Could I ask for an example of what you mean by one writing a story where a character's whiteness is to be understood implicitly/written for the white gaze? I presume the post means when a character does something such as call the police to report a crime when a Black character in the same situation would not but I wanted to ask for clarification if you could provide some!
The way anons were accidentally on, I audibly cursed 🤣 luckily I answered this in the comments. It is one example, sure.
"It's everything. That's why I said "experience"; people are mentioning skin color because while that too is an example, it's not the only one. I don't know how else to explain it to you but that your experience as a white person, as a whole, is not a universal one. But when we go see movies, starring white people, or read books by white people, we're supposed to understand them as the "human" experience. Meanwhile, if those same films or books came out with a full Black cast, it would be seen as "the Black experience". A "Black movie". But we don't call all white casts a "white" movie. Everyday white people on here admit they don't understand movies from a Black perspective, but I've grown up forced to understand the white one. Not because it's universal, but because it was reinforced. Y'all are not made to practice what we have been, because your experience has been cemented as the Default. Your Gaze is centered as The Default."
Or like, how white actors are "famous", but we have "Black famous" actors because we know they're famous, but white audiences act like they've never seen them before (e.g. Delroy Lindo has been acting for decades and yet an interviewer for Sinners claimed he was a new talent.)
Or like I said with the magic of being mermaids. No one ever seriously questions "how does Ariel's hair stay so silky smooth" despite that being a very logical question to ask, because thinner textured hair isn't just immune to constant salt water exposure. We don't ask the logistics of how white mermaids exist, we just Have Them. But when a Black mermaid shows up, suddenly the skill set to write a character and suspend disbelief is gone and she needs to be analyzed... But you were already so easily able to accept that white mermaids would just Be.
Hell, that's fantasy as a whole. No one questions how white people are in space with aliens, or how white people are fucking dragons, but Black elves and dwarves throw off the immersion. Why? Why are we so comfortable with seeing white actors, but everyone else is pandering? Because you've always assumed the characters are white and nothing has ever stopped you, because the authors, too, wanted you to see them as white. No need to describe them as such. (""Pale" means white"; no it doesn't. It means pale.)
It's why every time a character gets cast as Black, there's an uproar because a character whose real world race is irrelevant is suddenly "not what they pictured" WHAT DID YOU PICTURE 👀👀 WHY? How often have you been right, that this is such an unacceptable shock to you? And why are there so many white people agreeing with you, unless you were all on the same page that default image you pictured was...?
Also, watch the videos I linked in the post, please.
