Hollywood’s Latest White Savior Flick – The Blind Side

Blood Diamond, Sahara, Tears of the Sun, Dangerous Minds, A Time to Kill, Amistad and now The Blind Side. Do you know what all of those films have in common? There is some glorified White character saving the day for Black people or a Black character.

Almost every year Hollywood seems to pump out one of these movies, and usually, like this year’s White Savior Flick, it is based on a true story. And they love these true stories. Why? Well, it gives their foolish pattern some authenticity.

The actual true story is not foolish. I am certainly happy for Michael Oher, who is a rookie offensive lineman in the NFL and the White Memphis family that did in fact take him in. 

But the plot is old, just like many of the other White Savior Flicks. A Black person is doing nothing with his life, virtually homeless, with no past and no future, and then all of a sudden, a perfect, prosperous and humane White family appears out of the clouds—OK, not really out of the clouds, but you get my point—and they spot this Black person. And they bring him into their home—and they change his life.  Whiteness saving Blackness—vividly depicted in this film.

And to make matters worse, the vast majority of the rest of the Whites in the film are an extension of the perfect, paternalistic White family. Most of them are depicted as good and helpers of Oher. Meanwhile, as Natasha Ngaiza, a film student at Temple University so appropriately noticed, most of the Blacks in the film are depicted as bad, and those who are trying to hinder and hold back Oher.  Wow, just writing this dynamic makes me shake my head.

It seems as if Hollywood is on a mission to display movie after movie of Whites helping Blacks. For every one case of a White person dramatically and significantly helping a Black person, there are probably hundreds of cases of Black people dramatically and significantly helping Black people.  Oher’s story is a “remarkable true story,” as the promoters of The Blind Side keep telling us. However, where are those remarkable true stories of Black helping Blacks?

Those stories are simply rare in Hollywood. And that’s because I argue that Hollywood is a major purveyor of White paternalism in this country. The vast majority of the stories about racial situations always have to be some central White character saving Black people. 

These types of stories are made specifically for, and are popular with, some White people, as they go along with the American racial history narrative. It goes along with what Blacks and Whites are taught. You know, that everything Blacks have received in their history has been due to the graciousness of White people. 

Whites saved Blacks from barbarism and paganism through enslaving them, supposedly. Abraham Lincoln graciously freed the slaves, supposedly.  Lyndon B. Johnson altruistically ended legal segregation, supposedly. Bill Clinton compassionately opened up a slew of opportunities for Blacks, supposedly. We have been saved for eternity by a perfect White Jesus and a White God.

Furthermore, Blacks and Whites alike have been taught that the livelihood of Blacks will only be saved in White schools, in White neighborhoods, and through being surrounded by Whites at work. Whites save Blacks. Black people can not live, operate, thrive, or progress on their own. Black nationalism is an impossibility. Integrationism is the only solution—Blacks integrating into White spaces (never the other way around).

Movies like The Blind Side drill the screw of these racial ideas further into our consciousness. Some Whites walk away from these movies drenched in White paternalism, and some Blacks leave the theatres believing more in White benevolence as the primary mode of advancement for Black people.

The Blind Side by itself is not the problem. If it was abnormal, then I would not have a problem with it. If I did not see most disadvantaged Black people in Hollywood films being saved by benevolent Whites, then I would not be in uproar over this film. 

But I do.  White Savior Flicks seem to be the norm. 

Individual Whites, like the family that helped the football player, have a long history of helping out individual Blacks. Yet, as a society, or better yet, White America as a community has never given Black America anything.  Black Americans have had to seize every one of their civil and human rights. Every major advance Blacks as a community have received in this country—every single one—Blacks had to fight for, had to be imprisoned for, they had to die for—every single one. Trust me, as an African American historian, I know. Lincoln was forced to free the slaves in order to save the union. Johnson was forced to pass civil rights bills by the rising tide of the Civil Rights Movement. White power brokers were forced to institute affirmative action policies to dodge the tornadoes of the Black Power Movement. 

Just as Whites have generally saved White people, Blacks have generally saved Black people—almost always structurally, and usually individually. That is something that Americans need to understand. It is something we have to understand. The Blind Side and the flood of White Savior Flicks like it, however, only keep us ignorant. They only breed White paternalism and Black passivity.

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