The White Gaze Sparknotes

The authors explore the notion of a white gaze which is hegemonic, historically established in material relations of white power where women and minorities are blamed for taking away their undeserving privileges. It boils down to resentful entitlement or privilege. The school shootings perpetrated by middle-class white male students, the men’s-rights movement, white supremacists, the fathers’-rights groups, etc. There is a deep-seated impression, among some white male Americans, that they are being deprived of their space in society. The era of privilege, when the reputable jobs and the best possessions was the white male American’s merit, has degenerated and is being succeeded by a society where white males are being systematically marginalized and overlooked in patronage of minorities and women. The white gaze has created angry white men who cannot face the truth and realize the era of privilege that birth with colonialism is over. They believe the tides have turned against them

Resistance movements is a form of agency minorities, women and those discriminated against have performed in order to recognize themselves as agents able to challenge and free themselves from the hegemony of the white gaze. The black lives matter movement and feminism understand that their liberation from oppression is connected with the liberation of others. Without the White gaze it becomes about the systematic oppression and murder of marginalized groups and the systematic silence of white people. It is a political strategy used by people with no other alternatives than to put their bodies in danger recognizing that a good deal of them would be beaten and some would lay down their lives in the expectation of convincing white society that Black lives matter and marginalized groups. This refusal of the White gaze allows for a new point of view of civil rights