Book Review: "White Benevolence"

By Kaia MacLeod

Gebhard, Amanda, Sheelah McLean, and Verna St. Davis. White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial
Violence in the Helping Professions. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2022, 280pp, $28.00

In the introduction of “White Benevolence: Racism and colonial violence in the helping professions” Gebhard, McLean, and St. Denis define White benevolence as such: “White benevolence is a form of paternalistic racism that reinforces, instead of challenges, racial hierarchies, and its presence is found across Canadian institutions” (1). With this definition in hand, we examine helping professions that fall under, education, social work, healthcare and justice. This means we inspect teachers, social workers, nurses, doctors, and pharmacists as well as lawyers and prisons. The authors assure us that there is nothing exceptional about the racism in these white helping professions. “It is significant to spotlight white helping professionals not because their racism is exceptional, but because of how their work has come to signify an antithetical relationship to violence”(19). 

The chapters are bold in their descriptions of racist encounters hiding behind the screen of benevolence, making some of it emotionally difficult to read. This difficulty emphasizes the need to read and re-read chapters that make us uncomfortable so that we can discover the foundation for our discomfort. 

White Benevolence puts Canada under an uncomfortable spotlight. Any illusion of Canada as a perfect country without a racism problem is broken early on. Indigenous identity is a complicated affair in Canada, including the challenge of being perceived as white or being white-passing. The book focuses on professions in four areas: medicine, education, social work, and justice. In these helping professions innocence is seen and presumed of the professionals.  Although there is racism and inequity in the history of these professions. Although libraries are not mentioned, librarians are involved in all of these aspects. We can see the same problems that plague these helping professions within our profession.  

The book discusses expected topics like racism, intergenerational trauma, and violence toward Indigenous Peoples. However, each chapter focuses on different voices, including both Indigenous and settlers. The authors waste no time getting to the root of their analysis. When discussing policing Indigenous students, Gebhard does not mince words when she says “[..] well-versed in the performance of innocence, teachers secure their non-complicity in racism and inequity, as well as their sense of themselves as good people, through their displays of love and care for Indigenous students.” (112) This ties to another chapter where McLean interviewed teachers. Some of the teachers claimed they did not see a racism problem but then go on to talk about instances of racism they witnessed (47). This intentional weaving of topics and sub-themes allows the reader to synthesize the information and make connections across the professions, in a way that would not be possible if the book only focused on one profession at a time.  

The information within the chapters can range from well-known to obscure and sometimes it is dependent on the province. The “Whiteness of Medicine” examines one of these instances: the health care cards in Saskatchewan have an R to indicate if someone has Indian status (197). Indian status in Canada is “the legal standing of a person who is registered under the Indian Act” (Government of Canada, 2023). Knowing someone is Indigenous can change their access to care. In chapter four, Harding reflects on the inequalities in health care for Indigenous people, specifically calling out stereotypes like “Indians want drugs” (52) or that they have high pain tolerance (57). Another common issue for Indigenous Canadians in the prairies is the infamous 2016 Gerald Stanley case and the killing of Colten Boushie.  The verdict of that case created many consequences including that “[..] the killing and acquittal enforced the sense of many indigenous peoples living in Saskatchewan that they may, at any time, face deadly racist violence” (131). 

The book skillfully balances the expected, unexpected, and necessary discussions. One of the main strengths is recognizing the debate on the white settler versus the settler of color. Patel, a Pakistani-Canadian, and Nath an Indian Canadian, as settlers of color, weigh in on the conversation. They witnessed white people using the phrase  “settler or color,” implying it was the same as a white settler, with no room for complexity or elaboration (148). The next topic that was unexpected but essential was the acknowledgement that  “the dualism of loving white people who harbour unchallenged racist values is a form of race consciousness” (201). The thought-provoking conclusion discusses the participation of professionals in Indigenous culture and how it "[...] is insufficient for unlearning entrenched colonial scripts of indigenous inferiority and may even reinforce them” (253). The book ends with eight major conclusions including 1. Anti-Indigenous racism operates under the guise of benevolence. 2. For institutional transformation to occur, it is essential that white heteropatriarchal violence is exposed. 3. We need to question how narratives of white superiority continue to be revamped. 4. The destructive consequences of racism are minimized by performances of innocence. 5. Choosing to educate settlers on Indigenous cultures instead of anti-racism teachings, leaves the settlers in a position of an innocent spectators. 6. “Feminized performances of “care” can be as destructive as overt forms of colonial violence.” 7. Accountability for innovation should be shared across the institutions of education, social work, health care and justice. 8. White Settlers need to be the locus of change when it comes to remedies for racial inequality (256-257). This list makes the final chapter a must-read summary.  

This book is a tough but necessary read. 

Sources 

Government of Canada. (2023, January 11). About Indian Status. Government of Canada. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1100100032463/1572459644986   

Kaia MacLeod

Kaia MacLeod is a member of the James Smith Cree Nation and is the University of Calgary's Indigenous Cataloguing Librarian. She received her MLIS from the University of Alberta, as well as a BA majoring in Film Studies. She is a 2020 ALA Spectrum Scholar and a 2020 ARL Kaleidoscope scholar. Her research interests are LIS education, BIPOC representation in YA, and inclusive cataloguing practices.

Twitter: @KaiaMacLeod1