I recently came across the term “white-savior movies.” According to critics, this is a type of film that features a white hero or heroine entering the life of a helpless, troubled, often clueless Black person and, as one Black critic puts it, “swoops in” to turn his or her life around.
In an article called “Top 5 Most Cringeworthy White Savior Films,” a critic named OnlyBlackGirl offered this definition: “If you’re not familiar with the ‘white savior complex’ it’s basically is when there’s a person or community of color facing some hardship and some white figure swoops in on their kale carpet to save us. Obviously, no person of color can succeed without a pale hand of whiteness reaching down into our broken lives.”
The hit movie “The Blind Side,” starring Sandra Bullock, drew the wrath of many Black critics who found it insulting and condescending. OnlyBlackGirl wrote: “Let me just start by saying, I hate everything about this film. I hate how they portray this young man as a stupid Black man incapable of doing anything without being cradled in the white bosom of this lady who kind of forcefully takes pity on him and brings him into her home.”
But this is the exact same message and the very narrative that white-savior liberal politicians like former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and President Joe Biden have preached for decades. “Systemic racism,” they tell Blacks, prevents them from achieving success, unless, of course, they vote for us Democrats to pave the way.
Biden told Black radio host Charlamagne tha God, “Well, I tell you what: If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” During the 2012 presidential race, Biden attacked Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s policy of fewer Wall Street regulations as practically tantamount to reinstating slavery. To a Virginia audience of supporters that included a number of Blacks, Biden said: “Romney … said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
During the 2020 campaign, O’Rourke rarely missed an opportunity to warn Blacks about America’s thicket of contemporary racism that, who knows, with his help, Blacks just might be able to navigate. At a primary debate, O’Rourke said: “Racism in America is endemic. It is foundational.” He said this while flanked by rivals that included a Hispanic man who served in former President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, a Black-Indian female who served in the U.S. Senate and a Black man also serving in the Senate.
As for Hillary Clinton, she really, really feels Blacks’ pain. In her best “Black accent,” Clinton, in a 2007 speech in Selma, Alabama, said: “On this floor today, let us say with one voice the words of James Cleveland’s great freedom hymn: ‘I don’t feel no ways tired. / I come too far from where I started from. / Nobody told me that the road would be easy. / I don’t believe he brought me this far to leave me.'”
Never mind what Edward Rodrigue and Isabel Sawhill of the center-left Brookings Institution call the “success sequence”: “Graduate from high school, live in a family with at least one full-time worker, and wait to have children until you are married or at least are in a committed partnership with another adult.” To this formula, economist Walter Williams added, “And be a law-abiding citizen.”
But white-savior politicians like Biden, O’Rourke and Clinton tell Blacks that America’s “systemic racism” means the success sequence does not apply to them. About white-savior films, OnlyBlackGirl said, “Obviously, no person of color can succeed without a pale hand of whiteness reaching down into our broken lives.” But the “pale hand” of white-savior Democratic politicians who sell Blacks the same insulting, condescending message does not provoke the same outrage. It should.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host. His latest book, “The New Trump Standard,” is available in paperback from Amazon.com and for Nook, Kindle, iBooks and GooglePlay. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @LarryElder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Whatever color, the hand of The Savior is continually extended, beckoning all to reach out and take it, but it keeps getting slapped away. Our god-politicians are incapable of granting the salvation they claim to be able to provide and our country, and our world, sinks deeper and deeper into a quagmire of depravity. If the masses continue to put their trust in campaign promises and political correctness, their redemption will be denied.
One’s relationship with GOD is entirely between them and GOD.
Everyone has a choice to follow, love and worship whatever they please.
Matthew 7:15-23
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
True and False Disciples
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
WHAT redemption. THESE COMMUNISTS in charge, are IMO WAY BEYOND any form of redemption.
For every white savior movie put out by the media there are a 100 black destroyer movies that teach blacks hate and revenge on white power and success, as if whites are not entitled to succeed or excel as well. Just turn on the tube and all you see in films is edification of drugs, race hatred, jealousy, division and destroyed neighborhoods populated by people whose plumbers butts and backside exposed cracks, tatoos and genereal unkept appearances is pushed upon the American people as the new excepted norms. Instead of the losers taking control of their lives to raise themselves up to a higher equal level, all they offer is the lowering of exceptional people down to the equal equality of their own created social failures.
Good point. HOW many films have been made, even by WHITE Directors, that glorify the gang hoodrat troope.. How many films glorify the rap culture?
Last time I looked Hillary, Beto O’Rourke and Joe Biden are all white. Therefore, according to Hillary, Beto and Joe, they (Hillary, Beto and Joe) are all “white supremacists”. So, to the black community, according to the above mentioned “white supremacists”: “They’re going to put y’all back in chains,” right Joe “White Supremacist” Biden?
God bless Larry Elder for his clarity on these racial shape-changing attitudes driven by the Left.
I gotta agree with OnlyBlackGirl. It’s insulting to make a movie about someone of a different race coming in and “rescuing” people as if they weren’t smart enough or capable of helping themselves. This is a subset of my view of the actual “systemic racism” in our country – progressive whites thinking that they have to “save” black and latino people from the evils of society.
The insult, and consequently racism is in thinking that blacks are not smart enough to take care of themselves. This is extremely demeaning and disrespectful. Essentially, “Oh you poor black people. You’re not able to figure out how to get a picture ID to vote. You’re not smart enough to decide how your kids should be educated, …” and the list goes on. It’s beyond offensive.
As an old white guy I see the same message, but in a different format. The feminists are telling me not to rape, as if telling me to stop something I haven’t been doing is going to change things. I have Gillette talking down to me. I see myself portrayed as a bumbling fool in the movies and on TV. And they wonder why I’m not buying their products.
This is all systemic abuse, whether racism or sexism. We all need to join together to fight it.
How many films out there, show BLACKS being the saviors of themselves, let alone OTHERS? Very few…
Isn’t it amazing that black activists demonize the white man. The same white man whose influence in Africa rocketed blacks through millions of years of evolution that they had not been able to achieve on their own.
There’s days i would love to give them their wish.. ELIMINATE ALL Whites, but ALSO ELIMINATE ALL technology and medical breakthroughs WHITES MADE..
THEN SEE HOW LONG They would survive, without us.