Other people’s words about … the White Gaze
My perception of any given situation is sometimes clouded by the ever-hovering cumulonimbus of racism. And so, at times, it’s hard to know what’s what. This is one of the biggest problems with being Black. You live with this ever-dangling question: Is it racism or not? If, for example, a waiter attends to a white person before me, it could be that the waiter simply has missed seeing me, or is absentminded, or is already in the middle of attending to that white person in the next booth of the diner; but also, the waiter could be racist.
It’s a pernicious mindfuck that never goes away. I need to validate my suspicions, but I can never be absolutely certain. And so, when that hypothetical waiter at the hypothetical diner finally arrives at my table, I’ll usually test them carefully by smiling to see if I’m met with a warm, receptive gaze, and also to show I am not one of those savages or thugs to be feared. Sometimes, though, to prevent any further confusion and degradation, I might demand that the server provide me with equal service. I’ll point out how every white person was attended to first. Yet, with either of these approaches, I’ll risk seeming either too complicit in my own degradation or else too rude and demanding. I may even come off as straight-up paranoid: What if the waiter was simply nearsighted and missed seeing me, and it had nothing to do with race at all? I cannot win. And yet, I’ll have to choose what kind of Black person to be at any given moment — accommodating, demanding, silently paranoid, or overtly paranoid. And it could all be for nothing! It is exhausting to be Black and go out in public at all.
From ‘Greenland‘
By David Santos Donaldson
I think the passage above is one of the best, most succinct explorations of the White Gaze that I, as a white person, have ever read. Donaldson’s narrator in his novel Greenland, Kip, is Black, male and gay, and he lives with a white man, Ben, several years older than himself who, while loving and desiring Kip, is growing tired of the courage it takes to do so. But Ben is afraid to admit this. What he believes, and what he tells Kip, is that he has been seeing Kip the whole time they’ve been together. This is, after all, what everyone wants, isn’t it? To be seen.
The tiredness Ben feels about their relationship takes the form of telling Kip that he can’t make up for everything that every white person has ever done to Kip. That he can’t make up for all of the history that Kip is a victim of. That it is, finally, too big a wound. What can Kip do in response but watch Ben retreat, even as he, Kip, is not afforded the luxury of being able to retreat? Kip, who wants only to be seen.
Some months ago, I quoted a passage about the White Gaze by another writer, Brandon Taylor, from his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. Taylor’s narrator, Wyeth, describes the experience of being a Black artist as having: a tiny white man in your mind to argue with constantly all the way up and down until you died never having had a single thought that was not either about whiteness or a reaction to whiteness.
What I love about both Taylor’s and Donaldson’s writing in these passages is how they go about making it clear that there is no such thing for a Black person (or, as in both these cases, a Black man) as playing the race card, no such thing as getting over it. There is only living with the cards you have been dealt (that word again, card, in another guise) and understanding how much you have internalised them. There is only the daily decision you have to make about whether you have the energy and courage to go out again in public for another day.
Even Ben’s tiredness is a privilege. Ultimately, that’s what he has to learn.
Reading nook, June 2026.
Lately I’ve been reading …
- Some people collect dirt from significant places. / Or spoonfuls of cloudy oceans inside jars: ‘Vivarium’, a poem by Jenny George, accompanied by a discussion by the wonderful Devin Kelly of Ordinary Plots
- What I didn’t know before / was how horses simply give birth to other / horses: ‘What I Didn’t Know Before’, a poem by Ada Limón, along with another of her poems, ‘What I Want to Remember’, in the Washington Square Review
- One gallon of water, one first-aid kit, one pocket knife, two boxes of granola bars: ‘Go Bag’, a piece of microfiction by Chris Scott, in Milk Candy Review
- There are no stupid questions—: ‘There Are No Stupid Questions’, a piece of microfiction by Elena Zhang, in the Offing
- The girl I love wears a harness everyday under her shirt, worn brown leather, I made it from the straps of an old saddle myself: ‘Nervous Thing’, a piece of flash fiction by Ani King, in Pithead Chapel
- I’m just sitting down at a table at the back of the bookstore café with a stack of books and an iced coffee, and the woman at the next table, thirtyish, dreadlocks, librarian glasses, nose ring, leans over and says, ‘Skip that one’: ‘The Last Reader’, a piece of flash fiction by Jess Row in The Commuter
- The first time he calls you a whore, you laugh: ‘Bad Artist’, a short story by Francesca Carra, in The Rumpus
twenty-one words 