Volume 4 Issue 2, Review
Tome 4 numéro 2, Critique
Review by Shenaz Kermalli
REVIEW | CRITIQUE
Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism
Christopher Cheung
UBC Press, Purich Books, 2024
(288 pp.)
Review by Shenaz Kermalli
Issues around race and representation—often dismissed by some on the right as ‘identity politics’ in the context of populist discourse around governmental policies that regulate mobility and opportunity—are central in Canadian journalism. Debates around class reductionism or right-wing nationalist agendas that exclude ethnic “others” highlight the complexities of inclusion in media narratives.
While dynamic initiatives are emerging to confront traditional Euro-centric approaches to journalism—from a new course at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies exploring decolonization through the lens of Indigenous, Black, francophone and Global South communities, to the launch of the new Mary Ann Shadd Cary Centre for Journalism and Belonging at Carleton University—scholarly literature on the intersection of representation, intersectionality, and decolonization in shaping journalism ethics and practices remain relatively rare.
Recent essential works that are on class reading lists already include: Desmond Cole’s The Skin We’re In (2022), Duncan McCue’s Decolonizing Journalism (2022), and Candis Callison and Mary Lynn Young’s Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities (2020).
Now added to the list is Christopher Cheung’s Under the White Gaze (2024), which references each of the above books. As a Chinese-Canadian journalist for one of Canada’s earliest online news sources, BC-based The Tyee, Cheung’s name is familiar to educators and journalists nationally after The Toronto Star published his award-winning essay, “Blind Spots,” in 2022. Cheung argued that journalists often fail to cover stories outside their familiar cultural circles, akin to how certain neighbourhoods in Vancouver with rich immigrant histories are often dismissed as undesirable until rebranded by predominantly White business interests. The invisibility and gentrification of cycles like this often result in racialized places and communities being either excluded from mainstream narratives or scrutinized through a Eurocentric lens—the very essence of the White gaze.
With easy, personable prose and an honest, thoughtful approach, Cheung brings depth and humanity to a topic too often dismissed under the broad label of “diversity.” Early on, he acknowledges his own susceptibility to the White gaze, highlighting a crucial first step toward meaningful change in the industry: the willingness of journalists to self-reflect and turn the microphone on themselves. By critiquing his own reporting, he models the humility he asks of his readers: “I treated white Canadians of European descent as the default viewpoint,” he writes. “They were the baseline. They were the ‘us’ and everyone else was the ‘other’” (p. 8).
Among my early stories were inspirational ones about model minority immigrants who sacrificed themselves by working 365 days a year. I wrote stories about ‘ethnic’ food as if they were exotic finds rather than the everyday eats of people from the cultures they belonged to. (Cheung, 2024, p. 22)
Importantly, Cheung points out that these narratives didn’t provoke concern from readers, editors, or even himself, because they are so normalized. The harm here, he adds, is that such practices lead us to believe we are challenging the dominance of Whiteness in journalism. This is where the White gaze manifests. In choosing language and topics to cater to a select audience, Cheung (2024) describes himself as “an unknowing tour guide,” often omitting unfamiliar details or over-explaining for readers’ benefit (p. 22). As a result, the lives of racialized people are being viewed from a distance, their experiences not fully conveyed from their own perspectives. “The problem is not whether cultures are covered, but how they are covered,” he argues (p. 82), humorously likening Canadian editorial coverage of community festivals to a Lonely Planet guide. “Journalists should of course introduce a holiday to audiences who are unfamiliar with it, but they should also cover the holiday for those who do celebrate it” (p. 82).
In an ode to CBC journalist and Carleton University professor Duncan McCue’s widely- known “Five Ds” that sum up stereotypes about Indigenous peoples, Cheung constructs his own mnemonic to capture common tropes of racialized people:
‘Darlings’ – model minorities who are celebrated;
‘Deviants’ – people of colour who have their behaviour racialized, whether the behaviour is bad or perceived as bad;
‘Damaged’ – sad and suffering people of colour; and
‘Delicious’ – cultures for consumption. (Cheung, 2024, p. 49)
Cheung offers rich context to illustrate how each of these stereotypes manifest, even concluding with a section questioning the fairness of being so critical about these Ds. Iterating that while there is nothing wrong with covering stories that reflect any of them, Cheung urges media workers to consider how they are being used: Does the audience learn anything new? Are the stories reductive or do they complexify certain issues? Is the representation of racialized people a sanitized vision of ‘diversity without oppression’?
Anyone who reads Cheung’s book will likely recognize—and perhaps cringe at—the missteps they’ve made in their own reporting (myself included). What struck me most however were his opening remarks, where he plainly acknowledges that despite having been a journalist for only a decade, reaching that milestone is remarkable given how many racialized individuals leave the industry within just a few years. It’s a sobering, painful truth.
Many who leave cite the precarious nature of the work; others point to racial toxicity in newsrooms. More recently, former senior producers have highlighted management’s failure to address accusations of pro-Israel bias (Schumann, 2024) and the suppression of pro-Palestinian perspectives in covering Israel’s on-going genocide in Gaza (Kermalli, 2023). Despite recent efforts to improve representation and awareness in journalism, progress remains slow.
Journalists are often at their best when they have years of experience behind them, making the industry’s high turnover rate deeply concerning. Unfortunately, the Canadian public is worse off for it. Books like Cheung’s aren’t just valuable; they are essential. They must be studied, debated, and deeply engaged in journalism, communications, sociology, and political science classrooms—and beyond. The future of fair and inclusive reporting depends on it.
Quoteworthy
Just as we can’t talk about reconciliation without talking about colonization we can’t talk about diversity in journalism without talking about whiteness. It’s easy for newsrooms to say that they want to diversify, but what exactly are they diversifying from? If diversity is one side of the coin, whiteness is the other.” (Cheung, 2024, p. 11)
“Rather than simply reporting a story, I’ve felt like I’m playing chess, having to anticipate how the opposing side might react. It’s caused me to abandon stories or fill them with unnecessary details in hopes of preventing outrage from white readers.” (p. 42)
“I took on the white gaze in everything from my language choices to my story frames. I treated white Canadians of European descent as the default viewpoint. They were the baseline. They were the ‘us’ and everyone else was the ‘other.’ When writing about non-Western cultures, I’d go to great lengths to explain them to a white audience, reporting on them with an air of discovery and distance, padding my stories with little encyclopaedia entries.” (p.8)
Shenaz Kermalli is a freelance journalist and instructor at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She holds an M.A. Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and B.A. Journalism Studies at Sheffield University in the UK. A former producer for CBC News, BBC News and Al Jazeera English, her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, iPolitics and The Ottawa Citizen, among others.
REFERENCES
Callison, C. & Young, M. L. (2020). Reckoning: Journalism’s limits and possibilities. Oxford University Press.
Cheung, C. (2024). Under the white gaze: Solving the problem of race and representation in Canadian journalism. Purich Books.
Cole, D. (2022). The skin we’re in. Doubleday Canada.
Kermalli, S. (2023, Dec. 23). Canadian newsrooms are stifling Palestinian perspectives. J-Source. https://web.archive.org/web/20250326032747/https://j-source.ca/canadian-newsrooms-are-stifling-palestinian-perspectives/
Mazur, C. (2021, June 14). Blind spots: Journalism’s critical failure on Indigenous issues. The Tyee. https:// web.archive.org/web/20250612133114/https://thetyee. ca/Culture/2021/06/14/Blind-Spots/
McCue, D. (2022). Decolonizing journalism: A guide to reporting in Indigenous communities. Oxford University Press.
Schumann, M. (2024, May 16). CBC has whitewashed Israel’s crimes in Gaza. I saw it first-hand. The Breach. https://web.archive.org web/20250612133347/https://breachmedia.ca/ cbc-whitewashed-israels-crimes-gaza-firsthand/
Cite this article
APA
Kermalli, S. (2025). [Review of the book Under the white gaze: Solving the problem of race and representation in Canadian journalism]. Facts & Frictions: Emerging Debates, Pedagogies, and Practices in Contemporary Journalism, 4(2), 77-79. https://doi.org/10.22215/ff/v4.i2.06R
Open Access / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0