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White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions
When working with Indigenous people, the helping professions ―education, social work, health care and justice ― reinforce the colonial lie that Indigenous people need saving. In White Benevolence, leading anti-racism scholars reveal the ways in which white settlers working in these institutions shape, defend and uphold institutional racism, even while professing to support Indigenous people. White supremacy shows up in the everyday behaviours, language and assumptions of white professionals who reproduce myths of Indigenous inferiority and deficit, making it clear that institutional racism encompasses not only high-level policies and laws but also the collective enactment by people within these institutions. In this uncompromising and essential collection, the authors argue that white settler social workers, educators, health-care practitioners and criminal justice workers have a responsibility to understand the colonial history of their professions and their complicity in ongoing violence, be it over-policing, school push-out, child apprehension or denial of health care. The answer isn’t cultural awareness training. What’s needed is radical anti-racism, solidarity and a relinquishing of the power of white supremacy.
- GenresNonfictionRaceEducation
256 pages, Paperback
Published June 21, 2022
49 people are currently reading
803 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
December 2, 2023
Worth reading the entire thing, though it can be difficult and sometimes dry. Some injustices are more surprising than others. It is important to recognize the sytems that colonialism created and how they were implemented to control Indigenous people. Particularly relevant for people working in education, social service, or healthcare settings in Canada.
March 30, 2024
This is a fantastic collection of essays to really deconstruct white privilege in the helping professions. As a white, female teacher who has done a lot of anti racism work, I felt that this book challenged me to see benevolence / white saviour complexes and my own privilege at a deeper level. I learned about how intent vs. Impact can really change depending on situation, race, and more. I found out about queering the mainstream, and specifically understanding interconnectedness more deeply. Along with so many other valuable lessons that I need to process and consider within my own profession on a daily basis. If you are in social work, teaching, nursing, or any other “helping” / “guiding”
Field, I would 10000% recommend this book.
My only issue was the language. It’s incredibly academic, and I understand why… I just found it to be incredibly dry at points.
Field, I would 10000% recommend this book.
My only issue was the language. It’s incredibly academic, and I understand why… I just found it to be incredibly dry at points.
August 15, 2024
This is a very insightful and thought-provoking book. Maybe due to my background in federal corrections, I found Van Styvendale’s chapter on Indigenous prisoner organizing during COVID particularly impactful. I also really enjoyed Allen’s Tracing the Harmful Patterns of White Settler Womanhood and Scribe’s The Stories We Tell.
September 14, 2024
Damn. Hard to even find anything to say because all I can do is grab your shoulders, shake you hard, and say please read this book! It is single-handedly demolishing my collection of page flags. Gonna be thinking about this one for a long time.
August 5, 2022
So much self-reflection after reading this. It was so good, and will be reading a second time.
October 8, 2025
One million stars. Essential reading for anyone from the prairie provinces.
September 25, 2022
I appreciated the variety of topics that these authors chose to cover. I think this book makes accessible many points on white women's roles in uplifting and upholding settler colonial standards in Canada. My one hesitation in that some articles written by settler scholars use positionality in a self-defeating way. Indeed, the one article on whiteness in nursing, while possessing an overall good analysis of the issue, also frequently centres her disgust with her discovery of her whiteness in the mirror thus centring white women's guilt and emotions which just read as taking away from the book's message. Nonetheless, the rest of the articles are steller especially Timothy Stanley's and Jas M. Morgan's.
June 8, 2022
This book is probably going to be one of my top books this year.
So much deep thinking, and inspiration to take action.
All helping professionals should read and consult it often.
So much deep thinking, and inspiration to take action.
All helping professionals should read and consult it often.
March 6, 2024
Ariela's review:
I was just a little bit surprised with myself for getting this book. Lately I’ve been reading books like these, ones that provide evidence of the racism towards Indigenous Peoples in Canada. So this one is not different, except it focuses just a little bit more on the actions of white people. This is a book that really made me think and think about my views a lot. It certainly challenged me, and I feel like I have a new perspective on the world.
Some of the topics discussed in this book were
Whiteness in a field like education
How Indigenous Specific Racism is coached into health care systems
White Settler Womanhood
Settlers of colour
And that’s only naming a few. These are the ones that I felt most interesting. Before I dive into these topics, let’s first read the definition of White Benevolence, the title of this book.
White Benevolence: A form of paternalistic racism that reinforces instead of challenges racial hierarchies and it’s presence found across Canadian institutions.
Just incase you aren’t familiar with the definition of “benevolence”, benevolence is being kind. Benevolence is a good thing, people being charitable and generous, so that must be what this book is about, right? Well, technically yes. But also no.
In this case, the generosity of white people in this context is harmful. This book offers evidence of the ways that white settlers have been racist, mistreated, and discriminated against Indigenous Peoples under the impression of providing “help” to them. It’s not only about how whites have tried to “help” Indigenous, it also deals with blatant mistreatment.
Whiteness in a field like education is a topic that I found really fascinating, it was actually titled “Toxic Encounters: What’s Whiteness Doing in A Field like Education?”. One of the topics in this chapter was the racism and bullying at schools, to the point that Indigenous kids alienate themselves from the rest. It talked about how the bullying could get so bad that the Indigenous kids would adapt the mindset that they’re the problem. Parents and teachers may think that a school is a “safe space”, and of course bullying is discouraged, but when it happens, teachers silence themselves instead of speaking out against hate and bullying. This could also be because they support the bullying, or they simply don’t think it’s worth the time. This topic really shed some light on the school systems, and how Indigenous kids are treated within them.
Indigenous specific racism is something that is coached into the health care system. Essentially, doctors refuse to treat Indigenous patients, and they are not truly safe in the healthcare system. Some doctors commit “socially accepted murder”. Meaningless deaths have happened due to racism, and it’s so sad to face this cruel reality and this cruel world. This is something that professors have tried to teach to others, and it’s even it’s own term. It’s called “Indigenous Specific Racism Coaching” or ISRC.
White Settler Womanhood was probably the chapter that I found most interesting. It explored many topics, and I appreciated that this chapter was the first-hand experience of a woman. It also explored the traditional values for women, how women are taught to keep others “civil”, be respectable, and follow the example of men/be there to help men.
“In this piece I invite readers to consider how white women have been integral to the survival of an ongoing settler colonial project through the performance of benevolent white femininity that preserves white woman’s status and white settler dominance under the guise of protection, help, and saving.” (Willow Samara Allen, Page 87 of White Benevolence)
The last topic that I will discuss today is “settlers of color”. For the record, I’m not a huge fan of saying “people of color”. We’re all coloured people. This term only exists to separate people more. I don’t like it. White is a color too. Either way, this section talks about Canadians who descend from non-European countries. The author of this story is from South Asian, I believe it was Pakistan. This topic is so incredibly interesting to me, and I thought the section in the book was good to read about.
Some additional takeaways and notes from this book were the “Sixties Scoop”, the mistreatment and abuse of Indigenous prisoners, how the stories and experiences of Indigenous women are censored, and undeserved violence towards Indigenous Peoples. It’s a book that presents a lot of evidence of Indigenous lives with the interference of colonialism. It’s a look back into the past of how whites have come into Canada, and how they have treated Indigenous under the guise of “helping” and “kindness”. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about this, and educate themselves. It certainly is an important topic.
I was just a little bit surprised with myself for getting this book. Lately I’ve been reading books like these, ones that provide evidence of the racism towards Indigenous Peoples in Canada. So this one is not different, except it focuses just a little bit more on the actions of white people. This is a book that really made me think and think about my views a lot. It certainly challenged me, and I feel like I have a new perspective on the world.
Some of the topics discussed in this book were
Whiteness in a field like education
How Indigenous Specific Racism is coached into health care systems
White Settler Womanhood
Settlers of colour
And that’s only naming a few. These are the ones that I felt most interesting. Before I dive into these topics, let’s first read the definition of White Benevolence, the title of this book.
White Benevolence: A form of paternalistic racism that reinforces instead of challenges racial hierarchies and it’s presence found across Canadian institutions.
Just incase you aren’t familiar with the definition of “benevolence”, benevolence is being kind. Benevolence is a good thing, people being charitable and generous, so that must be what this book is about, right? Well, technically yes. But also no.
In this case, the generosity of white people in this context is harmful. This book offers evidence of the ways that white settlers have been racist, mistreated, and discriminated against Indigenous Peoples under the impression of providing “help” to them. It’s not only about how whites have tried to “help” Indigenous, it also deals with blatant mistreatment.
Whiteness in a field like education is a topic that I found really fascinating, it was actually titled “Toxic Encounters: What’s Whiteness Doing in A Field like Education?”. One of the topics in this chapter was the racism and bullying at schools, to the point that Indigenous kids alienate themselves from the rest. It talked about how the bullying could get so bad that the Indigenous kids would adapt the mindset that they’re the problem. Parents and teachers may think that a school is a “safe space”, and of course bullying is discouraged, but when it happens, teachers silence themselves instead of speaking out against hate and bullying. This could also be because they support the bullying, or they simply don’t think it’s worth the time. This topic really shed some light on the school systems, and how Indigenous kids are treated within them.
Indigenous specific racism is something that is coached into the health care system. Essentially, doctors refuse to treat Indigenous patients, and they are not truly safe in the healthcare system. Some doctors commit “socially accepted murder”. Meaningless deaths have happened due to racism, and it’s so sad to face this cruel reality and this cruel world. This is something that professors have tried to teach to others, and it’s even it’s own term. It’s called “Indigenous Specific Racism Coaching” or ISRC.
White Settler Womanhood was probably the chapter that I found most interesting. It explored many topics, and I appreciated that this chapter was the first-hand experience of a woman. It also explored the traditional values for women, how women are taught to keep others “civil”, be respectable, and follow the example of men/be there to help men.
“In this piece I invite readers to consider how white women have been integral to the survival of an ongoing settler colonial project through the performance of benevolent white femininity that preserves white woman’s status and white settler dominance under the guise of protection, help, and saving.” (Willow Samara Allen, Page 87 of White Benevolence)
The last topic that I will discuss today is “settlers of color”. For the record, I’m not a huge fan of saying “people of color”. We’re all coloured people. This term only exists to separate people more. I don’t like it. White is a color too. Either way, this section talks about Canadians who descend from non-European countries. The author of this story is from South Asian, I believe it was Pakistan. This topic is so incredibly interesting to me, and I thought the section in the book was good to read about.
Some additional takeaways and notes from this book were the “Sixties Scoop”, the mistreatment and abuse of Indigenous prisoners, how the stories and experiences of Indigenous women are censored, and undeserved violence towards Indigenous Peoples. It’s a book that presents a lot of evidence of Indigenous lives with the interference of colonialism. It’s a look back into the past of how whites have come into Canada, and how they have treated Indigenous under the guise of “helping” and “kindness”. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about this, and educate themselves. It certainly is an important topic.
December 18, 2025
A great critical look at how violence (racialized and otherwise) plays out in helping/caring professions. Fundamentally, there is a paradox of informed consent in encounters with helping professionals. In that interaction, I, as someone needing help, seek relief and know my suffering better than anyone could; the helping professional is supposed to know and communicate to me the underlying cause of my suffering, the options for addressing that cause, and the risks and benefits of those options. In that interaction, there is necessarily a trust placed in the helping professional and a yielding of some measure of control and autonomy. When overlaid with racism, heteropatriarchy, and other power structures, that power dynamic becomes more fraught and perilous than it already is.
What I struggled with in this book is what the concept of "white benevolence" adds beyond the concepts of paternalism and colonialism. The conclusion addressed that nicely:
"Anti-Indigenous racism in the settler-colonial context operates under the guise of benevolence and doing good." (256) This is practically a definition of paternalism, but it is a necessary stepping stone for the points below. I'll also note here that this quote and the book as a whole is about settler-colonialism in Canada but is transferable with little effort to anti-Black racism in the US, racism/colorism/colonialism in Central America, heteropatriarchy, etc. etc. etc.
"Feminized performances of 'care' can be as destructive as overt forms of colonial violence." (257) This is the key point of the book. Paternalism and colonialism -- both in etymology and performance -- are fundamentally masculine. They generally involve the imposition of empowered people's wills over marginalized people through physical or state violence. Benevolence generally represents the role of women and feminized professionals -- social workers, nurses, teachers, and increasingly doctors -- in colonial violence, where people are compelled or coerced to comply with colonial norms. A nurse I saw taking a social history of a young Black man made little effort to conceal her assumptions from him or anyone else that he used alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco. That doctor's appointment was a small part of one day of this guy's life, but tied up in that are assumptions about his character, virtue, standing, and the image he wants to project vs. the image others project onto him, and in every interaction like that, at the very least, he is made to expend pained effort to resist those racist assumptions, and worse, he is repeatedly "put back in his place" by people who he is repeatedly told just want to help him. In small ways, that interaction represents an abuse of informed consent by the healthcare professionals involved. That guy consented that day to a doctor's appointment and probably expected some uncomfortable questions about substance use, sex, etc., but he did not consent to fending off a nurse's racist assumptions. Of course, that applies everywhere in his life, but there is something more humiliating about seeking help, consenting to receive help, being reminded throughout the interaction that everyone wants to help you get the help you want and that you are "in the right place," and then being hurt by people you expect to be trained to help you but who have also been trained to hurt you.
"The devastating consequences of racism are minimized by performances of innocence and a facade of good intentions." (256) Large organizations will offer so much free employee or student labor, community partnerships, etc. before they ever give actual, tangible, financial resources to community members and their organizations who need them. This reinforces the falsehood that the large, benevolent organization obtained its abundant resources through virtue, and that virtue, competence, and diligence are the things the organization has to share and which 'othered' community members lack.
What I struggled with in this book is what the concept of "white benevolence" adds beyond the concepts of paternalism and colonialism. The conclusion addressed that nicely:
"Anti-Indigenous racism in the settler-colonial context operates under the guise of benevolence and doing good." (256) This is practically a definition of paternalism, but it is a necessary stepping stone for the points below. I'll also note here that this quote and the book as a whole is about settler-colonialism in Canada but is transferable with little effort to anti-Black racism in the US, racism/colorism/colonialism in Central America, heteropatriarchy, etc. etc. etc.
"Feminized performances of 'care' can be as destructive as overt forms of colonial violence." (257) This is the key point of the book. Paternalism and colonialism -- both in etymology and performance -- are fundamentally masculine. They generally involve the imposition of empowered people's wills over marginalized people through physical or state violence. Benevolence generally represents the role of women and feminized professionals -- social workers, nurses, teachers, and increasingly doctors -- in colonial violence, where people are compelled or coerced to comply with colonial norms. A nurse I saw taking a social history of a young Black man made little effort to conceal her assumptions from him or anyone else that he used alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco. That doctor's appointment was a small part of one day of this guy's life, but tied up in that are assumptions about his character, virtue, standing, and the image he wants to project vs. the image others project onto him, and in every interaction like that, at the very least, he is made to expend pained effort to resist those racist assumptions, and worse, he is repeatedly "put back in his place" by people who he is repeatedly told just want to help him. In small ways, that interaction represents an abuse of informed consent by the healthcare professionals involved. That guy consented that day to a doctor's appointment and probably expected some uncomfortable questions about substance use, sex, etc., but he did not consent to fending off a nurse's racist assumptions. Of course, that applies everywhere in his life, but there is something more humiliating about seeking help, consenting to receive help, being reminded throughout the interaction that everyone wants to help you get the help you want and that you are "in the right place," and then being hurt by people you expect to be trained to help you but who have also been trained to hurt you.
"The devastating consequences of racism are minimized by performances of innocence and a facade of good intentions." (256) Large organizations will offer so much free employee or student labor, community partnerships, etc. before they ever give actual, tangible, financial resources to community members and their organizations who need them. This reinforces the falsehood that the large, benevolent organization obtained its abundant resources through virtue, and that virtue, competence, and diligence are the things the organization has to share and which 'othered' community members lack.
February 17, 2026
Excellent book. I appreciated the format as a collection of essays from different authors; it makes it easy to pick up and put down, and gives a wide variety of perspectives on the harms whiteness and the ongoing project of colonialism enacts on Indigenous people, in fields from teaching to nursing to social work. I would not call it a good introductory book for someone new to learning about antiracism and colonial violence (the writing assumes a certain baseline level of understanding), but that's not a bad thing. The advanced nature of the book meant it could dive deeper than more basic books on the subject, and I came out of it with many new perspectives and a newfound understanding of what it means for me to be a white settler on Turtle Island and the work that I need to do to fight against white supremacy and colonialism.
December 22, 2022
Essential reading for everyone's anti-racism journey, particularly for all Canadians who work within the 'helping professions'
Well-edited set of short essays, which offer interesting and compelling insights and allow the reader to consider themselves without having to find the way through the academic literature. Each essay has its own theme and is incredibly interesting, and I challenge any (white settler) reader not to learn or self-reflect when reading this book.
Well-edited set of short essays, which offer interesting and compelling insights and allow the reader to consider themselves without having to find the way through the academic literature. Each essay has its own theme and is incredibly interesting, and I challenge any (white settler) reader not to learn or self-reflect when reading this book.
March 21, 2025
Excellent. Each chapter is a stand alone and it’s written academically in that the authors/ researchers speak to one topic (ie racism in health care). This collection of articles should be shared widely and incorporated into curriculum. Very educational. A difficult read content wise, the brutality of Indigenous Peoples’ reality is harsh. I would recommend spacing out your reading to properly absorb and digest.
May 25, 2024
Broadened my awareness and challenged my perspectives. The title says a lot and describes the reason white women get into the helping profession. I appreciated the essay that highlighted the importance of cultural safety. Everyone should read this book.
July 28, 2024
As a racialized teacher working in a predominantly white school in BC, I felt so seen. The chapter on white woman’s tears really hit home for me. I think that is a chapter that every white female teacher in Canada needs to read before entering the profession.
September 6, 2022
Me and a couple of girlies are reading this for our book club and we absolutely love it. Excellent encapsulation of anti-Indigenous racism in the prairies
October 10, 2022
I highly recommend this book!
February 15, 2023
Everyone should read this!
December 26, 2024
This is a very important book to read. It is heavy, with complicated concepts, and takes a lot of concentration.
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