In ‘Under the White Gaze,’ a Stirring Call for Change

• Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism
• Christopher Cheung
• UBC Press, Purich Books (2024)

Despite its ethnic diversity and politically progressive surface representation, Vancouver is not always a hospitable place for conversations about race and racism. For years, local media have seemed to lack the analytical and intersectional tools needed to help the public understand why the news media — and, by extension, the public conversation — looks and feels so impenetrably white. And crucially, why it seems to be missing so many key voices from the communities it purports to represent.

In his refreshing and necessary first book, Tyee urban issues reporter Christopher Cheung breaks the silence with Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism. Tyee readers will remember his newsletter of the same name from 2021, which we published as a Tyee series in 2022 and which Cheung significantly expanded for this book.

Cheung uses scholarly research and his personal experiences in the industry to help readers make sense of representational strategies and pitfalls in Canadian journalism. There are chapters on the abundance of “model minority” stories and how racialized places are too often covered with an outsider’s point of view, like they’re a chapter in a Lonely Planet guide.

The book is also filled with recent examples of reporting from mainstream outlets to show how everyday shorthand, well-intentioned attempts at inclusion and an ultimate lack of ethnic diversity in Canadian newsrooms contribute to a media landscape that fails to reflect the diversity of the public it’s meant to serve. There are sections on the racist tones of the housing crisis, the debate over the “un-Canadianness” of Chinese-language signs in Richmond and the criminalization of immigrant cities like Surrey and Scarborough.

Cheung also shares articles in which journalists submit stories with verbatim interview quotes from immigrant families who speak a native language other than English and appear to be unaccustomed to speaking to the press. Without editing the responses for basic syntax or clarity, their editors publish quotes like “All the people no fight, all the friendship, how good, how excellent,” often noting their sources struggle to speak “a lick of English.” The result is a limiting portrayal that should be as embarrassing to the publication as it may be to the sources themselves.

These are just a few among numerous examples in the book of how people of colour are shown to not matter much to the local press. And journalists of colour receive similar treatment. In a striking scene in the final chapter, Cheung details how a young racialized journalist was recently followed for nine minutes in his car while working as a news reporter in a small, predominantly white community in rural B.C.

“If you’re white, the news is giving you a redacted portrait of who you share your community with,” Cheung writes. “If you’re a person of colour like me, this mismatch between what you experience as reality and what you see on the news feels extra personal when the people you’re familiar with, the places you frequent, the cultures you belong to, and the issues you care about are represented inaccurately. That is, if they’re in the news at all.”

This is the book that I wished I could have read in journalism school, and again while in the first years of my career when I’d adopt the white gaze as a survival strategy, too scared to act on what Cheung investigates with such verve. To his credit, he turns the mirror on himself and considers his early years as a journalist when he’d inadvertently reproduce some of the reporting pitfalls he details in his book.

Cheung responds to key, pressing questions: Why do we prioritize the stories that we do, and what informs our approaches to reporting them? Whose perspectives are missing? How does the media, intentionally and unintentionally, erase or delegitimize the realities and experiences of people of colour?

Under the White Gaze is a welcome invitation for journalists and editors to self-reflect. And it’s a call for all of us to act in service of a more inclusive and representative media landscape.

Cheung notes that one of his early inspirations was the American writer Gay Talese, a leader in 1960s literary non-fiction known as “New Journalism” who said good reporters were “masters at the ‘art of hanging out.’”

I can attest that Cheung is an excellent hang. Here are the gems from a recent conversation of ours, which has been edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: For those who don’t know, what is the “white gaze”? How does it relate to journalism?

Christopher Cheung: It’s a point of view that shapes depictions of a subject. Whiteness, whether that’s white people or European culture, is presented as normal while everything else is presented as the “other.”

So under a white gaze, anything racialized might be presented in a negative way, such as being lesser or abnormal. For example, a story might frame the appearance of a bunch of Iranian currency exchanges as being a blight on a neighbourhood when they really just exist so a diaspora can access financial services.

Othering can also be seemingly positive, emphasizing the exotic or the exceptional. A story about dim sum might gawk at the excitement of dishes like chicken feet that are common foods, while a story that admires Filipino migrant workers might treat them as superhuman, ignoring the fact that they have dependants overseas or what the cost of their labour might be. And for racialized stuff that the white gaze is unfamiliar with, it often leaves them out of the news coverage entirely.

This gaze is the product of the kind of place Canada is and the fact that the journalism industry remains white-dominated. And that means both white journalists and racialized journalists can take on the white gaze. It’s something that I did a lot in my early career and am trying to avoid now by thinking about who our news is catered to.

Toni Morrison had a great way of describing the white gaze, a little figure that sits on your shoulder and checks out everything you do or say. The book has some tips on producing journalism that isn’t burdened by that phantom.

When did you start writing this book? Can you tell me about what was happening in the wider world at the time, and in your own life?

There was a lot going on! This book was a pandemic book, and the different stages of the pandemic really shaped it.

When I was cooped up at home, I wrote some essays about race and representation in Canadian journalism that probably wouldn’t have been as spicy if I had been out doing other things; the Tyee series of the same name was the bulk of this.

Then as restrictions lifted and we could meet up with friends in person again, I got to catch up with journalists (not white) who shared a lot of laugh/cry stories involving managers who said racist things, pushed racist frames in their reporting or ignored their pitches about racialized groups in favour of their own. It reminded me that this power dynamic was still the reality in many newsrooms.

As for what showed up in publications, one big headline of the pandemic was Asian hate. I saw many newsrooms, with good intentions, wanting to counter that in some way. While there was some coverage that did a nuanced job talking about the ways in which Asian peoples are still othered in Canada, there were also a lot of stories that celebrated “Asianness” in ways that I found cheesy, commercial and vague.

To me, these stories pushed an idea of “Let’s all just get along and celebrate each other!” rather than “Let’s talk about some difficult things like anti-immigration and immigrant exceptionalism.”

[The year] 2024 was also approaching, my 10-year anniversary working in journalism. You know how people calculate dog years as human years times seven? I feel like there’s such a thing as journalism years, where you age and big changes happen at two, three or four times the speed of real time.

It was a common occurrence to see publications fold, friends lose jobs and projects that made gains in terms of representation shut down. I felt like having stuck around for 10 years is a pretty long time when I could have been snuffed out earlier.

So I wanted to put this book out as a document of some things I’ve learned along the way and keep the conversation about race and representation going.

Between then and now, what’s changed in regard to the journalism landscape as you've experienced it?

Something that’s always happening is layoffs or journalists calling it quits. It’s always sad when I see racialized reporters who’ve done good work step away from the industry. I wholeheartedly support their decision to do what’s best for them, but the loss of one reporter is always a loss too many. It’s the loss of relationships they’ve built with sources and audiences, it’s the loss of specialized knowledge they’ve built during their beat, it’s a loss of accountability in the community they’re serving.

And that’s an especially big loss if they were able to connect with racialized groups that were not used to being covered in English-language media with the same rigour.

I have been encouraged by organizations like the Canadian Association of Journalists who are aware of the issue of representation and actively working on ways to improve it. It’s a topic of discussion at conferences and their mentorship program has mentors wanting to help young racialized journalists looking to get a foothold in the industry.

One helpful project has been their newsroom diversity survey, which they kicked off in 2021 and has been conducted every year since. There hadn’t been any data like it for 17 years, and it gives the industry a starting place to see its own makeup.

We also see where racialized reporters are overrepresented, like in part-time and internship roles, and where they are missing, like in management. I’m encouraged that I have colleagues nationally who want to see change.

Thinking about the journalism industry, what, to you, are the gaps in regard to diversity and inclusion that you see as most pressing? And what can be done to address them?

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of The Tyee’s diversity committee, and one helpful document that we’ve looked at is a series of calls to action from the Canadian Journalists of Colour and the Canadian Association of Black Journalists. They fall into three main categories.

What are we doing to help racialized journalists into the industry? This means things like connecting with schools, offering mentorships and scholarships and making sure that they get paid for their work, which is especially important to help international students make ends meet because they are paying a lot more than domestic students for their school.

After they’re in the industry, what are newsrooms doing to help them succeed? Maybe they don’t want to cover the communities they’re from, and that’s totally fine. But for those who do, are they trusted for their knowledge and experience and given opportunities to take the lead on stories?

I’ve spoken with many a racialized journalist who said they felt used by their white editors to gain “access” to a community, whether because of how they look or by the language they speak to gain trust, to cover story angles they don’t believe in.

Also, are racialized journalists mentored and given opportunities to be newsroom leaders?

And racialized journalists aside, how are newsrooms approaching their coverage of underrepresented groups as a whole? Are all reporters, white or not, covering their beats in an intersectional way? Are style guides being updated to ensure that language is accurate and not othering?

Is there a conversation with those underrepresented groups about how the newsroom is doing? And is this all happening regularly with an open mind to improve?

After reading your book, what do you hope readers will carry with them?

The ways in which the news is not entirely neutral. I don’t mean this in terms of the “left-wing media” and “right-wing media” labels that get tossed around on social media to discredit a news source. I want to challenge news audiences to think about how any journalism they consume is crafted, how information is framed and ultimately how knowledge is produced. News can strive for accuracy, but the subjectivity of the journalist can still creep in.

There’s a bunch of questions I hope readers will think about with regard to race, ethnicity and culture in the news. Whose stories are missing? Is there a group who lives near you that never makes it into the news? Whose stories are told? How are they portrayed? Are the same stories being told about them again and again? Does the coverage bring you inside of a group or is it a cold, distant view from the outside?

I hope readers will think critically about whether their local outlets do a good job of telling them about their own communities. And if not, know how to push them to do better.

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Christopher Cheung will celebrate the launch of ‘Under the White Gaze’ on Sept. 18 at the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch. He will be in conversation with celebrated Vancouver author Kevin Chong. You can RSVP on the VPL website.