Word.ws English Dictionary

white saviorism

white saviorism noun: the worldview that regards white people as saviors and other groups as needing to be saved by them.

Noun

white saviorism (uncountable)

  1. The worldview that regards white people as saviors and other groups as needing to be saved by them.
    • These strike me as pretty apparent examples of White savior mentality. Perhaps I'm being a bit sensitive about this. I admit that the Chao charcters link to white saviorism is a bit weak, but when this is coupled the character change of Harold Livotny to Harold (fill in asian name here).1994 May 4, D TUng, “JOY LUCK CLUB: and Asian Women”, in soc.culture.asian.american (Usenet)
    • White saviorism is a form of false generosity; it maintains and embodies white supremacy; it frames the white outsider as the savior and hero and the people of color as too oppressed, too downtrodden, too powerless to help themselves.2015, Keith M. Sturges, editor, Neoliberalizing Educational Reform, →ISBN, page 117

Forms of white saviorism

alternative formwhite saviourism

Origin of white saviorism

From white savior + -ism.

Questions about white saviorism

What does white saviorism mean?
White saviorism means the worldview that regards white people as saviors and other groups as needing to be saved by them.
What part of speech is white saviorism?
White saviorism is a noun.

Words near white saviorism in the dictionary

  1. white sapphires
  2. white satin
  3. white sauce
  4. white sauces
  5. white savior
  6. white saviorism
  7. white saviors
  8. white saviour
  9. white saviourism
  10. white saviours
  11. white scavenger vulture

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: white saviorism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “white saviorism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/white_saviorism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.