Raising Public and Educational Awareness of the 
White Screen Savior in Commercial Video Games

• In Event: Roundtable Session 45
  In Roundtable Session: Antiracist Reading Practice in Curriculum

Abstract

This project assesses the white savior trope in commercial video games and raises educational and public awareness with the aim of initiating discourse on ways to leverage these games into consciousness-raising curriculum. Eight video games were analyzed using Hsieh and Shannon’s (2005) and Potter and Levine-Donnerstein’s (1999) approaches to content analysis. Preliminary findings show that whites were often portrayed in protagonist roles and nonwhites in saved roles, and that the manifestations of white saviorism, while similar to cinema, can be unique to gaming media. This study also contends that commercial games can be sites of participatory resistance, allowing learners to diffuse the logics of white saviorism and the interpretative frame it imposes on gaming and real-world contexts.

Authors

• Joseph D. Hooper, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Janice L. Anderson, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill