“Reason to Hope?”: The White Savior Myth and Progress in “Post-Racial” America

Abstract

On April 4, 2015, White North Charleston, South Carolina, Police Officer Michael Slager shot and killed Black motorist Walter Scott. Upon the release of a bystander video of the deadly shooting, Mayor Keith Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers denounced Slager’s actions and announced his arrest for Scott’s death. This article argues that journalists’ use and subsequent circulation of White savior mythology to narrativize the work of the two leaders offered a message of hope, progress, and White redemption, anchored in a vision of a “post-racial” United States.

Keywords

Whiteness myth race racism

On April 4, 2015, Black motorist Walter Scott was stopped by White Patrolman Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina for a broken tail light. Mere minutes after Officer Slager took the warehouse forklift operator’s license back to his patrol car, Scott took off on foot in an attempt to evade arrest. Slager followed the unarmed Scott through a vacant lot, where a scuffle ensued. Upon breaking free, Scott continued to run, at which point Slager fired his service pistol at least 8 times at Scott’s back (Zucchino, Queally, & Mozingo, 2015). The 50-year-old father of four was pronounced dead at the scene.

News, Lule (2001) argued, “offers the steady repetition of stories, the rhythmic recurrence of themes and events” (p. 19). In this way, the suggestion that “news” is actually new is something of a misnomer (Lule, 2001, p. 19). The story of Walter Scott’s death fit a familiar script in the contemporary United States: Unarmed Black man confronted by a White, gun-wielding police officer; Black man killed by White officer. Scott’s killing in South Carolina “stirred memories of the fatal Brown shooting [in Ferguson, Missouri] and the chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island at the hands of an NYPD officer” (Otis, Goldstein, & Siemaszko, 2015, p. 4). Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Cynthia Tucker (2015) recalled the story of the young Tamir Rice, “a 12-year-old Cleveland boy wielding a toy gun, [who] was shot dead last November [2014] by a police officer who fired seconds after reaching the scene.” Walter Scott, like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, was a victim of violence enacted by a White police officer. Scott’s death was captured on cell phone video by a citizen journalist, bystander Feidin Santana. It was, journalists recounted, an unexceptional story—conjuring most immediately memory of the cell phone video of the police chokehold that killed Garner—similarly captured by a citizen journalist.

Although Walter Scott’s death marked another instance of the overzealous policing of a Black man by a White officer, the story emerging in the wake of Scott’s death could also be distinguished from those to which it bore eerie resemblance. Following the release of Santana’s video, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers quickly condemned the actions of Michael Slager and announced the officer’s arrest for Scott’s murder. The announcement earned the two White leaders praise from journalists, who dubbed the response evidence of “transparency, compassion, and contrition” (“What North Charleston can teach America”, 2015). The Reverend Al Sharpton similarly lauded Summey and Driggers, claiming, “In the Deep South, a mayor and police chief did what we couldn’t get mayors in the North and the Midwest to do” (Moore & Otis, 2015, p. 8). The announcement of Slager’s arrest was deemed a departure from “script” by Ernie Suggs (2015, p. 1A) of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an indication that “ . . . the people of North Charleston . . . have decided to write a different story, not just in words but in deeds” (“What North Charleston can teach America”, 2015).

Although the response of North Charleston’s White officials was “different” in that it resulted in an unexpected outcome, the arrest of Officer Slager, the emerging cultural narrative echoed a familiar and popular form in 21st-century United States: the myth of the White savior. A narrative with historic roots, the White savior is typically a male character “whose innate sense of justice drives [these] tales of racial cooperation, nonwhite uplift, and white redemption” (Hughey, 2014, p. 7). Building on Hughey’s (2014) work on the White savior as filmic genre, this article examines the articulation of the White savior myth in journalistic discourse surrounding Mayor Summey and Police Chief Driggers. The White savior film, Hughey (2014) argued, “is an important cultural device and artifact because it helps repair the myth of white supremacy and paternalism in an unsettled and racially charged time” (p. 15). This article argues that journalists’ use and subsequent circulation of White savior mythology in the face of yet another traumatic shooting of a Black man by a White police officer offered a message of hope, progress, and White redemption, anchored in a vision of a “post-racial” present. Reinscribing historic discourses of “manifest destiny, the white man’s burden, and the great white hope” (Hughey, 2014, p. 15), journalists reinforced color-blind ideology that transformed the story of Walter Scott’s death into a story of heroic White officials, minimizing the reality of profound racial inequality in the United States.

In what follows, this article first considers journalism’s role in narrating stories of trauma, emphasizing the role of myth in attempting to facilitate healing. In discussing reviews of White savior films of the so-called “postracial era,” Hughey (2014) argued that such commentaries are “racialized hagiographies: essays on the lives of cinematic saints that emphasize their natural superiority, alleviates white guilt, and overcomes prejudicial character flaws with aplomb” (p. 118). This article discusses journalists’ narration of Summey and Driggers as White saviors, examining three discursive threads that intertwined to fortify the White savior myth, based on the characteristics of racialized hagiography described by Hughey (2014): color-blind morality, racial cooperation, and inclusive victimhood. This article concludes by considering the implications of journalistic uses of this mythic frame, specifically its possibilities to potentially impede, rather than advance, productive discourses surrounding race and racism in 21st-century United States.

Racial Trauma and the White Savior Myth

In the face of traumatic events, journalism performs vital cultural work. When “meanings and values in society become confounded and ambiguous” (Berkowitz, 2010, p. 645), journalism functions to make sense of the seemingly inexplicable—to offer a semblance of order and cohesion from chaos (Bird & Dardenne, 1990; Kitch, 2003). Journalism provides not only explanations and reassurance (Berkowitz, 2010) but also performs a unifying function, building and articulating group values and identity (Kitch, 2003). This community-building apparatus serves not only the public but the interpretive community of journalists, whose boundaries are necessarily challenged by traumatic events (Berkowitz, 2000; Berkowitz & Gutsche, 2012; Kitch, 2003; Zelizer, 1993).

Myth is one mechanism used by journalists to narrate trauma (Kitch, 2003; Lule, 2001). Journalistic myths have worked to facilitate healing in the face of traumas such as the Virginia Tech shooting, the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., and the attacks on September 11, 2001, among others, invoking the past as a way to reinstate societal values (Berkowitz, 2010; Edy, 1999; Kitch, 2002, 2003). When the victim is a person of color, however, journalistic efforts to foster healing have tended to come at the victim’s expense. As Lule (1993, 2001) argued, journalistic narrativization of the shooting death of Huey Newton cast the Black Panther leader as a threat to the social order, delegitimizing his dissent. Following the tragic death of Rodney King, Maurantonio (2014) argued, journalists mythologized the Black motorist as an “accidental victim” who endured brutal police beatings as a result of “bad timing” rather than institutional racism. In each of these instances, journalistic mythologizing emphasized the victim’s culpability for his fate, individualizing his plight by distancing him from larger structures. Such work is a central feature of color-blind ideology, which the motif of the White savior serves to fortify.

The White savior is, Vera and Gordon (2003) argued, “the redeemer of the weak, the great leader who saves blacks from slavery or oppression, rescues people of color from poverty and disease, or leads Indians in battle for their dignity and survival” (p. 33). Recognizable in a spate of contemporary films, the White savior is a trope with an extended history. Linked to constructions of the “noble savage” and the concept of “manifest destiny,” the White savior, as represented in popular texts, signals a heroic colonizing force, responsible for civilizing primitive, indigenous (non-White) peoples. Elaborated in texts such as Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” the myth of the White savior is intimately tied to a sense of moral responsibility, rooted in paternalistic racism (Hughey, 2014, pp. 8-10).

The White savior, whose history extends back into the 19th century, has become increasingly visible since the 1980s in response, Hughey (2014) argued, to a largely unresolved racial climate. According to Hughey (2014),

In a climate in which many whites believe they are unfairly victimized and losing dominance, many people are exhausted with talking about race, and there is a latent desire to see evidence of interracial reconciliation and amity, films that showcase strong, kind, and messianic white characters assisting nonwhite, down-on-their-luck characters deliver just the right touch. (p. 15)

Given the number of cases to which Walter Scott’s death bore tragic resemblance, emphasizing the unsettled nature of the nation’s racial climate, this article explores the articulations of the White savior trope in a historical moment that reflects the aforementioned conditions outlined by Hughey (2014).

Although journalism adheres to a different set of professional norms than film, journalism, like film, is responsible for contributing to a series of “images, stereotypes, and knowledge that define us and constitute us as human beings” (Vera & Gordon, 2003, p. 2). Responding to unfolding events, journalists perform work that one might argue constitutes a “review” of contemporary news much like critics review films, interpreting their meanings. This article, thus, turns its attention to journalists’ narration of the responses of the White leaders implicated in the Walter Scott case: Mayor Keith Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers, in an effort to consider the ways in which both fictional and nonfictional stories have merged into a larger, coherent cultural narrative.

In attending to the discourses surrounding Summey and Driggers, this article explores the extent to which journalism mythologized White supremacy in the form of the White savior or what Madison (1999) termed the “anti-racist white hero,” an archetypal figure that has become a visible part of popular culture, from film to news to public rhetoric (Hughey, 2014; Lacy, 2010a, 2010b; Madison, 1999; McFarlane, 2015; Vera & Gordon, 2003). The White savior’s narrative arc, while attempting to interrogate systems of oppression, is ultimately suffused with White supremacist ideology. The “anti-racist white hero” performs what Hall (2011) termed “inferential racism” and Entman (1990) dubbed “modern racism”—a form of racism underpinned by racist assumptions and premises rather than performed in overtly racist or bigoted ways (Madison, 1999). Typically defined in sharp contrast to violent, racist Whites who occupy the role of “Dixie-style Southerners” or the “sole white racist in the North” (Lacy, 2010a, p. 207), the White savior propagates “an ideology of innocence and invisibility, circumscribed by the notion that our society should or can be ‘color blind’ and ‘race neutral’” (McPhail, 2002, p. 173).

The ideology of color blindness gained purchase in the wake of the backlash era of the 1990s (Hughey, 2014). If the 1990s were dominated by discourses that cast Whites, the “white father” in particular, as the arbiters of morality, enactors of revenge, and icons worthy of adulation by so-called grateful “others,” the “post-racial” 21st century “attempts to deftly avoid the issue of race altogether and in so doing tries to bring whiteness above the fray of such racial vulgarity” (Hughey, 2014, p. 117). To achieve this “colorblind” aura, at least within the context of filmic commentary, Hughey (2014) suggested that critics adopted a stance that rationalized White superiority without “succumbing to overt racial hostility or racism” (p. 118). This article considers the extent to which journalists engaged this rationalization process following Scott’s death.

To explore this process, this article is guided by three related questions.

RQ1: How were the two White leaders of North Charleston, South Carolina, Mayor Keith Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers, located within the story of the aftermath of Walter Scott’s death?

RQ2: To what extent did coverage of Summey and Driggers speak to existing motifs of the White savior in journalistic mythologizing?

RQ3: What does the circulation of the White savior myth suggest about journalism’s role in shaping public discourse surrounding Whiteness in the 21st-century United States?

Method

To address these questions implicating the White leaders of North Charleston, a textual analysis of newspaper coverage following Walter Scott’s death was conducted. Emergent themes and patterns in coverage were sought out so as not to “trap” the analysis by prefiguring outcomes (Altheide, 1996, p. 33). Examining coverage across U.S. newspapers archived by the Lexis-Nexis database, news items were searched between the dates of Walter Scott’s death, April 4, 2015, and a week following the slain man’s funeral, April 18, 2015. By April 18, 2015, Slager’s case had been handed over to federal authorities, making Mayor Summey and Police Chief Driggers less central players in the story.

News items were collected using the search terms Summey or Driggers or Walter Scott. Although the focus of this article is on coverage of the two White leaders of North Charleston, Walter Scott was included as a search term due to the likelihood of intertextual references. This search yielded 191 discrete U.S. newspaper sources, including local and national publications. News stories, editorials, and commentary were examined.

In analyzing these textual sources, particular attention was paid to discourses surrounding Summey and Driggers, attending to journalistic commentary as well as sourcing practices within the news stories in circulation. Given little was known in the immediate aftermath of Scott’s death, journalists’ use of particular “official” sources is not insignificant (Sigal, 1973). Rather, as Tuchman (1978) argued, the use of quotations can be interpreted as a technical device intended to “create a web of mutually self-validating facts” (p. 95). Sourcing practices were, thus, considered as reflections of news ideologies.

The White Saviors of North Charleston

Breaking news of Walter Scott’s death “followed a depressing pattern” (Suggs, 2015, p. 1A). Columnist Cynthia Tucker (2015) reminded, “[it’s] easy to slip into a deep pessimism, to believe we’re right back where we were 50 years ago.” Reflecting upon this news, New York Times columnist Charles Blow (2015) commented,

I am truly weary, deep in my bones, of writing these columns about the killings of unarmed people of color by the police. Indeed, you may be weary of reading them. Still, our weariness is but a dim shadow that falls near the darkness of despair that a family is thrust into when a child or parent or sibling is lost, and that family must wonder if the use of deadly force was appropriate and whether justice will be served.

The story was devastatingly familiar. The New York Times reported days after Scott’s death,

In a ritual that has been repeated around the country after racially charged police killings, this working-class city [North Charleston] was preparing Friday for a weekend of public mourning and angry protest over the death of an unarmed black man who was shot in the back by a white police officer. (Blinder & Fernandez, 2015, p. 12)

The frequency of such rituals—from the death to the funeral rites to the news columns meditating on the nature of police action—made them almost predictable.

Despite the devastation communicated by journalists following news of Walter Scott’s death, headlines following the announcement of Slager’s arrest proclaimed a more positive message, “Quick Reaction to Walter Scott Shooting Is Reason to Hope” (Chico Enterprise-Record), “A Hope for Change in Culture” (Telegram & Gazette), “After Another Tragedy, Signs of Progress” (Washington Post), “Narrative Changing in Police Killings” (News-Journal), “What North Charleston Can Teach America” (2015, Christian Science Monitor), and “Learning Lessons From Ferguson” (Los Angeles Times). Discourses of hope circulated in news of North Charleston’s response to Santana’s video, suggesting a future rooted in the community’s restored faith in its police. According to Tucker (2015), the aforementioned pessimism “is not entirely warranted.”

Although journalists acknowledged the powerful impact of Santana’s cell phone video, the responses of the White leaders of North Charleston, Mayor Keith Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers, became focal points in coverage following the video’s emergence. As Tucker (2015) summarized,

The outcome (assisted immensely by the video, of course) [Slager’s arrest] would have been unlikely as recently as a few years ago and impossible to imagine 50 years ago. While the criminal justice system remains a bastion of bigotry, a new surge of activism is helping to change that.

Summey and Driggers’s “swift action” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. 1) and comments denouncing Officer Slager provided evidence of that “new surge of activism” (Tucker, 2015), and with it, progress.

Between April and June 2015, journalists referred to neither Mayor Summey nor Chief Driggers as heroes or saviors. The construction of the White leaders’ savior status rests on journalists’ reliance on the leaders’ statements and positive public responses to them, further supported with journalistic commentary reflecting on the Scott case’s unfolding. News stories in the aftermath of Scott’s death placed into sharp relief the ways in which Whiteness could be redeemed in the face of yet another murder of a Black man by a White police officer in the United States. The sections that follow discuss three themes drawn from coverage following Scott’s death. Adapted from Hughey’s (2014) analysis of film criticism, the themes of color-blind morality, racial cooperation, and inclusive victimhood collectively minimize racial inequality while championing White action.

Color-Blind Morality

Film critics, Hughey (2014) argued, tend to praise the White savior as “a figure who turns against his tyrannical, close-minded, and racist white community and comrades. In so doing, the character stands as proof positive of whites’ ability to transcend race and become truly color-blind” (p. 120). In reporting the responses of Summey and Driggers, journalists largely adhered to this script, carefully drawing attention to the Southerners’ color-blind moral code. Unlike Slager, who had, in the words of Summey, made a “bad decision,” the mayor and police chief had done what was “right.” Articulating a form of racial neoliberalism, the White leaders of North Charleston made repeated “appeals to individualism and colorblindness” (Hughey, 2014, p. 78)—appeals reiterated across news outlets. The repetition of the statements of the White leaders of North Charleston, Summey and Driggers, amplified their authority.

When asked about North Charleston’s response to the video of Scott’s death, Chief Driggers answered in a widely circulated statement, “It’s the right thing to do” (Robles & Blinder, 2015, p. 1). Driggers reiterated, at what was described as “an emotional and often chaotic news conference” (Robles & Blinder, 2015, p. 1), “We’re gonna continue to strive to do what’s right” (Otis et al., 2015, p. 4). The sense that the “right” action needed to be undertaken was further emphasized by Mayor Summey, “‘When you’re wrong, you’re wrong.’ . . . ‘If you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the shield . . . you have to live with that decision’” (p. A01). The Reverend Al Sharpton echoed the mayor’s statements, “(Summey) said it best when he said, ‘Wrong is wrong’” (Moore & Otis, 2015, p. 8). Rather than adhere to the “thin blue line,” Summey and Driggers acted in accord with a moral code that encouraged color-blind punishment for wrongdoing. Whether Slager was White, Black, or blue, he was to be held accountable for his actions.

Journalists quoted sources that further legitimated the actions of the White leaders. Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic strategist, said in an interview with USA Today (2015), “the authorities acted quickly and correctly.” Feidin Santana, who captured the damning cell phone video of Slager shooting Scott, echoed the words of Mayor Summey, “He [Slager] made a bad decision . . . and you pay for your decisions in this life” (Robles & Blinder, 2015, p. 1). The repeated description of Slager’s action as a “bad decision,” a poor choice, facilitated the narrative of color-blind morality by individualizing Slager’s action and deemphasizing its racist underpinnings.

Reports of Mayor Summey’s call for 150 more cameras for North Charleston’s police officers, ensuring that all officers would wear body cameras (Rice, 2015), offered added evidence of the leaders’ color-blind moral code. By committing to the purchase of police cameras, the North Charleston leaders were cast as part of a larger effort to enact change and bring the perpetrators of police violence to justice. They would not turn a blind eye to news of violence. In repeating the leaders’ call for body cameras, journalists reminded that not only did Summey and Driggers evidence verbal commitment to ending police violence, they offered tangible solutions.

Implicit in Summey’s call, however, was the assumption that video cameras would enable “the truth” to emerge. With the release of Santana’s video, the public was able to bear witness to the horrific incident in “an unambiguous way” (Norman, 2015, p. A-2). By championing calls for cameras, journalists suggested that racial tensions could be resolved with the incorporation of such technologies. As the New York Post claimed,

Back before cellphones put a videocamera in nearly every citizen’s hand, bad cops had it much easier. Now they have that much more to fear. And, that—not any lesson about what police nationwide are supposedly magically getting away with, without anyone catching them on video—is the real bottom line of the North Charleston killing. (“A Killing on Camera,” 2015, p. 22)

The Post was not alone in its assessment. The Wisconsin State Journal relayed similar optimism, “Cameras on police uniforms will make it easier to identify and weed out rogue cops” (“More Reason for Cameras,” 2015, p. A13).

Such claims suggested that if only visual evidence of wrongdoing existed, “justice” would be served. Attending to the video as the answer to the problem of racialized violence, however, addressed the issue of institutionalized racism on only one register—accountability when violence was enacted. It neglected to take aim at the ideological underpinnings of such violence or the fact that video, as the Eric Garner case powerfully demonstrated, is hardly a guarantee of “justice.” Summey’s call for police cameras was, nonetheless, cited as evidence of a move to spur change—to punish wrongdoing regardless of the identity of the perpetrator.

The “right” work of Summey and Driggers was cast in dramatic contrast to the violence of the “wrong” Slager, who according to “some black residents in North Charleston” “had a reputation” (Suggs, 2015, p. 1A). Although some claimed Slager had a history of harassing Black businesses, Brandon Robinson, a local firefighter, stated, “I work with the police a lot and there are a lot of good cops. This is just a bad deal and Slager made the wrong decision” (Suggs, 2015, p. 1A). Echoing the words of North Charleston’s top officials, such comments pointed to Slager as an officer who made a series of poor choices—choices that could be sharply juxtaposed with those who chose correctly. In the language of the White savior film, Slager was the “bad white” (Hughey, 2014, p. 48), thereby enabling “good” and “evil” to be carefully and clearly delineated. By placing emphasis on the morality of individuals who did not leave Slager’s actions unquestioned, journalists pointed to the heroism of the two White leaders—two leaders whose own statements were extensively quoted in coverage. Quality policing, within this discursive frame, could be distilled into the actions of individuals not structures.

Racial Cooperation

If Summey and Driggers’s denunciation of Slager’s action in the wake of the video was evidence of the leaders’ color-blind morality—their willingness to do “right” when faced with a “bad decision,” they had, prior to Scott’s death, shown themselves to be critical allies of North Charleston’s Black community. Stories tracing the leaders’ work prior to Scott’s death suggested Whites’ ability to transcend race, a hallmark of White savior mythology (Hughey, 2014). As the New York Times wrote, “Some residents have credited Chief Driggers with helping to calm tensions, even as others angrily demanded answers from him at a news conference on Wednesday. An Episcopal deacon, Chief Driggers once served as the department’s chaplain . . . ” (p. 5). In a community linked to a history of racism in the Deep South, North Charleston’s White leaders displayed a willingness to ease, as Hughey (2014) argued with respect to the White savior film, “the raw and emotional folks of color with cool and dispassionate logic” (p. 118). The White leaders’ capacity for and commitment to racial cooperation, alongside their color-blind morality, made them well positioned to assume the status of White saviors, adhering to a form of “postmodern whiteness” (Hughey, 2014, p. 122).

Unlike Officer Slager, Mayor Summey and Chief Driggers were cast by journalists as men who were committed to repairing historically strained relations with the Black community. As Collins and Lucas (2015) recounted, “Driggers has made efforts to reach out to minorities with cookouts and community discussions.” According to Ed Bryant, chapter president of the North Charleston NAACP, improved relations between the Black community and police since Driggers took his post could be observed (Otis et al., 2015). Summey, according to Councilwoman Dorothy “Dot” Williams, “regularly shows up at black churches—at Royal Baptist, Charity Baptist and Mt. Moriah Baptist—because he prefers ‘the old-time, kick-down music’” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. 1). According to Councilwoman Williams, Summey “once hit 340 pounds, then underwent gastric bypass surgery and went on a diet . . . ‘He sneaks over to the black restaurants behind his wife’s back . . . ’ But that’s just Mayor Summey. Everybody knows it” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. 1). Summey and Driggers did not fit the historic script for Southern Whites in power. According to the Los Angeles Times, “She [Williams] praises the white, Republican mayor, Keith Summey” as “one of the kindest, best men I know. He loves black residents and would do anything for them” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. 1). The Los Angeles Times front-page article assured that these two leaders were hardly virulent White racists of the Jim Crow South. Rather, the men cultivated honest and caring relationships with the Black community of North Charleston, sharing meals, worshipping, and enjoying music.

Journalists’ descriptions of Summey and Driggers’s exchanges with the bereaved Scott family added further insight into the leaders’ interactions with their Black constituents. Reporting on the funeral of Walter Scott, Suggs (2015) wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

Members of the city’s white power structure—specifically the mayor and the police chief—stayed away. Mayor Keith Summey told the Post and Courier that he wanted to give Scott’s family ‘the utmost respect and the respect that the gentleman who is deceased deserves. (p. 1A)

Attention and praise given to the White mayor suggests that respect for the deceased was not to be expected, a point echoed by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who lauded Summey for “embracing the black man as a ‘victim’” (Li, 2015, p. 18). Sharpton continued, “Maybe now, between a Southern white mayor and a forgiving black mother [Judy Scott], maybe this nation will deal with this” (Li, 2015, p. 18). Sharpton’s juxtaposition of “a Southern white mayor” with “a forgiving black mother” suggested an unlikely, albeit compelling, duo, offering a model for the future.

Coverage of Summey and Driggers’s exchanges with the Scott family emphasized the leaders’ empathy, a point reiterated by Walter Scott’s elder brother, Anthony, who described Driggers: “The chief was very kind, very kind. He was very gentlemanly, very different from the way everyone else was acting. Everyone else—it was eerie how they were acting. They were cocky” (Blinder & Fernandez, 2015, p. 1). In addition to summoning the praise of notable Black leaders such as the Reverend Al Sharpton and members of the bereaved Scott family, journalists reminded of Summey’s call for prayers for the Scott family, proclaiming the slain Scott’s death “a horrible tragedy in our community” (Pearce, 2015, p. 13). The circulation of such statements foregrounded the relationships between the White leaders and the grieving family, emphasizing shared loss and understanding. Racism was, thus, incidental to this story.

Inclusive Victimhood

In addition to emphasizing the leaders’ color-blind morality and racial cooperation, journalists forwarded a narrative that cast Mayor Summey and Police Chief Driggers as victims alongside Scott, who paid the ultimate price in this story. When departing Charity Missionary Baptist Church following Scott’s funeral, a man embraced Mayor Summey. Journalists reported, “‘Keep praying for me,’ Mr. Summey said softly. ‘Keep praying for me’” (Blinder, 2015, p. 13). The tragedy of Scott’s death was not exclusively to be borne by the slain man’s family. The loss, journalists reiterated, transcended race.

The White savior, according to Hughey (2014), “often experiences pain and torment” (p. 41) as he negotiates his own subjectivity. Within this narrative, “The paternalistic racism of the ‘white man’s burden’ is eclipsed by the supposedly pure religious narrative of one person’s sacrificial redemption that allows others to live as free and noble people” (p. 42). A former chaplain who worked to ease racial tensions within North Charleston, Driggers was “sickened by what I saw,” claiming that he had “not watched it [the video] since [the first time]” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. A1). Unlike prior cases of White police violence enacted against Black men, women, and children, Driggers and Summey publicly professed their revulsion at the sight of Santana’s cell phone video in statements repeated widely across news organizations. “Driggers said he viewed the shocking cellphone video of the shooting when it was released on Tuesday, and it made him queasy” (Steinbuch & Fears, 2015, p. 11). The police chief did not respond with a meditation on police procedure. He made no attempt to defend Slager. A show of raw emotion, Driggers’s tears communicated empathy and struggle. When questioned about whether proper police protocol had been followed in this case, Driggers answered, “Obviously not” (Robles & Blinder, 2015, p. 1). Although Driggers’s response might suggest a certain irritation with the journalist’s question, it also pointed to Driggers’s sense that the meaning of the video was transparent: Seeing was believing, and seeing meant bearing witness to a brutal action performed by a White police officer.

While Driggers and Summey declared their disgust at the sight of Slager shooting the father of four as he ran away, journalists noted Driggers’s continued reflection on the experience of bearing witness. Driggers responded not simply as a police chief bearing witness to the brutal actions of one of his officers. The police chief announced, “I have been around this police department a long time and all the officers on this force, the men and women, are like my children,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “So you tell me how a father would react seeing his child do something? I’ll let you answer that yourself” (Tacopino, 2015, p. 12). In identifying himself as a father, a paternal figure, who was responding to the sight of his “child,” Driggers positioned himself and his emotional distress at the center of the story, a thread woven into news coverage, local and national. By foregrounding the experience of the traumatized White leader, journalists privileged Driggers’s distress, positioning it as a surrogate for all.

Summey and Driggers, journalists reminded, were victims alongside Scott. They had borne witness to Scott’s death; they had seen one of “their own” make a “bad” decision. They were, therefore, confronted with the need to take action—to engage with “bad” in an attempt to salvage “good.” While, journalists reminded, the nation mourned for Walter Scott, the Black man shot by White officer Slager, the nation would pray for the White leaders—that they continue to do “right.”

Mythologizing Progress

The narrative threads of color-blind morality, racial cooperation, and inclusive victimhood collectively reinforced the mythology of Summey and Driggers as White saviors—men who evidenced North Charleston’s racial progress as opposed to its persistent racism. The sense of progress was bolstered by journalists’ use of quotes from local and national figures attesting to change. Although North Charleston “has struggled to put segregation behind it,” according to Councilwoman Williams, who served the city for 24 years, “She doesn’t run across that type of racial vitriol or denigration much anymore [use of intimidation by whites]” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. 1).

The city may have once been a bastion of racism, but, according to Williams, “black and white people, especially the younger generation, mingle like never before” (Zucchino et al., 2015, p. 1). According to Pearce (2015), quoting John Gaskin III, a Black St. Louis community activist, “Things have changed considerably . . . Quite honestly, Ferguson was the Watergate of public relations. It was a disaster . . . I think a lot of people, many, learned from Ferguson” (p. 13). Pearce (2015) reminded, “The Ferguson police chief—Thomas Jackson, who has since resigned—took almost a week to reveal the name of the officer who killed Brown, and when he did, he also implicated the dead man in a strong-arm robbery” (p. 13). Summey and Driggers, in contrast, immediately turned the case over to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Reflecting on the events in North Charleston, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (“What the Case of Walter Scott,” 2015) wrote, “Perhaps the case of Walter Scott will be the rallying point that elevates this new civil rights movement and reduces the sharp division between black and white, between police and protester” (p. A12). The future looked hopeful.

Progress was not only evidenced within the city of North Charleston. Summey and Driggers’s response to Santana’s video marked an opportunity for journalists to summon stories of progress across the United States. Offering further evidence that “lessons from Ferguson” had been learned, Pearce (2015) described,

When a white Madison, Wis., police officer fatally shot biracial 19-year-old Tony Robinson after a long struggle, Madison Police Chief Michael C. Koval, who is white, quickly appeared on television to provide facts of the case and express his understanding of protesters’ grievances. (p. 13)

In the one instance that ran counter to the dominant narrative championing Summey and Driggers, New York Times columnist Charles Blow offered less effusive praise for the Police Chief. When asked whether race played a role in what happened in North Charleston, Police Chief Driggers responded, “I always look for the good in folks, and so I would hope that nobody would ever do something like that” (Blow, 2015). “Hope” that “bad decisions” would not predominate, Blow suggested, implied a certain isolation to the shooting, as if Slager’s action could be divorced from the larger culture of racism to which it is inextricably linked. If one adhered to the belief that Slager’s action was indeed an isolated incident, divorced from a structure of racism, Blow argued, the progress that seemed visible with the actions of Summey and Driggers was largely illusory.

Conclusion

The cultural narrative surrounding Mayor Summey and Chief Driggers’s responses to the shooting of Walter Scott resolved, at least temporarily, critiques of institutionalized police racism. The White saviors provided evidence that “good” prevailed. Slager, by extension, was cast then as an individual police officer who made a “bad decision.” Although Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. (2015) casted doubt on the claim that Scott’s death was another “isolated incident,” his commentary centered around the brutality of police action, rather than North Charleston’s response. The circulation of White savior mythology throughout newspapers, leaning both left and right, fostered discourses of progress, emphasizing the laudable color blindness of the White leaders’ actions while summoning their histories of racial cooperation. These were not racists of the Jim Crow South, journalists reminded. The White leaders’ denunciation of Slager’s shooting of Scott was deemed “reason to hope”—evidence that indeed the tragic lessons of the past had been learned. Whiteness was redeemed; race had been transcended.

The ultimate irony of the story emphasizing progress and lessons learned, however, would be placed into sharpest relief in mid-June 2015 when Dylann Roof, a White supremacist, entered Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine African Americans and injuring one other person with the intention of starting a “race war.” The story of Charleston served as a grim reminder that more than police videotapes will be needed to ensure respect for the lives of people of color. As Lipsitz (1995) argued, “As long as we define social life as the sum total of conscious and deliberate individual activities, then only individual manifestations of personal prejudice and hostility will be seen as racist. Systemic, collective, and coordinated behavior disappears from sight” (p. 381). Rather than an isolated incident perpetrated by a lone, racist individual, the deadly massacre in Charleston is part of a larger narrative with historic roots, inextricably linked to the myth of the White savior. Closer attention to the structures embedded in mythic constructions of Whiteness is necessary to engage the issue of racism and its pervasiveness in contemporary United States. Without it, victims of color will continue to be forgotten to devastating effect. Such attention requires active resistance to the White savior myths that reify color-blind ideology in public discourse. This work entails more than “hoping” alone.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Nicole Maurantonio is associate professor of rhetoric and communication studies at the University of Richmond. Her research interests include race, journalism, and public memory.

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