White Gaze – Part 2

Whose Gaze Has Validity?  

In a previous blog, we explored the White Gaze as a concept created by Toni Morrison. An African American writer and scholar, Morrison identified this concept as a method for exploring who had the authority to define the stories and scholarship of Black Americans. Why are African Americans held in suspicion when they address issues of race or when they write about their own communities – especially when this same censorship does not apply to White or European scholars? An example of her concern can be seen in a January 18, 1999 interview with renown TV journalist, Charlie Rose. In this episode, he asked Toni Morrison if she would ever consider not writing about race. The assumption behind the question is that, if she is writing about Black people, she is writing about race because Black people are seen as “raced.” By contrast, if Morrison is to write about White people, she is not writing about race. Here is an example of the way “Whiteness” is perceived as being “neutral.” 

Morrison answered him by initiating a critique of the question because she understood, as many of us do, that Whiteness is certainly not neutral. (This is why the M2M Research Network makes the deliberate choice to capitalize “White.”) It is to call attention to the fact that Black people are not the only ones conscripted to navigate a racialized hierarchy. This is true for all of us.

In addition to demythologizing the assumption of “White” as neutral, Morrison raised a second issue with that question. For her, no one would ever challenge White writers, such as James Joyce, to do “more scholarly” writing and stop writing about race. Morrison found this insulting, in part, because one of the early reviews of her book, Sula, was said to be “immature.” Instead, Morrison would have to grow up and “deal with the real issue for Black people” which is “White people” according to the reviewer. In other words, how can a story of Black people be valid without centering whiteness?

As scholars who are writing non-fiction, there is a temptation to dictate that Black scholars should refrain from identifying or dealing with race. I was recently told, when applying to a fellowship program in Paris, that I would be unqualified to explore my research into the theological traditions of African descended people in Paris. For to do so, is to deal with “race” as a Black woman. Instead, any intellectual or epistemological production of African descended people, would be the purview of a White female in their institute. Many of her colleagues vehemently disagreed. Yet, they would never formally or publicly admit to such righteous indignation. In this way, they become complicit with her racialized assumptions.

I suspect that these assertions are because Black scholars can serve as data to be collected, but we are seen as lacking the efficacy to provide the analysis of said data. To do that is, somehow “subjective.” Or perhaps, the real issue within religious scholarship is ontological in nature. (See Victor Anderson’s article, “Black Ontology and Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology.) To believe Black scholars can identify, examine and publish rigorous work regarding their own backgrounds is to finally admit that we are full humans who are also part of the imago Dei, the Biblical term which means, “in the image of God.” Self definition is at the very heart of our humanity. If others must tell us who we are, then we haven’t become fully formed human beings.  

Yet, we are to believe that the data regarding the records of our lives have validity only through a hermeneutical lens of cultural Whiteness. (See Teresa J. Guess’ article, “The Social Construction of Whiteness: Racism by Intent, Racism by Consequence.”) Guess cogently argues that scholarship today fails to adequately interrogate “Whiteness” as a socially normative construct. 

Within Religious Academia, that assumption means the religious epistemologies, theological wrestling and ethical analysis of people of color is only “objectively” viewed through the White Gaze. Perhaps the real issue is that protecting a “White gaze” protects “White authority” over others. 

Subjectivity within Scholarship

There are people who have benefitted from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, have participated in various forms of racial apartheid and Jim Crow, and have continued to embrace inequality such as refusing to hire Black scholars. In fact, it is well documented that names which appear to be “Black” are less likely to be called in for an interview within typical job settings. These behaviors are not objective but are subjective. How many Schools of Divinity within the United Kingdom have a single African descended person as a Lecturer or Professor? They are rare, indeed. 

We must admit that much of the religious scholarship today protects the standard of “White objectivity” as a privileged hermeneutical lens. When your epistemological mythology contributes to a pervasive intellectual apartheid where scholarship is valid from a WHITES ONLY perspective, then it begs the question – how is there a presumption of objective scholarship based on Whites having a superior ability to analyze race? 

The Religious Academy may advocate that “Whiteness” is a neutral and unbiased category. Yet, this cannot be the case. Those who socially identify as “White” are over-represented in professorships and lectureships. The Protestant and Catholic Church have functioned as primary vehicles for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. Therefore, the soteriological value of this violent and inhumane system was not about “saving souls” as much as it was about creating and maintaining “Whiteness” as a power construct. (See The Guardian’s article, “The Invention of Whiteness: The Long History of a Dangerous Idea“.) 

This salvation came at the expense of the humanity of dark skinned brothers and sisters. This historical partnership, between slavery and the Church, renders the contemporary  Religious Academy as particularly vulnerable to reliance upon Whiteness as a trope of “neutrality” and also “superiority.” It is “neutral” as it operates under the guise of being outside of race. Yet, it is superior as its adherents (Euro-centered thinkers and patterns of thinking) are deemed as objective and normative.

Clearly, the White Gaze has over-functioned as a tool of domination which continues to this day. (For another contemporary take on the White Gaze from the perspective of African descended women, please read the article, “‘Against a Sharp White Background’: How Black Women Experience the White Gaze at Work.”) What is the impact of this functionality and how can we seek correctives? We will cover that in Part III of our series on The White Gaze.

CL Nash, PhD © 2023

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