Talk:White savior

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 January 2020 and 14 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Perry Katsarakes.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:52, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Critique

Tlhslobus, please explain the purpose of the empty "Critique" section. At white savior narrative in film, the "Critique" section is not one that negatively criticizes the existence of this trope. That section quotes commentary about the harmful implications of the trope. You say here, "criticism section added, as seemingly needed per NPOV". Are you trying to have a section that argues against the validity of the general topic? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:51, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Probably more a section that briefly cites the alleged pros and alleged cons of some aspects of the trope, typically stating X criticized notion A but Y replied with argument B, perhaps roughly along the lines of the Criticism section at the SETI article (which I've worked on in the past). As mentioned before in the film section Talk page, I find it a bit hard to believe that there is no debate engendered by the subject (even if such debate may not necessarily be easy to find). After working on Mary Prince (nanny) I decided to see whether anybody was criticizing the Carters as white saviors. That eventually got me looking at both this article, and also at this, which summarizes itself as follows: "Op-Ed: Why Won’t White Savior Complex Go Away? Western aid to Africa is just neocolonialism in sheep’s clothing." Now this may well be true, but even if so, I would expect there must be plenty of supporters of Western Aid trying to answer back (tho not necessarily using the 'white savior' terminology, which may unfortunately make such replies harder to find on Google). So in this instance I would expect to see X criticizes aid as the White Savior Complex, but Y replies that it isn't (or isn't really, or whatever). That seems roughly similar to what currently appears in the film Critique section, in which we have X criticizes film A as White Savior Rubbish, but Y rejects the criticism for reason B. And, if possible, ideally some brief summary of all this should appear in the lead. If there are any RS criticisms of the trope in general (or perhaps criticism of alleged or actual abuse of the trope?), and replies to such criticisms, these should also appear, but these may well not be easy to find (possibly due to the above-mentioned Google problem) - which is unfortunate, as it makes the article look POV even if quite likely it isn't really. However a well organised Critique (and/or Criticism) section should go some towards countering that impression, even if RS criticisms of the trope in general never get found.Tlhslobus (talk) 16:26, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Incidentally I am definitely NOT "trying to have a section that argues against the validity of the general topic", nor one that argues FOR it either, since, per WP:NPOV and the 2nd of the 5 Pillars of Wikipedia, Wikipedia is not supposed to argue anything, merely to present the arguments that are made by others (provided they are made in reliable sources, etc, and provided we give them their due weight).Tlhslobus (talk) 16:35, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Here's another item possibly worth looking at: This Huffington Post piece criticizes Barack Obama for quoting Atticus Finch, the alleged White Savior of To Kill a Mockingbird. I would expect that some people out there will have defended Obama. There's also this item called 'In defense of Atticus Finch'. And I expect quite a lot of such stuff can be found if editors are interested enough to go looking (tho I'm not sure that all that many are - quite likely I'm not, per WP:NOTCOMPULSORY and WP:BNO). Tlhslobus (talk) 17:12, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Your proposed section is structured as a general rebuttal to the topic as a whole, and as far as I can tell, there have not been reliable sources doing this. There are sources that dispute specific applications (e.g., whether or not a film has the trope), but not the topic as a whole. Per WP:STRUCTURE, any so-called debates should be folded together. For example, the "Association with Africa" section can have commentary all around about whether or not the label applies. Even if you are not trying to have a section to negatively criticize the validity of the general topic, it is presented as such, without any sourced backing, and should be removed per WP:NPOV. If there really are sources that qualify, such coverage would best belong in an "Overview" kind of section in combination with coverage providing a general understanding of the topic. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:08, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Actually what I was looking for was a section as explained in Wikipedia:Criticism#"Criticism"_section and which is described there by Jimbo Wales as sometimes desirable and sometimes not, and which is described in Wikipedia:Criticism#Approaches_to_presenting_criticism as "sometimes used for politics, religion and philosophy topics" (and this article seems to be that kind of topic). And, incidentally, these sections refer to criticisms (plural) and don't seem to require 'general criticism'. But there are plenty of contrary texts on that page, and even in those two relatively favorable sections. And in any case the page is just an essay, not a policy, whereas WP:STRUCTURE is part of a policy page (WP:NPOV), so it should normally trump it, tho it hasn't prevented criticism sections and even criticism articles in many areas. So I assume what's at work is that we get criticism sections where there are a large number of editors willing to fight to have them. But in most other cases they get virtually suppressed by being hidden (oops, sorry, folded away, per NPOV policy). This is very annoying if one is a reader trying to find out what criticisms have been made of a topic, but it is very convenient if one is a vested interest or true believer in a topic. And since such people are far more determined than mere readers, the finer points of our NPOV policy, such as WP:STRUCTURE (with its nonsensical 'folding is needed for NPOV, except in all the articles which ignore this'), would unsurprizingly seem to have been written by them to suit them. And written in a way that is not required for an article to be NPOV, unless one is claiming that all the articles with criticism sections are POV, which is not only untrue, but often the reverse of the truth, as it's the articles without such sections that both appear, and often are, subtle POV pushers of the view of the individuals and/or interests who are not supposed to WP:OWN them, but in practice do effectively own them. As a reader I find this infuriating, and damaging to Wikipedia, but there's not much I can do about it. And perhaps the present article is the genuinely NPOV 'exception that proves the rule'. So since it would seem you have Wikilaw on your side, please feel free to do as you see fit. Anyway, congratulations on winning. Regards. Tlhslobus (talk) 19:01, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. I don't find that this topic is part of the politics, religion, and philosophy topics. To me, these topics mean the more general ones where there is enormous breadth of coverage. The more narrow the topic (and there will be many narrow topics in the scope of the aforementioned Big Topics), the less need there is for such a general "Criticism" (or "Controversy") heading. For this topic, there is nothing even remotely like "an organic whole" to consider here. Any criticisms to be had are isolated counterpoints. I don't see the folding as suppressing or hiding; to have all the points and counterpoints together for a given specific situation is to provide full context. For what it's worth, I've linked to aid for "Association with Africa", which talks about that kind of thing outside any "white savior" label. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:30, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Copyright concern

• Cherepanov, Elena (2018). Ethics for Global Mental Health: From Good Intentions to Humanitarian Accountability. Routledge. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-351-17572-2.

In reviewing Google Books results in 2018 for this topic, I found that the above source copies this Wikipedia article's lead section nearly word-for-word. A screenshot of the page can be seen here. I cannot find any license mention that warrants this copying. Mentioning here for eventual follow-up. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:42, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Structure

I think that the structure of this article needs improvement. Currently, there's one section about Africa, one about movies, one about TV, and one about Teju Cole's interpretation. I would suggest that the middle two sections could be condensed into a single "media" section (which could also include literature, video games, etc), and the geographic scope of the article could be expanded to better address the topic in relation to Asia and any other relevant places. The coverage of Teju Cole also seems to give WP:UNDUE weight to the theories of one specific writer, and I feel that this section should be folded into a broader overview of the topic. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:10, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the geographic scope of the article, have you seen any good sources in that regard? I think it tends to be more used in association with Africa and with media than anything else. Literature and video game sections or subsections would be a good idea, but we'd need to find sources for these as well. As for the term "white savior industrial complex", I think it has had a life of its own since Cole coined it. The question is if it is appropriate as a sub-topic here or should have its own article. See how the term comes up a few times in Google Scholar here. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 00:17, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

In particular I'm looking at usage in regard to the Middle East, which also seems to be prevalent to some extent. There are sources like these: [1], [2], [3], the first of which is already used in the article. The film and TV sections seem to indicate further usage regarding Asia as well. And Cole certainly deserves a few sentences in this article, but it seems that the term is tied to him; the number of references to it drops considerably when it's not in reference to his usage of it. It's certainly notable, but I don't feel that his interpretation should be given more weight than other academics with notable interpretations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:32, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

That makes sense about the Middle East and these sources. As for Cole, I'm not sure what you mean by other notable interpretations out there? He popularized the term "white savior industrial complex", tying in the industrial complex concept, and I feel like others have gone off that framework. I don't really think many sources would use that term without crediting him, so I don't think it makes sense to try to look up that term without his name. Like this says, "Through parallel analyses employing Cole’s framework, we identify the enactment of White Saviorism in three exemplative leisure practices..." The source credits Cole for the framework but then goes in its own direction with that framework. I'm open to including other interpretations, but I'm not sure what other related terms or frameworks there are to consider. "White savior film" isn't Matthew Hughey's term, but he wrote a whole book defining that classification, which is covered in the sub-article. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 02:33, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

My thought process is that even if Cole is the most prominent author on the subject, his commentary still only makes up a small proportion of the topic, but it makes up a large proportion of the article. I feel that the best place for it would be to move the main points of Cole's interpretation into the "Association with Africa" section as that's what Cole discusses, and then move the details to Cole's own article. But of course that's just one suggestion. In the meantime, I'll see what I can find about usage of the term in regard to other forms of media. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:28, 27 February 2022 (UTC)