: what are white people saving Black and Brown people from? This goes to the heart of the logics of racial hierarchies based on biologised and racialised internalised superiority of white people.
Menakem (2021) understands white bodied supremacy being constructed through pervasive concepts which position white bodies as follows:
- White bodies are fragile and non-violent
- White bodies are weak and vulnerable
- White bodies require comfort, safety and soothing
- White bodies require protection
- White bodies are innocent and pure
(adapted from Menakem, 2021)
These ideas, that continue to be reinforced in cultural representations by everything from local news to classical literature, associate white people with purity, benign-ness and innocence. Dyer (1997) notes how aesthetics and motifs of Christianity transport whiteness and how symbolically vital the White body is in rituals, story and imagery. These constructions, embedded in societies with Christian hegemony at their foundations, impart aspirations derived from archetypes, such as, passive, caring and receptive women and men striving for control between mind and body. In addition, these constructions inform and promulgate Aryan and Caucasian origin models and reinstates quests for distinctive and ‘pure’ White identities (p.21).
Dyer writes:
‘either [White people] are a distinct pure ‘race’, superior to all others or else they are the purest expression of the human race itself’ (p.22).
He notes this is especially significant in imperialist empire-building framed within a biological imperative of Christianity informing one’s destiny (Dyer, 1997). Through these constructions, positions of saviourism are routinely justified acts adhering to God’s word which have classed and racialised consequences. This is especially pertinent to ideals of the White woman who, through passivity, finds agency through actively serving (or rescuing) under these terms. Once collectivised, such acts reverberate into cultural and religious practices that rationalise inhumanity exemplified by histories of enslavement, colonialism and justification for war (Dyer, 1997).
‘Holy whiteness’ peddles the same racial logics and is an attempt to (re)assemble racism afresh (Stewart-Hall, 2024). In the dynamic, white people take up the mantle of purity as rescuers positioning Black and Brown people as requiring change. Despicable as this is, it is a dynamic legitimised and at the very heart of the cultural psyche in the UK.
Research Findings
In the study Keeping Them Out (Stewart-Hall, 2024), most white anti-racists named internal saviourist behaviours as a continuous barrier to anti-racist practice but felt isolated about how to interrupt such dynamics within themselves. Participants mourned the absence of professional learning available and, to further complicate, noticed that saviourist behaviours continue to be rewarded in professional circles and in organisations.
What counters Holy Whiteness in anti-racist work?
This advice is not solely aimed at white bodied people, because the saviourist dynamic is culturally adopted and embedded; many Black and brown people adopt similar approaches, it must be noted. The are ways of disarming saviourist tendencies, in favour of repelling internal dominance and questioning its legitimacy.
- Collective organising where racial dynamics are openly discussed and where power is shared amongst the collective is one way of disrupting saviourism. Having control shared and resisting hierarchy helps people to learn and recognise their own patterns. Through using processes of co-creation, we can see how our intentions are often not matched by behaviours. In other words, people might talk the talk but behave in ways that peddle saviourism.
- Engaging in networks who offer feedback is a beneficial on-going praxis that helps people recognise the saviourist dynamic in themselves. It can be hard to recognise when one has been socialised positively into these behaviours but different ways of connecting and building relationships are available and developing internal alternatives and building networks to challenge externally can be support (re)learning.
- Interrupting frames of reference are a useful and generative way of reimagining ways of being for white people. For example, questioning what you have learned by widening your own lens can interrupt these habits in your life. Reading, learning and listening can re-educate, revise and abolish racist technologies.
‘Allowing one’s whiteness to be interrupted and seeing oneself as part of a collective whiteness can be a form of subjective objectification in short term and long term relationally different future’ (Hunter, 2015, p.54).
We at Equitable run spaces to interrupt dynamics that mask racism. Saviourism affects everyone and are especially legitimised in service professions, such as, schools, social work, charities and the NHS.
We offer one to one race identity coaching sessions and a white accountability space, a drop in monthly group for white and white-passing people to trouble racial logics and their implications in whiteness. Check out our podcast Whiteness at Work. You can contact Claire for a free introductory chat here.