How White Americans Experience Racial Gaze: Public Interactions and White Parents of Black Adopted Children

Abstract

Within America’s racialized social system, White people can generally navigate life as “unmarked,” oblivious to race. But for White parents of Black adopted children, everyday public interactions provide occasion to directly and vicariously experience a form of “racial gaze,” specifically via scrutiny directed toward them as parents and the bodies of their Black children. Drawing on 46 in-depth interviews with White adoptive parents of Black children, and incorporating insights from whiteness theory and research, I analyze how White parents perceive and respond to racial scrutiny. Parents describe how their ability to raise Black children feels challenged through unsolicited advice about haircare, negative comments, and perceived disapproving looks from Black strangers. These interactions provoke parents’ insecurity and anxiety such that they become more aware of their own whiteness and thus less “colorblind” than they might have been otherwise, while also resenting Black strangers for implicitly challenging their parenting abilities or the appropriateness of their parenting Black children. Findings provide novel insight into ways White Americans respond to the subjective experience of racial gaze. Given expectations of universal white innocence, competence, and colorblindness, they react with increased anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and greater guardedness around Black Americans in public to the point of resentment.